By
Susan Ellis of Key Life Journeys

It has been many months since I last recorded on this blog. Oh I have written in my caregiver blog the story of my friend dying of cancer who wished to stay at home till the end. But my last entry here was a story of crisis of faith and trust; A facing of truth about our democracy and freedom. My innocence destroyed when confronted by police during a peaceful rally at the time, in Toronto, of the G20 gathering. Since then many have clamored around the Middle East and North Africa for democracy and freedom and have faced the might of those in power. That power with an agenda and no ear for the proletariat.

Survival of the fairest
By Lynn McTaggart
Friday, 18 March, 2011

As most of you know, for two years, I have been holed away, writing a new book, The Bond. Now that it’s done, I want to tell you a little about this project and why I wrote this book.　　

All of us now sense that we have reached the end of something. Since the millennium, commentators of every variety have been trying to get a handle on the collective significance of the continuous crises besetting us in modern times: banking crises, terrorist crises, sovereign-debt crises, climate-change crises, energy crises, food crises, ecological crises, manmade and otherwise.

"The world as we know it is going down," a Wall Street broker told reporters in September 2008, after Lehman Brothers collapsed and Morgan Stanley threatened to follow suit. It is the "end of capitalism as we know it," declared filmmaker Michael Moore, when American auto giants General Motors filed for bankruptcy.　　

It is the end of our dependence on fossil fuel, announced President Barack Obama, about the Deepwater Horizon oil-rig explosion. It is the end of nature, wrote Bill McKibbin in his book of the same name. It is the end of oil, wrote journalist Paul Roberts in his book of the same names. It is the end of food because it is the end of oil, declared Roberts in his follow-up book. With various Japanese reactors poised for a meltdown, it is the end of nuclear power.

For those who take stock in the Mayan Long Count calendar and the apocalyptic significance of 2012, it is the beginning of the end of the world.　

The beginning in the ending
But the crises we face on many fronts are symptomatic of a deeper problem, with more potential repercussions than those of any single cataclysmic event. They are simply a measure of the vast disparity between our definition of ourselves and our truest essence.

For hundreds of years we have acted against nature by ignoring our essential connectedness and defining ourselves as separate from our world. We’ve reached the point where we can no longer live according to this false view of who we really are.　

What’s ending the story we’ve been told up until now about who we are and how we’re supposed to live — and in this ending lies the only path to a better future.

Living a lie
As I began researching and studying the latest discoveries in a vast array of disciplines—general biology, physics, zoology, psychology, botany, anthropology, astronomy, chronobiology, and cultural history—the more it became clear to me that the lives we’ve chosen to lead are not consistent with who we really are.

A new understanding is emerging from the laboratories of the most cutting-edge physicists, biologists, and psychologists that challenges the very way we conceive of ourselves. Frontier scientists in every field have all found evidence that individuals are far less individual than we thought they were.

The space between things
Between the smallest particles of our being, between our body and our environment, between ourselves and all of the people with whom we are in contact, between every member of every societal cluster, there is a Bond — a connection so integral and profound that there is no longer a clear demarcation between the end of one thing and the beginning of another.

The world essentially operates, not through the activity of individual things, but in the connection between them — in a sense, in the space between things.

What’s more, these new discoveries in physics and biology demonstrate that we are in crises because we are living a lie. All living things succeed and prosper not through competition, but only when they see themselves as part of a greater whole.

We succeed only because we share, we care and we’re fair.

Rather than a will to dominate, the essential impulse of all of life is a will to connect.

The competitive paradigm
Nevertheless, our paradigm for living has been built upon the premise that competition is the essential calling card of existence. Every modern recipe in our lives has been drawn from our interpretation of life as individual and solitary struggle, with every-man-for-himself competition an inherent part of the business of living.　

Our entire Western economic model is built on the notion that competition in a free-market economy is essential to drive excellence and prosperity.

In our relationships, we extol our inherent right to individual happiness and self-expression above all else. We educate our young by encouraging them to compete and excel over their peers. The currency of most modern two-cars-in-every-garage neighborhoods is comparison and one-ups-manship.　

The world, as Woody Allen once put it, "is one big cafeteria."

Outdated rules
The crises we have faced on every front have occurred precisely because we are operating according to an outdated set of rules.

The competitive impulse that is now a major part of our self-definition and that forms the undercurrent of all our lives is the same mindset that has created every one of the large global crises now threatening to destroy us. If we can recover wholeness in our lives – in our relationships, our neighborhoods, our societies, in my view, we will begin to heal our world.

