FLOCK OF BIRDS: Quantum coherence and the movement towards perfection

This article was published in The Mindful Word journal of engaged living (http://www.themindfulword.org)

Have you ever looked up in the sky and seen a flock of birds tightly undulating as though they were a single living organism; continuously transforming into a new configuration of their same selves or self, separate yet solid; like the organic expressions inside a lava lamp?

There’s something truly fascinating going on there that we all intrinsically recognize from way down in our psychic cellars up to our archetypal attics—a cooperative organization and movement issuing from an invisible intelligence. Science has its good reasons for these orders and arrangements of populations, reasons which tend to willfully frame the miraculous, to help justify a sense of control and qualified understanding of what’s barely comprehensible.

Beneath all of it though, there lies that unifying intuitive understanding of the natural arrangement of our matter in space, the ever-evolving expression that we “boids” are eternally expressing. We’re doing it too. That’s the reason why, even in the face of catastrophe, we have so much hope—because we know these forms are constantly rediscovering and rearranging themselves (ourselves) into a timeless, working whole.

Quantum coherence and emergent self-organization aren’t exclusive to the magical and miraculous, they aren’t confined to particles or waves or to anthills, either—indeed, they’re more finely drawn evidence of it. That we are all psychic at our subtlest level comes as no shock to us now. We’ve known that for a long time already. That we’re connected, entangled in “non-ordinary” ways, by our “non-local” source, by an “a-causal connecting principle” is likewise no surprise; it arises into our blooming global consciousness as a personal realization, like déjà vu.

Allegorically illustrated by beautiful multitudinous entities of flocking birds and schooling fish are our own emergent properties—not just as strategies for survival, but also for evolution on the levels of the obvious and the profoundly subtle. Of course, the birds know there’s safety in numbers (not what “the establishment” necessarily promotes), but in no way does that explain the energy that animates their collective expression of divine purpose—to move beautifully and harmoniously as one.

The Occupy Movement, the Internet, Evolver, a participatory power grid, the (aptly named and anonymous) Recovery Movement, and many more examples all express some of these aspects, finding an identity in the emergent kind of post-technological mythology that Neo-Shamanism seeks to reconnect us to—grounded in altruism, activism, spiritual evolution and personal responsibility.

Just who is leading that flock of birds? From which individual comes the order to take one form of expression or another, to flock and part and come back together, to carry on as birds should; to cohere to the greater energies at play in the Universe, and within each and every individual? It’s simply beyond me. Beyond us.

Discovering within oneself, and allowing the ease of belonging to the horizontal hierarchy that each of these movements organizes itself upon, is to come into balance with our emergent global consciousness. In our sunsetting age of unbridled ego and delusional exploitation, it’s no longer something that comes all that naturally, even though it really does when you allow it. Each of us intuitively recognizes these emergent properties of our nascent unified consciousness… now if we can just personally live that way. Give yourself (ourself) the benefit of the doubt and try your best.

“There is a community of the spirit. Join it, and feel the delight of [flying in the noisy flock, and] being the noise…Close both eyes to see with the other eye… Open your hands, if you want to be held… Sit down in this circle.”—Rumi

I find these emergent qualities of global consciousness, these superpositionings, expressed wonderfully in Ervin Laszlo’s “Ten Commandments of a Timely Vision”—Quantum Shift in the Global Brain—which (with apologies to Mr. Laszlo) I’ll try to synopsize for the sake of brevity:

1. Live in ways that enable others to live, without detracting from their chances.
2. Live in ways that respect the [absolute] right to life and economic and cultural development of all people.
3. Live in ways that safeguard the intrinsic right to life and a supportive environment.
4. Pursue happiness, freedom and fulfillment in harmony with nature and with consideration for others.
5. Require that your government relates to all people peacefully and in a spirit of healthy cooperation.
6. Require your enterprises to accept responsibility for their effect on markets and environments, free from exploitative intentions.
7. Require (or create) the public media to provide reliable information crucial to informed decision-making.
8. Help those less privileged to live a life of dignity.
9. Encourage young and open-minded people to evolve spiritually.
10. Work with like-minded people to preserve, restore and maintain the balance of your neighbourhood, country and global biosphere.

“To the knowing, all of life is a movement towards perfection; so what need have they for the excessive, the extravagant, or the extreme?”—Tao te Ching, 29

Read this article by Robert Kopecky on the Power of Love in Being

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