Not 'victory celebration' Mr Putin - Pentecost!

As Russia endeavours to claim some success against Ukraine for its 9th May 'Victory Celebration' we could all rather focus on celebrating 'Pentecost' on 5th June.

In his powerful poem, ‘Second Coming’?William Butler Yeats writes:

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere???

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst???

Are full of passionate intensity.”

Then he ponders:

“Surely some revelation is at hand...”

Revelation

I’ve been looking for that revelation. Over the last few days I have immersed myself in the harrowing business of following the tragic and brutal events unfolding in Ukraine. Yeats’ poem sounds powerfully apt.

There is a view that Putin is looking to claim some victory for Russia in their invasion of Ukraine for their 9th May Victory Celebrations commemorating the final defeat of Nazi Germany. I want to suggest that we should collectively rather be looking to celebrate Pentecost on 5th June.

A ceasefire?

Some consider, given his disabusing about Russia’s vaunted military capacity in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance, that finally capturing Mariupol, or being able to establish a secure base and thereby ‘liberate’ the Donbas region, should be reason enough to call a temporary halt.

Others take seriously the comments from the Kremlin of a much greater intended military outcome, of which Ukraine, as was the case with Crimea, is just one part. To lose momentum now would be a strategic error in the Russian imperialist intention. We simply don’t know.???

VUCA

What we do know is that whatever the unpredictable outcome of this invasion, it is highly explosive. If ever there was a situation representing the VUCA acronym of ‘volatility’, ‘uncertainty’, ‘complexity’ and ‘ambiguity’, it’s disruption on human lives will not only be physical, but also political, economic, social, and especially psychological.

And coming against the background of much greater global existential challenge to all of humanity, in our immediate awareness is the growing realisation of the disruption of climate change, this war can only be seen as being tragically distracting.

In this so-called post-truth age the notion of ‘ambiguity’ bedevils rational approaches to finding a resolution. There are competing narratives for those nations in the West siding with the Ukrainians, those nations siding with the Russians, and those choosing neutrality.

Factors for progressive advance

In my observation of human?affairs I’ve identified at least three potent factors that enable progressive advance; ‘integrity of information’, ‘power of imagination’, and ‘timing’.

Integrity of information

In this age of disinformation where it is easy to start believing one’s own propaganda, as Putin has no doubt belatedly discovered, integrity of information is seriously compromised.?

Power of imagination

Concerning ‘imagination’ our common prevailing?reductionist and mechanistic scientific paradigm is accompanied by an economic emphasis on material gain through extraction and exploitation of resources, both natural and human. Consequently the competing ideologies of capitalism versus socialism have trapped the power of imagination in envisioning a unifying outcome.?

Timing

So the critical requirement of integrity of information and enabling power of imagination are compromised by a mechanistic worldview fundamentally out of sync with natural process. And critically this ‘out of sync-ness’ means that the key element of ‘timing’ is compromised.

Entelechy

It was Aristotle who introduced the notion of the ‘telos’ - the outcome embedded in the living seed. So the ‘telos’ of the acorn is the mature oak tree - and beyond that the Oak forest. Today, from the holistic perspective, we see that as being part of a vast complex eco-system. But then Aristotle also offered the notion of the ‘entelechy’ as the set of conditions in which a potentiality can become an actuality.

Mechanistic social engineering

Tragically, our mechanistic worldview and its accompanying political and economic competing ideologies, has resulted in endeavours to engineer social organisation within that framework and as a consequence our imagination has been trapped in that limited worldview. As a result, the critical factor of ‘timing’ is seriously compromised.

As we have drifted ‘out of sync’ with natural emergent creative evolution, our prevailing worldview has resulted in us becoming agents of disruption rather than progressive collaboration.

Right-brain function

Thinkers like Iain McGilchrist and others, employ the analogy of the left-brain/right-brain schism to highlight this disjunct.?The predominant left-brain function in our worldview is mechanistic and manipulative - whereas the subdued right-brain function is integrative and intuitive.

Rationality

What this simply means is that it is futile to endeavour to resolve our highly complex ‘wicked problems’, of which the war in Ukraine is but one example, with our current notion of rationality. This, as Einstein suggested, is trying to solve a problem from the level of consciousness that generated it in the first place.??

Epoch-change to Holos

That is why we in the Holos-Earth project https://holos-earth.org/ are tentatively describing three broad preceding epochal changes in the history of humanity, namely, ‘Mythos’ - the world of animating spirits, ‘Theos’ - the world governed by a single ‘external’ deity, and ‘Logos’ - the world governed by science and logic. Now we anticipate a fourth epochal change, namely ‘Holos’ -a world in which we have come into alignment with creative evolution itself.?

