January 30, 2011
What is a Love Shift?
Love shift is a radical expansion in perspective, purpose and level of concern, from ego-centricity, self-importance and self-interest, to caring for, and doing what will benefit, all life.
Individually, love shift creates a mature, benevolent and responsible human being. Collectively, love shift creates global community. When individuals and society expand and extend their level of concern to include the whole living system, love itself becomes the prevailing human function.
Why Love Shift?
At this moment in time, we face unprecedented danger. From hunger, war and global warming, to poverty, species extinction and the loss of honeybees and biodiversity, we know things are getting worse.
There are many solutions to these problems. One is to change our identity, relationship and culture. By expanding our level concern to include all life, we shift our caring out (and up) to a new dimension. From this point of view, we see differently, and thus can act more wisely.
How Will It Work?
The hypothesis of this process is that, if people will change their beliefs, values and ideas, then they can open themselves to discover more successful responses to life. When more adaptive behaviors are found and used, better outcomes will result.
All is One
All is one is a blueprint for survival.
As we look around the world, the effects of human behavior are ever present. Overpopulation, global warming, nuclear proliferation, hunger, poverty… the list goes on and on. What is missing is an awareness of the complexity of the problem, and an understanding of how our worldview contributes, at the most fundament level, to everything we see and do.
So what is worldview? How can this be so powerful? Worldview is the sum total of all of our ideas, beliefs and assumptions about the way things are. Worldview determines what we see, and therefore, what we do.
A good metaphor for worldview is an iceberg. We see what is on the surface of the water, but, underneath, there is a deep (often hidden) set of values which drives the actions on the surface. If our belief is that we are separate, then the thinking, actions and outcomes will derive from this, “enemy” formations will occur, and limited-sum thinking will dominate.
If, on the other hand, we see the system as fully integrated at all levels – if we see and understand that, “we are one,” then this unitive worldview will yield an entirely different set of thoughts, beliefs, values, behaviors and outcomes. The key is to see how pervasive worldview is, and to see how our thinking is very enculturated, and not based in the truth that All really IS one!
We are all birthed into the same universe, the same “single, multi-form, emerging, energy event." We are like fish, and the universe is the water we live in. We have no choice about it. All of us, and all of reality, exist within this same space. That’s where we are.
Fortunately, this place is loaded with integrity, consistency and laws. Light, energy, life, consciousness and even love are pre-existent in this place, and we are fully subject to the implications of these and other principles. If we jump off a high building without a parachute, we will hit the pavement and be killed. The system does not – and will not – suspend its principles for our particularity.
How is this relevant to life, and predicament we find ourselves in today? Just this: There are instructions for us to follow, if we want to survive. These are benevolent, and totally “for” us. They pre-exist our time here, and will still be present after we are gone.
If we can understand and comply with these principles, we will have a chance. If we ignore them (as we are currently doing) we will not survive.