ONE IDEA
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From: Bruce S.
Date: Thursday, February 28, 2008, 7:42 AM
Subject: One Idea
ID: 259886

If we were to say something like -- "All things emerge from the One and return to the One" -- we would be expressing an idea from classical metaphysics. Perhaps a bit vague or too abstract -- but still, something instinctive in many of us would validate this thought.

In this Bridge model, as it continues to emerge -- this idea might be a way to encapsulate what we are doing. We might say -- "All ideas emerge from One Idea -- and return to One Idea..."

And this thought would not be foreign to our traditions -- all the departments of knowledge in the west -- everything that ends with "-ology" -- psychology, biology, anthropology -- refer to the underlying concept of Logos -- the Logos from which they all emerge...

The instinct here, in this Bridge vision -- is that this Logos is knowable. Yes, it is consistent with, and perhaps the same thing as, concepts like "The Cosmic Christ". Maybe the Logos can "be incarnated in a person" -- maybe the Logos is a "pure idea" emerging from "being itself" -- out of "ontology". Howsoever we understand it, it seems to be a "pure form" -- something utterly profound and simple.

Here in this context, we now have over 11,000 quotations available to us, as inspiring guidance from deep intuition. JoAnn has built an amazing library of insights into these things -- something I tend to suppose might be the most powerful single statement on these subjects ever put together.

So, we might simply say -- that what we are doing here -- is everything it takes to show exactly how this happens. Maybe others are content with the abstractions, with the philosophical vision alone. But for me -- the idea must be "brought down to earth". It must be concretized. It must be de-mystified. Today, I would say, despite our best intuitions -- we don't really know what we are talking about. It's just something we feel, something we are pretty sure is true, something we would like to see emerging into the world as a guiding template for a brilliant new civilization...

The biggest issue we face -- is that this emerging new form is inherently synthetic -- something put together, something composed, or assembled, made from many pieces. This new synthetic vision -- this One made out of Many -- is like a house of cards -- a million pieces brought together into a single framework, making a single statement -- with every card in the structure being a point of vulnerability that can collapse the entire thing...

For this reason, grand visions and synthetic theories are quite vulnerable to fragmentation and collapse. Any grand scheme like this crosses hundreds of borders and boundaries -- in ways that may be seen as inauthentic trespassing by the guardians of the traditional (and fragmented) disciplines. And of course, the standards they set are often genuine and valuable. We DO need to meet the highest exacting standards, and we cannot simply dismiss the disciplines and methodologies that have proven themselves successful.

But we cannot allow their skepticism and traditional boundaries to limit our vision. Their investment in a traditional way of doing things -- could entirely crush the emergence of new ideas and brilliant new possibilities. Indeed, that is a major theme in the book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", by Thomas Kuhn, that introduced this word "paradigm" into the popular conversation. The status quo will hang on to its structures and assumptions -- and controlling role in the world -- until the forces of revolution become so overwhelmingly powerful and clearly authentic that these older modes are simply no longer sustainable. At some point, the high priests of the establishment must look through the telescope -- and accept that it is the earth revolving around the sun, and not the other way around.

Some would like to argue that history is like the myth of Eden -- there was once a pristine and perfect ontology, and perfect and stainless human beings, who were somehow tempted away from wholeness, thus crashing down the entire edifice of perfection, and forcing human civilization through this long trial and error evolutionary process called history -- with all its wars and suffering and human blindness. But we don't need to presume that the objective in what we are doing today involves recovering from a "fall". We can simply say that civilization is evolving towards the light -- and that today, we are in a process of fabulous convergence, as ideas from every culture and every discipline come together, in a huge collective/collaborative creative process -- as millions of souls look for a new understanding, something consistent with the throbbing insistence in their souls, that life and the world and reality are One.

Here in this emerging Bridge environment, I am beginning to sense that what we are doing is gathering up the energy and the technology and the relationships that it will take to fully compile this vision. We need to explicitly articulate this entire process -- identifying its pieces, placing them in relationship with one another -- and exploring by whatever means the creative interpretations that can lead to a full and sealed integration of this incredible "diversity" of forces and elements.

It seems to me that the Internet now gives us the tools we need to do this. When the BRIDGE-L conversation first began, back in 1993, we had nothing like the resources available to us today. Now, with vast libraries of high-quality information (including graphics) at our immediate fingertips, and our ability to weave "wiki" database systems that can embrace this information in a single context, we can draw together the entire range of pertinent human understanding.

This energy is out there today. People are feeling it. People can sense that this is happening, that it is a great thing.

I thought I would send to this group a scan of the a current 2008 conference flyer for AGNT -- the Association for Global New Thought. AGNT has been a pioneer in these areas for years (generally combining Religious Science and Unity churches, sometimes in intimate relation with IONS -- the Institute of Noetic Sciences) -- and this flyer review this same large issue. How can we pull these pieces together?

I'd say one good starting point -- in putting this huge jig-saw puzzle together -- is simply to get all the pieces in one place -- and lay them out on a table big enough so that we can see them all. Maybe Interspirit/LightPages/Bridge/GlobalResonance can do that....