Spirituality

Essentially then?we are looking not at a ‘rational’ but a ‘spiritual’ framework of consciousness to engage with our wicked problems. And by that I mean we are intuitively informed by emergent creation herself. Our ‘integrity of information’ is then defined by being in touch with natural process - we can sense and respond to her patterns. By that I mean that our ‘power of imagination’ is inspired to adopt our potentially collaborative role in reorganising human affairs to advance creative evolution. And by that I mean that the ‘timing’ of our engagement, in our individual and collective responses, is not defined by opportunistic self-interest, but ultimately by timely service to cosmic evolution.

Ukraine?

How then might this happen in a fragment and tormented world - and might that resolve the potentially disastrous situation in Ukraine with its potential consequences of a previously unthinkable global nuclear war?

Judeo-Christian ethos

I want to suggest that the one potential unifying factor that can be shared both by the West and Russia is, in my humble opinion, the essentially misunderstood and abandoned narrative of the Judeo-Christian ethos - and the powerful celebration ?of Pentecost.?

The symbol of the cross https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/contemplating-open-grave-claudius-van-wyk/ is the symbol of death and resurrection. At is deepest level it represents a metanoia, as in the parable of the Prodigal Son, a fundamental change of consciousness and motivation towards service of the Greater Order. ???

Edge of chaos

It might just be that this ‘edge of chaos’ that we are experiencing, with its potential for large-scale disruption, provides the very milieu for the dissolving of our trapped frame of consciousness.

It might just be that the deeper intelligence of ‘Being’, cosmic intelligence, is itself provoking the unmasking of the human shadow. In so doing it is revealing the consequences of our reductionistic and hence separated identity, and the accompanying consequences of the notion of the ‘survival of the fittest’. ?

Retrieving the narrative

Let’s re-examine the Judeo-Christian narrative. In the Old Testament book of Malachi 3: 2, 3 we read:

“But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap ... And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness.”

Spiritual heat

What this suggests to me is that in the heightened spiritual heat of cosmic truth the dross of humanity is surfaced - and it’s not easy on anyone. The constrained cosmic evolutionary impulse, trapped in our frame of reference, will have its way. So who then shall stand - and what might that mean?

Demons

?In the New Testament book of Matthew 8: 29 we read of Jesus encountering a man ‘possessed of demons’:

“And ... they cried out, saying, “What have we to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God? Art Thou come hither to torment us before the time?”

?In this narrative the cosmic ‘integrity of information’, TRUTH, as manifested in the Holy Spirit-filled person of Jesus, is functioning through Him as a ‘refiner’s fire’.?

Surely the 'demons' are our fundamentally misguided notions - wrong assumptions about how life works.

And the Holy Spirit is just that - the totality of information manifesting in creative evolution, through time, releasing and enabling the creative potentials as described in Aristotle’s ‘entelechy’.

Russian celebration

And this then bring us to the Russian celebration of 9th May.

Maybe in the West, and especially including Russia, we should rather be celebrating Shavuot (Christian Pentecost) on 5th June.?Shavuot has a double significance. It marks the wheat harvest in Israel and it commemorates the anniversary of the day God gave the Torah to the ??Israelites at Mount Sinai. Remember in Matthew 4;4 Jesus said:

“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

So Shavuot was about receiving a life-enabling code of conduct, essentially the ten commandments’, from cosmic intelligence itself on their journey to the promised land.?

?

Pentecost

Now let's look at Pentecost. Fifty days after the Easter Passover, 7 x 7 days + 1, in the New Testament narrative the Holy Spirit descended on the assembled disciples.

From a simplistic perspective then, Pentecost might represent the reactivation of the holistic right-brain. Or, at a deeper perspective it might represent a deeper opening to the field of cosmic intelligence, the ultimate intelligence that informs the very structure of our cells, “... in which we move and have our being...”.?What Pentecost means to me is being willing to come into alignment with creative evolution as its willing servant.

As Martin Buber put it in his ‘Hasidic Legends’ - when we strive continuously to that higher order service, even though it might appear futile, “...God reaches down and pulls us up.” ??

And similarly In the parable of the Prodigal Son the father runs out to meet him.

The Judeo-Christian narrative carries a profound evolutionary ethos. Whilst there are indeed other beautiful and powerful narratives, when understood at its deepest level it might it still be capable of uniting not only the West and Russia, but also the greater world, in a transformed worldview. Now it might be sourced in nature's own revealed TRUTH, as greater integrity of information. Then too surely the narrative might re-inspire our imagination with an enabling vision of possibility for 'human becoming'. And above all, we pray it will help us to strive to open channels of consciousness to nature’s natural unfolding though cosmic intelligence so that we might yet fulfil our divine purpose of becoming instruments of the ‘...spirit of the whole’. ??????????

?“There is one ultimate Whole with ascertainable character, and human personality is the most highly developed form and function of this whole. Our human ideals of thought, conduct and faith follow from the nature of that Whole, and find in terms of that nature their true expression and explanation.” ‘

Jan Christian Smuts - An Enquiry into the Whole’ (1912)