In writing this book, I had an audacious mission: to rewrite the scientific story you’ve been told about who you are plus offer you detailed blueprint of how to live in harmony with it.

I wanted to help establish a very different set of rules from the ones we currently live by.

In fact, the only truth is the space between us—the Bond — which means that we must share and recover wholeness in our lives if we are to survive and flourish.　

A new blueprint
It was clear to me that need to perceive the world differently, relate to others differently, organize ourselves — our friendships and neighborhoods, our towns and cities — differently. We need to change our fundamental purpose on earth as something more than one based on struggle and domination.　

We must look at our lives from an entirely different perspective, a larger vantage point, to notice the connections that tie us all together.
continued at  http://www.theintentionexperiment.com/survival-of-the-fairest.htm

When the astronauts first saw the blue planet from outer space they were changed and the way they perceived Earth in all its fragility was changed forever. What will it take for us all to change directions? What must happen for us to understand that earth is not a stockpile of stuff for us to plunder, but part of the ecosystem that gives us life? Earth will adapt and change and will go on providing a habitat for living organisms but it may not be an environment conducive to the continued reproduction of our species. Lynn McTaggart has started the dialogue, not to save the planet, but to save us from extinction.

I remember when I was young, reading the novel by Nevil Shute. It was called "On the Beach." Set in Australia, the inhabitants waited as a cloud of radioactivity from nuclear bombs glided over the Pacific to kills the world’s last inhabitants. Published in 1957 it was a futuristic apocalyptic novel. Is the future now? If we had a measured time left on this earth, would we change our behaviour?

This is why Earth day is so important this year. We have some decisions to make. Do we continue with the concept that it is "every person for him/herself" and "top dog" has the right to privilege? Or do we answer a yearning inside of us to be part of the whole? Do we long for the fall of the tyrant Gadhafi without the loss of any more blood or do we continue to support dictators because it is good for business? But are we celebrating the desire of Egypt and Tunisia to experience democracy and freedom yet failing to notice that the leaders of democratic free countries are looking somewhat more like tyrants? Leading a minority government in Canada our Prime Minister closes the door to debate, turns a deaf ear to opposition. The opposition party in the US is advocating the same behaviour - every person for him/herself" and "top dog" has the right to privilege.

There are many of us who know we are part of the whole. We feel in our cells our connectedness to all things, visible and invisible. We are conscious that all our actions will have an effect on something else. Those of us who try to be responsible, conscious and compassionate also know our strength comes from being in community. We are part of Lynn McTaggart’s "bond." 

I now quote from the Canadian World Wildlife Fund website. But if you come from a different country why not Google Earth Hour 2011 and you can look at 8,380,000 different references. This is what belonging to a community is all about.

Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million individuals and more than 2,000 businesses turned their lights off for one hour to take a stand against climate change.

Only a year later on March 29, 2008 and Earth Hour had become a global sustainability movement with more than 50 million people across 35 countries participating. Global landmarks such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge, CN Tower in Toronto, Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and Rome's Colosseum, all stood in darkness, as symbols of hope for a cause that grows more urgent by the hour. Canada shone above the rest with almost half the adult population participating. About 10 million people in more than 150 cities from coast-to-coast switched off their lights. People in cities across Canada held candlelight dinners, enjoyed time with friends and family or went on walks.

On March 28, 2009, hundreds of millions of people took part in the third Earth Hour. Over 4000 cities in 88 countries officially switched off to pledge their support for the planet, making Earth Hour 2009 the world's largest global climate change initiative.

Earth Hour 2010 became the biggest Earth Hour ever reaching 1.3 billion people. On March 27, 2010, a record 128 countries and territories united across the globe making it the largest voluntary action ever witnessed. Iconic buildings and landmarks from Asia Pacific to Europe and Africa to the Americas switched off. People across the world from all walks of life turned off their lights and came together in celebration and contemplation of the one thing we all have in common - our planet. Once again, over 10 million of Canadians took part in all provinces and territories, turning out the lights in over 300 cities and towns.

Earth Hour 2011 will take place on Saturday, March 26 at 8:30PM (local time). It will continue to be a call to action to every individual, every business and every community throughout the world. A call to stand up, to take responsibility, to get involved and lead the global journey to a sustainable future.

Turn your lights out on Saturday March 26 at 8:30PM (local time) and join in community. Consciously become part of the whole. Don’t compete with it, don’t dominate it – share it, honour it, love it. Let’s create a different tomorrow.