Bruce Lipton The Phoenix Rising

Metamorphosis: the butterfly effect

HEAVEN ON EARTH.

by Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D.

If you follow the world’s news, browse the web, or if you have even looked out the window, you may have noticed something is going on. In the face of social, political and economic upheaval, religious violence, racial bloodshed, climate change and a devastating global healthcare crisis – civilisation is in a state of massive upheaval. Civilisation is at an evolutionary crossroads wherein unsustainable human behaviour is precipitating in the planet’s 6th mass extinction event. Five times in Earth’s history, life was thriving when some event precipitated a wave of extinction, eliminating 70 to 90 percent of all plant and animal species. The last mass extinction event, 66 million years ago, noted for wiping out the dinosaurs, was apparently due to a massive asteroid impact in Mexico that upended the global web of life. Science has been trying to inform the public for over 15 years that human behaviour has undermined the web of life and that our activity has precipitated the beginning of the planet’s 6th extinction event. Today’s severe environmental imbalance is, in large part, attributable to the cultural consequences of Darwinian evolution theory. Since the 1900s, neoDarwinian theory (the modern version of the theory that incorporates the science of genetics), has enculturated the public with a belief that survival is based on a competition for fitness in the ‘struggle for life’ and that we are ‘victims’ of our genes in controlling the fate of our lives. Darwinian theory based on ‘survival of the fittest’, has offered scientific legitimacy to the use of power, greed and violence in exercising that ‘fitness’. However, new insights from the Human Genome Project, the new science of epigenetic and quantum physics, have completely challenged the basic tenets of Darwinian theory. Conventional science has considered the gene-containing nucleus as the cell’s ‘brain’, however new research points to the cell membrane, the cell’s skin, as the information processor that controls the fate of the cell. Molecular switches built into the membrane translate environmental information into survival-driven cell behaviour. These switches represent the basic physical units of perception, the building blocks of consciousness. Epigenetics recognises that the environment, and more importantly, our perception of the environment, controls genetic activity and behaviour and thus shifts the focus of evolutionary theory to the role of our nervous systems and consciousness in shaping our life experiences. Consequently, the Darwinian notion of the ‘survival of the fittest’ gives way to a more scientific and profoundly more positive theory of evolution that emphasises the role of cooperation, interaction and mutual dependence among all life forms. In the words of evolution scientist Lynn Margulis, “Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking.” Today’s world crises are precipitating a major evolutionary upheaval that will profoundly alter the fate of human civilisation. The chaos produced by global crises, which are symptoms of our unsustainability, is destabilising the structure of civilisation and its institutions. Since our current way of life is responsible for our life-threatening predicament, the only way to survive is to revise conventional behaviour in order to build a better world on a new, sustainable foundation. Unfortunately, the media continuously focus on the scary news of the breakdown of our civilisation and ignore the fact that there is also an emerging new order of life – a new civilisation is evolving. To illustrate that point, consider the metamorphosis of a caterpillar evolving into a butterfly. Monarch caterpillars

“either hold on for dear life to the failing system, or, let go and participate in the evolution of a more sustainable humanity.”

are voracious organisms that have a heavy footprint on their environment. After Monarch caterpillars hatch from eggs laid on their favourite food plant, milkweed, they will eat all leaves off the plant. The caterpillar’s body encompasses a community of millions of cells. Each of its sentient cells, the equivalent of a miniature human, is employed in carrying out the caterpillar’s life functions. Muscle cells are responsible for the organism’s movements, gut cells harvest and digest food, while still other cells provide respiration, excretion and communication, among other system functions. When caterpillars run out of food, they encase themselves in a cocoon within which former life-sustaining functions cease. The caterpillar’s cellular community breaks down, forming a soup of ‘unemployed’ cells. However, specialised imaginal cells within the soup offer the community a new vision of an advanced version of their civilisation…the creation of a butterfly, an organism that has the lightest touch on the environment. During metamorphosis, the cellular community in the cocoon is in a state of chaos as the caterpillar civilisation is breaking down, while simultaneously, the structure of the butterfly is emerging. In this analogy, human civilisation, expressing the voracious appetite of a caterpillar, has been destroying its environment. As civilisation’s organisation is falling apart, the human equivalent of imaginal cells is offering the public opportunities to create a more sustainable version of civilisation, one with a smaller footprint on the environment. Citizens experiencing the current planetary chaos have two choices: either hold on for dear life to the failing system, or, let go and participate in the evolution of a more sustainable humanity. Those in fear of collapse are desperately holding on to the current system, live lives of stress, responsible for up to 90% of the planet’s health crisis. Rather than living in fear, those that invest their lives in creating a more sustainable culture will be rewarded with health and vitality. It’s a simple fact: we must either change our voracious behaviour or perish in extinction. New insights, understanding and visions offered by human ‘imaginal cells’, cultural creatives from every field of human endeavor are pointing the ways to reorganise human civilisation so we may thrive into the future. The current environmentallydestructive ‘caterpillar’ version of civilisation must transform into a ‘new’ sustainable organism…Humanity. The looming fall of current civilisation is a necessity; we simply cannot build a future for humans to thrive on the unsustainable foundation supporting today’s world. Will human civilisation survive its ‘metamorphosis’? At the moment, human civilisation is balanced on the knife-edge of extinction or conscious evolution. Our uncertain future is dependent on the actions we engage in today.

Evolution – By The People, or The Planet

The revised knowledge provided by quantum biophysics and epigenetics affirms our role as creators and with this awareness, we can usher in a new version of civilisation resembling a love-filled honeymoon. We are moving out of a world in which we perceive ourselves to be ‘victims’ of life and entering a new sciencebased reality wherein we actively exercise our powers as conscious ‘creators’. As one version of civilisation ends, a new one begins. Evolution does not throw out the baby with the bath water, it is a process of carrying forward civilisation’s good traits while revising behaviours that are not beneficial. Civilisation is actively reviewing the good and the bad aspects of human history in order to redefine and evolve humanity and its relationship with Mother Nature. Movements such as Me Too, Black Lives Matter, and Environmental Green are bringing to light civilisation’s current dysfunctions. By revising our role in life, we can actively participate in empowering civilisation to transition into a world based in Love and Harmony. In the process, we must honour and extend the wonderful supportive behaviours that have historically enhanced civilisation, such as a focus on family and community health and wellbeing, because the collective amplitude of a large community sharing the same consciousness can profoundly change the world. Through conscious evolution, we will all be able to experience Heaven on Earth!

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Bruce will be joining us in person on Wednesday, October 19th at the Talbot Hotel Stillorgan Co-hosted with seminars.ie Tickets available from positivelife.ie