When the Mud Settles and the Water Clears God Speaks 

Today, on Facebook I read an article by Joe Rogan on his experience in a Sensory Deprivation Chamber. In the article he describes the moment when the noise in your head stops and, "something truly amazing happens." The truly amazing happening is the moment we go beyond self consciousness and enter a state of "Pure Consciousness" and experience oneness with God.

A more readily accessible way of entering "The Field of Pure Consciousness" is through meditation and yoga. So much of what Joe describes is especially achievable through meditation. The ancient Indian scriptures such as the Vedas and  Bhagavad Gita describe this practice as achieving oneness of Self in Brahman (God).  Similarly, the Advaita Vedanta describes the oneness of Atman (soul) and Brahman (God) as its essence. In addition to yoga and meditation, these scriptures form the foundation of the practices of music, dance, drama and poetry in the performing arts of India. 

Over the past 100 years, scientists have validated through experiment,  the presence of the "Field of Pure Consciousness" which while external to us, is readily accessible through "The Gap" between our thoughts. When we enter "The Gap" with a sense of desire, opportunities arise as if by coincidence and our deep abiding desire is soulful integration which arises from the interaction of wholeness, preciousness and freshness. Soulful integration exists in The "Field of Pure Consciousness" because there is no separation, only oneness with God. In our awakened state of self-consciousness, our desire to connect with one another is so natural and if achieved with care, love and shared intention our individual identities can exist in alignment with others as we each strive for wholeness, preciousness and freshness in self and in all things. 

These principles form the basis of Open Source Psychology which honors the existence of pure spiritual potential as the motivating force bringing order to the underlying chaos of everyday life. Through our work at the MindIndigo Center we aim to connect clients with their spiritual potential and generate the energy to fuel their movement away from re-activity toward creativity. Through yoga, meditation and other mindful practices, we awaken people to this life force that moves within, without and between us.  A life force that is ever present in our extended bodies as well, swirling with the wind, exploding with the surf, swaying with the trees, and rolling through blades of grass. The existence of life’s energy may be invisible, but it is certainly not beyond our ability to be conscious of it.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.
Rumi

Open Source Counseling is the practice of going beyond the constricting forces of your body bound ego to discover your pure source of unbounded potential and in so doing enabling others to discover theirs. Attempts to discover the origins of this energy will ultimately bear fruit, as we prove through experimentation that there is a force that gives mass to the universe and makes life possible. Today, the existence of this invisible energy – call it God’s energy, Buddha nature or whatever term is meaningful to you This energy, which comes in many forms including heat, light, electricity and gravity, is the prime mover of all activity; it is life and consciousness. Through Open Source Psychology, we leverage this consciousness and, in so doing, alter our participation with it, and because our participation contributes to the emerging reality, evolving consciousness alters evolving reality. Consequently, when we become conscious of something we change its true nature from pure consciousness to self- consciousness thereby objectifying reality. It is this non local nature of consciousness which scientists have termed "The Hard Problem" because we have no knowledge of where it exists. One thing for sure is that it is outside of out physical being. 

In truth, we are literally altering consciousness and thus altering our participation with it. Because our
participation contributes to the emerging reality, evolving consciousness alters evolving reality. As  Heidegger’reminds us, we are “world disclosers,” using tools and technology to discover more and more about the world in which we live. We simply cannot resist the desire to connect with one another and to grow our individual identities as we strive for wholeness, preciousness and freshness.
More importantly, the connections we do make are not simply linear transactions but are highly synergistic interactions operating integratively to produce emergent transcendent products. 

The trinity of wholeness, preciousness and freshness form part of the Universal Rule of trinities such as:

■ The Father, Son and Holy Spirit of Christianity

■ Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva of Hinduism■ Dharma, Sangha and Buddha of Buddhism

Other important trinities in science are:

■ the three dimensions of space – height, width and depth
■ the three stages of time – past, present and future – which conspire
to comprise space and time.

Trinities of integrative interaction also underlay the practices of music, dance, drama and poetry in the performing arts of India. These examples offer important clues to the awakening of consciousness in Open Source Psychology and its related counseling practice. No matter where it is practiced, this approach to expanding human consciousness is unique because it honors the existence of pure spiritual potential as the motivating force bringing order to underlying chaos. And it is spiritual potential that generates the energy to fuel our movement toward re-activity and creativity. This energetic life force that moves within, without and between us is ever present in our extended bodies as well, swirling with the wind, exploding with the surf, swaying with the trees, and rolling
through blades of grass. The existence of life’s energy may be invisible, but it is certainly not beyond our ability to be conscious of it.

THE UNIVERSE’S RULES

Are you looking for me?
I am in the next seat …
When you really look for me
you will see me instantly.
You will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.

It seems we humans can't resist the temptation to seek the truth in just about every realm of life. As Martin Heidegger (1962 [1927]) put it, we  are constantly seeking answers to complex questions like who are we and why do we exist? In the past, answers to these quintessential questions  have come from mystics not "real scientists" as Albert Einstein pointed out when he said that God does not play dice. But now 100 years on, "real scientists" still cannot explain why in the sub atomic universe, deterministic laws do not apply, As Stephen Hawking said "not only does God play dice, but he roles them where they cannot be found".

