Inner Michael

In continuing our series on expansion, it is important to visit “perspective.” Where you are seeing from determines what you will see. Who you are being colors your experience of the world. We live in a world of paradox, as paradoxical beings. There is the micro view and the macro view. I interpret that as “as above, so below” because the more I look, the more I find echoes in existence. What happens in my life echoes where I am in my psyche. What I attract is a measurement of who I am being.

Life is reciprocal. What you put out is what you will get back. If you focus on the world of conflict and drama and give that your rapt attention, guess what will show up in your life? If you are prone to doom and gloom, your mind is constantly scanning the horizon to find the darkest representations of life– so the snapshots of your mind will reflect that affinity and you will be “awfulizing” your world. Nothing will meet your standards because everything is after all… awful.

The human ego likes to think of itself as important. When someone behaves as if “the world revolves around me” they have never grown up. That is how an infant views the world, as an egocentric being. If there is discomfort, the infant wails until his discomfort as assuaged and his needs are met.

The infant learns if I am hungry, someone feeds me. If I am tired, I sleep. If I want something, I must have it and I am given it. Infants and kitties and puppies are cute and being cute helps to get your needs met so adults often think that if they are “cute” everybody will find them loveable and their needs will be met. And then there are those who demand that their needs be placed on everyone’s priority list. They have grown up tantrums or manipulate to get what they want. We all know these people who have an inflated sense of self. The manipulate for attention, have drama, and suck all the air from the room.

 Then there are those whose spirit is magnanimous. They embrace all people. They see the “bigger picture” and understand that they are insignificant in the grander scheme of things or they understand their place in the divine plan and humbly show up for their mission. They don’t speak the same language as the egocentric individual. They don’t live in the same world. The egocentric person tends to have a cynical or suspicious view of everything because that is how their mind works. They starkly contrast with the more generous and magnanimous individual and they don’t understand them or are threatened by them and can unconsciously resent and wish to destroy them. Their world is colored by human misery and failure and they act to distance themselves from their own reality by pointing the finger at others, by comparing and competing and by acting on their projection onto others with destructive impulses. They see the world as a dangerous place and therefore and thereby make it dangerous.

There are the innocents or open hearted individuals who live in awe of beauty and splendor. They are untainted by the misery or rise above it to incorporate the beauty of existence. They accord everyone equal validity and behave as if everything and everyone is valuable, even sacred. They measure everyone by their own standard of excellence as demonstrated by a reverence of nature and beauty and often find their expectations disappointed or their hopes dashed by the intrusion of the human ego or human nature that is imperfect and self serving. They are not self serving so they can’t understand or relate to that world view just as the self serving person cannot fathom magnanimity. They view the generous or magnanimous as necessarily conniving because they themselves are. They tend to think them naive, foolish, silly or freakish. Instead of seeing a naive offender by comparison to their own sensibilities, they see a deliberate offender. They judge harshly because they are harsh people.

 I have made the bold statement that “Michael Jackson fans ‘get it'” and by that I mean they are not blind or one dimensional in their interpretation of the man and his life. They see in Michael what is reflected in themselves. When this understanding occurs at a deep level, they see the genius in the complexity and the innocence in the behavior because it is echoed somewhere in self. That is not to say that they don’t violate their own standards or that they aren’t occasionally (or more) hypocritical or succumb to human temptation or behave in a way beneath themselves, but to say that they have the capacity to be magnanimous and in service to others and the world. They saw Michael for who he really was because it lives in themselves. They see his humanitarianism, his soulful nature and his acts of kindness because the capacity lives in them.

Those who are warmaking individuals appeal to the violent. Positions of power attract the corruptible. Hollywood is a magnet for the flamboyant. We go where we find opportunity and nourishment. What we find there depends on whether we live from… abundance or scarcity. From judgement or from tolerance. From love or from fear. In other words, from the ego or from the soul. How you are comes from answering the question: “who is in charge?”

 I believe wholly and emphatically in that capacity that I spoke of. That capacity can change the world– guaranteed. It I didn’t believe that I wouldn’t be here or be here still. In that spirit, I share with you…

I subscribe to and embrace the philosophies of many groups and organizations on the planet who are either humanitarian or cheerleaders for the planet and its inhabitants. My global concerns are refelected in the Institute of Noetic Science and The Union of Concerned Scientists. I tend to like global thinkers like Carl Sagan, Jean Houston, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Edgar Mitchell (and many astronauts,) Gregg Braden, Peter Russel, Brian Green, Brian Swimme, Michael and Rickie Beckwith, Andrew Harvey, the Dalai Lama and others who look through a lens that shows them the view from that place of expansion.

The other day on Frontline, UCS Nuclear Engineer Dave Lochbaum recalled that UCS co-founder Henry Kendall “used to say that you can’t have but one half of a boat sink,” that here on Earth, we are all in it together.

Carl Sagan did a presentation where he used this slide (right.) If you look halfway down the stripe on the far right, you will see a little speck of light. That is the view of earth from the perspective of the Universe. It was taken from Voyager 1 launched in 1990 as it turned from 4 billion miles away and took this photograph. The streaks are just reflected glare from sunlight in the lens.

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994 ( The earth photos are new satellite photos from NASA)

Michael Jackson held an expanded view of  the world, the Universe, life and music. You recognize it in him because the capacity lives in you.  Here are a couple more views from expansion– from different visionaries with different approaches saying the same thing as Michael was saying thirty years ago. Meet Gregg Braden and Michael Beckwith with Rickie Byars Beckwith and Faith from Agape.

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Addendum to Post:
The Compassion Project from Earth’s Avatar Compassion Team:

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