Conscious Community

 By Carrie Chesney

It’s time for a change of pace! This month’s Conscious Community column is going to feature some things not previously seen. It will astound you, thrill you, and overall make your toes tingle! Ok... Well, it may not do that, but we do have some new things this month for you to peruse at your leisure.

The object of the Conscious Community column is to get the word out about all the neat things that are going on with the people of our humble little community. It can, and eventually will, include all kinds of things, from the people who are learning about astrology to what wonderful efforts people are trying to make to change things in our world. Hopefully, with a little help from the readers, we can really fill this column up and show how much loving, sharing, and caring has been going on, and what truly can be accomplished when people are able to work together to bring better opportunities to others.

However, while we are focusing on our own community, we must remember to look at the big picture, our world. Part of the concept of Conscious Evolution is how we can look at our world and do something about it, instead of just sitting back and letting things happen. This month, I have taken the liberty of asking several people from our Newsletter Committee to talk us about what Conscious Evolution means to them and why they think it is important for this world. Here are their thoughts:

To me, the idea of consciously evolving is all about awareness, both personal and transcendental. It starts with honest efforts to increase self-awareness, to know and acknowledge who you are, without illusions - either the illusions that unrealistically inflate your sense of self or those that wrongly diminish it. As you get a handle on that kind of unflinching insight into yourself, you become more compassionately able to see, feel and bring that level of awareness to interactions with other people, with Nature and with that sense of Source and Spirit that some of us call God. Bringing that clear awareness into contact with the life existing beyond our personal s-elves brings incredible potential for growth in understanding in a transcendental way. It is beneficial to people because it is what our hearts and minds are made for! Through awareness, we grow in light and love. The simple existence of a community of individuals who seek to practice awareness, seek light and act from love is in itself creative. Simply by being, by staying engaged with one another, we are sending out a call, or a prayer, that creatively increases the potential for light and love in the world in transcendental ways. We ride on the wind and glow in the light that shines on all. - Maria Barron

To me, the phrase Conscious Evolution means Growing Awareness, not just to a particular subject but to all that is around us ... you, me, people, things, beliefs, the world, the unknown. It’s being able to learn to see all sides of everything and be able to develop understandings and incorporate those that we have learned, so that we come to understand and feel strongly, in heart and soul, what is TRUE TO US IN SPIRIT - LOVE, Universal Love, unconditional and unprejudiced. It is THE POSITIVE SIDE OF LIVING and NOT TO APPLY THE NEGATIVE! Let our Spirit direct our Soul to direct our Life to eliminate the materialistic greed and ego that destroys humanity. It is through expressing, sharing and expanding this Growing Awareness of Spirit (UNSELFISH LOVE) that maybe Humanity may experience the oneness, happiness, love and contentment that it should have had at the beginning. Spirituality exists within US, within any Spiritual Congregation (what we call Religion). It is not man’s translation, not the opinion and not the dictation. Only you, I and the world can determine what is the True Spirituality in Us ... feeling the Universal Oneness.
     Conscious Evolution is a community that I am hoping will help us find awareness within ourselves through interactions, studies and analysis in many areas of spiritual growth and living. Be it love, hate, disagreements, overcoming ego and greed, faith, beliefs, learning and many other forms of states of consciousness, the challenge is in finding the balance of all states, positive and negative, meeting in one center - and that is our Higher Self, the Godliness within us, which is part of the all-powerful, loving and forgiving force in the Universe we define as God. The goal is to be able to connect, find peace and happiness, serve and Love without condition, without judgment or prejudice to all those we come in contact with, hoping that they too will find awareness within themselves and connect as we did. - Cristina / Libra_Sun 