Answers to questions about who are we, why we exist and what it means to be conscious remain unknown.  In this series of articles, I will attempt to explore and explain opinions on this topic from the perspective of spiritual and contemplative traditions as well as those of some scientists and philosophers who consider consciousness to precede biology and exist in the fine scale structure of the universe along with charge, mass and spin of electrons and intrinsic creativity. 

My exploration and explanation will be through a set of sound generalizations or “universal rules,” which allow us to understand the intrinsic creativity emerging from synergistic interactions among like-minded people in social networks. It is only with a thorough understanding of natural laws or rules that I believe we can begin to unravel the mystery of these underlying patterns, and using them as a lens, I will attempt to show how complex interactions among people can be managed in ways that maximize the source of human potential lying at the heart of human enterprise. Being natural rules, we discover that they applied to a range of situations from organizations in crisis, societies emerging from oppressive regimes, or nations in economic transition – the patterns are the same. My lens will reveal how we act as mirrors for one another and how our synergistic interactions allow us to successfully pursue those things we care most about and which make life worth living. My lens also reveals that we gain power by giving it away and our pure potential naturally seeks awakened opportunity. Applying this lens, I will show how the complex interactions taking place on the Internet are those embedded in the fine scale structure of the universe and are an evolving expression of a universe in the process of awakening. After all, each one of us is a natural expression of universal potential seeking wholeness, preciousness and freshness. We achieve this through continuous pursuit of our life’s mission, which is always and in all ways welcomed by the unbounded possibilities existing in our universe. According to the Buddha, this impulse to awaken is inherent in all manifestations – it’s all “Buddha nature.” The universe’s potential for awakening can be understood by consciousness – the most highly evolved expression of our universe’s energy.

The Internet has rewritten the rules as nearly 1 billion people worldwide go online, their shared knowledge and online reputations rapidly becoming a collective force of unprecedented power. For the first time in human history, mass cooperation across time and space is shaping a whole new game, requiring a whole new set of rules. Welcome to the age of “open source leadership,” a new style of leadership designed for a new kind of world – one which sustains environments that are infinitely improvisational, where people do things they regard as worthwhile, and where their presence is valued.

In order to better understand the rules of the new open source game it is important to view leadership through a different lens. To view leadership as the act of opening to The Divine Universe of Pure Consciousness and making manifest opportunities through intention and engagement of others. It might be helpful to apply the lens offered by George Land who, in 1973, proposed a unifying theory of transformation in his book Grow or Die. According to Land, all things grow and develop in a four stages: gather, repeat, share and transform. For example, babies move through the gather phase by taking in nourishment and growing in size. This stage is marked by growth of sameness, simply getting larger without changing form. Once the first stage is accomplished, the second stage of growth can begin. In the repeat phase, growth is achieved by replicating. For example, at the biophysical level, cells do this by dividing, creating literal extensions. When two adjoining cells prepare for division, they condense their DNA into chromosomes. The membranes around the cell nuclei, together with protein structures called “microtubules” divide the cell’s genome into two equal parts and pull each part into the resulting daughter cells. In Land’s terms, groups that form around self-similarity are replicating themselves and are in the second phase of growth. Land’s third phase of growth, share, is the most mature stage and where Open Source Leadership plays an essential role because it enables people to grow through reciprocal interaction and form a larger whole, whether in a corporation, community or family. We see this theme repeated in the ‘Fibonacci sequence’ developed by Leonardo of Pisa (also known as Fibonacci), where the power of these reciprocal
interactions is a kind of explosion of emergent creativity. Fibonacci depicted this process mathematically in his 1202 book Liber Abaci where he introduced the sequence, which states that after two starting values, each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers. So the first number of the sequence is 0, the second number is 1, and each subsequent number is equal to the sum of the previous two numbers of the sequence itself. For example, 0 + 1 = 1, 1 + 1 = 2, 1 + 2 = 3, 2 + 3 = 5,
3 + 5 = 8, 5 + 8 = 13, 8 + 13 = 21 … to infinity. The Fibonacci sequence (see Basin and Hoggatt, 1963) shows how the progressively productive process uses what it produces and is a perfect illustration of the way open source leadership creates emergent products that are greater than the sum of the individual parts. In the repeat phase, the important message from Land is that we grow by maximizing sameness, but in the share phase, we grow by maximizing differences, so that a higher
social order or social system might thrive, giving way to transformation in phase 4, which, by its very nature, ends up succeeding and encompassing the former system.

So we see that the practice of Open Source Leadership is open to all who wish to make a substantial difference in the world and can apply to every walk of life including organizational leadership. In my practice I apply the tools and techniques of Open Source Counselling to help clients develop new ways to live their lives. Through applying the Open Source Leadership Model they are able to realize extraordinary results in situations of overwhelming complexity and ambiguity. They come to appreciate that the secret of their success is their ability to live their lives in the spirit of trust and openness. Our Open Source teaching offers a balance of intellect and intuition and is designed to help people achieve understanding, appreciation and openness to their magnificence and that of those with whom they come into contact.