Articles

Evidence of a World Transforming and What That Means to Us

The article that follows is by Jacqueline Pratt, affectionately known as shamama by those of you who have enjoyed her assistance in Last Mask Center workshops. Here she summarizes the Institute of Noetic Sciences 2007 Shift Report: Evidence of a World Transforming. These are the things happening right now in our lives that are moving humanity into new evolution. Jacie focuses here on what the report saysand what that means to those of us involved in The Cycle of Transformation . Her conclusion: What we are doing here at Last Mask Center puts us on the forefront of this wave of human evolution. I encourage you to enter The Cycle and be part of this wave of transformation for yourself, your descendants, and our world. - Christina

Institute of Noetic Sciences Report - The 2007 Shift Report
Evidence of a World Transforming
and What That Means to Us
By Jacqueline Pratt

We are living through one of the most fundamental shifts in history - a change in theactual belief structure of Western society. No economic, political, or military power can compare with the power of a change of mind. By deliberately changing their images of reality, people are changing the world." Willis Harman

We who are involved in the Cycle of Transformation with Last Mask Center are in the forefront of the personal transformation aspect of this change of mind. We are learning to use the skills of personal intention, choice and will. With these skills we effectively change our minds about who we are, how we shall act, what is good or evil, what is true or false, how to be spiritual grown ups, and how to take responsibility for our actions in the world.

The very cosmology of The Cycle of Transformation allows us to transform our world view, or why things are the way that they are. By engaging in life through this cosmology, we transform all seven components of our worldview. Why does this matter so much? Because every thought, word, and action stems from our worldview.

This list, SEVEN COMPONENTS OF A WORLD VIEW, is offered by Vie University Brussels, 1995, as criteria for understanding the nature of a cosmology, or world view.

1. A model of the world: who are we?
2. An explanation: Why is the world the way it is? Where does it come from?
3. Futurology: Where are we going?
4. Values: What is good and what is evil?
5. Action: How should we act?
6. Knowledge: What is true and what is false? How do we know what we know?
7. Building Blocks: What preexisting theories and models have been used to answer the questions of the other six categories?

This report from the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) is a bold pronouncement of optimism about the current world status. The noetic way of knowing acknowledges the important impact of "aha!" moments and dreams in the advance of technology. The blending of noetic and analytical ways of knowing is leading to important shifts in worldview.

At Last Mask Center we are using such a blended approach daily in our fundamental decision-making tool: shamanic journeying. We blend our knowing every time we journey for answers to well-crafted questions about our own personal transformations. Analytically, we use all that our experiences have taught us and all that psychology has taught us to craft our questions. Then we enter the realm of non-ordinary reality, dreams, or some similar loosening of the restraints on consciousness, and posit our question. The wisdom received guides us in taking action in the physical world and in the inner world of our lives.

The IONS report covers Biology, Neuroscience and New Physics in a section entitled "WORLDVIEW EMERGENCE: WHERE SCIENCE MEETS SPIRIT." F. David Peat is quoted: "...societies and their belief systems deeply influence the questions we ask, the experiments we design, and the stories we create about the cosmos. By posing questions in different ways, other societies formulate quite different accounts of the world." (Blackfoot Physics, Harpercollins, 1995)

Learning to ask clear, effective questions brings us answers that are useful in our lives. Calling up the will to follow this guidance is the challenge we face each time. Remembering to ask the pertinent question when analysis of our predicament or a decision becomes constricted, is remembering to bring spirit into the arena. We know for certain that asking is essential. When we recognize that we want to tap into the wider sphere of knowing, we make our own intersection of science and spirit. We are, indeed, people who deliberately widen our image of reality.

The IONS report describes Institutional transformations in Psychology, Health Care, Business, Education, and Globalization. A quote of Buckminster Fuller overlies this section: "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." The section on Personal Transformation acknowledges the long ages of time that mystics, philosophers, psychologists, and anthropologists have been concerned with personal transformation. The report goes on to describe what we know now about what makes transformation happen, how people can encourage it, and how to do it. These effective processes are all described in basic terms common to many varieties of transformative practice. IONS concludes, "Science is revealing that we have underestimated our role in our own evolution." Now that we are learning about how genes evolve, how our brains change, how intention actually works, and what consciousness is, we can be more mindful, intentional, and purposeful in deciding how to live. That will influence the future of the world.

Through the experience of The Cycle of Transformation we have started along this path into a future of our own making. Our work together has great value beyond the weeks and weekends we spend together. The dreams we are dreaming are shaping a destiny beyond our years. It asks of us faithful discipline, careful honesty, and perseverance. Our community can be a new model of people who work together with heart, skill, and spirit to shape a destiny. Are you up for it?