I think of Conscious Evolution as the principle of active choice. It is free will in action. History has mapped humanity’s journey from primitive roots to the present day by chronicling the threads of discovery that led to more and greater application of human potential. The discovery of language, fire, the wheel, agriculture, helped early man to separate himself from the animals, and each was a huge leap in terms of evolutionary consciousness. No longer were we animals, we were people!!! And because we were no longer enmeshed in a daily battle for physical survival, our early discoveries gave us the leisure time to pursue artistic, scientific and cultural development. Every new discovery and every new thought-form gave rise to a greater and greater dawning of consciousness within humanity. The last few hundred years have given us new knowledge and access to this information like never before. Most of this information has been external, but some of the most significant discoveries, in terms of conscious evolution, have to do with the inner life and spirit of man. Religions have moved away from top-down models of organization, to embracing the idea of personal relationships with God. Before the advent of the printing press, most people never even owned their own Bible. That might sound like a small thing, but as more people began to have access to information, be it scriptural or secular, more people began to be able to think for themselves.
     This dawning of self-awareness is to me the beginning of humanity’s conscious evolution. Being self-aware is the first step in being able to be a conscious participant in your life. Instead of moving through life by rote, playing roles as they are thrust upon you, a self-aware, consciously evolving person can take charge of his or her actions and reactions and be the author and architect of his or her own life. To be consciously participating in life means to be consciously creating your future, consciously embracing your karma, consciously applying your free will. It is the force that brings us from this present point of crisis to the peaceful brotherhood that is the ideal embodiment of the spirit of the Age of Aquarius. - Terri Smallwood

As for my views on the issue, I think that Conscious Evolution is a process that all of humanity needs to actively engage in. It works for a greater good by getting spiritual and worldly information out to the public. Knowledge is indeed what has advanced people in this world. Unfortunately, we all must remember to use it wisely, for that same knowledge can also be used for destruction. While I hate to sound cliché, it is love and teamwork that will get us through. Otherwise, what’s it all for? Every day I walk around campus and I hear both the negative and positive of every issue under the sun. When I see people working toward the positive and betterment of people, I can see how transforming it can be. People can be great influences on one another, for it is those “moments” in life that truly make a difference. Yet, I also see the flip side of the coin, a not-so-pleasant rallying cry of despair that plagues people with their petty differences and intolerance. Unfortunately, sometimes it can be just as powerful as the positive side. I think that one of the goals of Conscious Evolution is the betterment of humanity through putting something out into the world that will help to advance the positive, rather than the negative side. Through this, we can not only better the community, we can also better ourselves.

In that vein, I thought of a way we could help those around us, even if it is merely a small token. The power of thought and prayer is a mighty thing, and so I thought we should start a White Light and Love section for each monthly newsletter. I invite you ALL to send in your requests to metamorphosis@consciousevolution.com.

* White Light and Love for... *

1. WriteOn asks you to pray and send white light for the healing of a family friend, Mary K. of Lawrence, Kansas, a peace activist and mother of four who was seriously injured in a car accident October 26. Many thanks.
2. Libra_Sun asks that you please send white light and love to her dearest aunt who has been diagnosed with cancer. “She is 74 years old, my Godmother, and she is a second mother to me, very loving and sweet and always there for everyone. I am deeply saddened and distressed that she is ill. She has no family of her own and I am the closest one to her. She will be starting chemotherapy to get rid of small spots that have spread and afterward will undergo surgery to remove what is in her lungs and close to her heart. I do desperately need prayers for her to fight these cancers.”
3. Enchantress299 asks for white light and love to be sent to her cousin Molly and her soon to be born baby boy, Noah. He is due to be born sometime within the first couple of weeks of November. Thank you ever so kindly.

As you can see, we don’t have very many requests this month, but I’m hoping that I will get more input from all of you readers out there who want to make a difference!

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Now we have a word from our fearless leader, Greg, about the new FREE Tarot reading!

The newest feature on our website is a FREE Tarot reading! You can get your reading anytime after Sunday, November 3, at this link: http://www.consciousevolution.com/Tarot/tarot_reading.php (You can also get to it directly from the Home page or under Features|Spiritual Paths|Tarot on the sidebar menu.) The new feature lets you enter a question and randomly draw three cards from the familiar Rider-Waite Tarot deck to answer it. Unlike any other “automated” Tarot reading we’re aware of, however, it goes beyond simply presenting you with standard interpretations for the cards you have drawn: it analyzes each card in relation to its astrological correspondence, and uses “elemental dignities” to examine the relationships among the cards to show how each one strengthens or weakens the others! For example, in a reading where the key card corresponds astrologically to the element “Fire,” but the other cards correspond to “Water” signs, the reading as a whole may indicate conflict and difficulty even though the standard interpretation of the main card is positive - because astrologically the elements Fire and Water tend to “fight” each other rather than cooperate harmoniously. Analyzing the cards in this way adds an additional layer of meaning to the reading, and also helps you to better understand the traditional symbols of the Tarot cards themselves. It’s free and it’s fun, so please give it a try!

Well, that concludes our Conscious Community column for this month. I hope you all enjoyed, and remember that this is YOUR community too, so if you have any ideas, don’t hesitate to speak up!