Volker Brendel, Bill Isaacs

The Power of Truth

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"Living with the truth, the willingness to face facts turns out to be liberating and empowering, not a cause for fear."

by Bill Isaacs and Volker Brendel
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Bill Isaacs: In this moment we have a remarkable vessel for letting the light shine. There have been countless cycles of history stretching back as far as human beings can see that have been setting the conditions for the emergence of an experience that allows the light to shine. Our ability here—to the extent that we actually exercise it—did not just arise unaided. It is the fruit of a very particular thread of history stretching back centuries. This thread, woven by life, has sought to bring conscious awareness again into the field of human experience. You might think, observing this now, that it does not seem like much. But that would be too limited a view. There have been relatively few containers for the emergence of conscious Being. When they do arise, they carry immense power and far-ranging impact. Coming to see the significance of this radiant stance, and more, to actively participate in it, is one of the great tasks of this age. 

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Bill Isaacs

The Living Symbol

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"There is a great transition underway, and it's quite obvious that this transition needs leadership."

by Bill Isaacs
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The earth is filled with mysterious symbols. A symbol is a representation of something more than itself, and symbols are easily misunderstood. Human consciousness is anchored in a materialistic and literal worldview. The imperial victory of scientific materialism has conditioned us to revere the surface appearances, and to look for materialist explanations of everything. We hold a strong conviction that what we see is what is, but we often miss the meaning. We even miss what is actually there. Studies of “inattentional blindness” show how readily we fail to see what is plainly in front of us. What is seen remains misperceived and mysterious.

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Bill Isaacs

Listening to the Secret Chord

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"There's a blaze of light in every word, It doesn't matter which you heard, The holy or the broken, hallelujah"

by Bill Isaacs
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We are in the closing days of one year and the opening of another. The light in the Northern Hemisphere is increasing again. This is a good symbol of what is occurring within everyone: the light is increasing. As the light shines it becomes possible to see, to relax and relinquish what does not belong, what was never true of you. One way the light gets in is through our increased vulnerability and humility. As the light intensifies it becomes increasingly evident that the control structures of human consciousness are dissolving. Like glacial ice floes, these can remain seemingly stable for centuries, and then can suddenly collapse, melting into the sea. The courses of collective thought go through various phase changes over time: ideological patterns shift, political systems transform, long held paradigms collapse, national boundaries are redrawn, dissolved, merge. What can look stable and unchanging from one perspective can suddenly transform entirely into something else.

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Bill Isaacs

Seeing from Above and Below

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"We move from the wasteland to the new land. We enter the new land because we create it."

by Bill Isaacs
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Bill Isaacs: In 1922 T.S. Eliot wrote the epic poem The Waste Land, arguably one of the most influential pieces of writing of the 20th century. The 1920’s reputedly were a period of roaring accomplishments but were in actuality a mix of swirling heights and looming shadows of what was to come. A young Eliot (he was 33 at the time) wrote a remarkable poem that described the mood of decay and the spiritual ills of modern Europe. It narrates the difficulties even as it seeks to find a way out of them. I think it’s useful to think of this now because the age in which Eliot wrote has its echoes in our time. People today are feeling a similar kind of angst, of coming challenge, replete with modern words to describe it, like “climate anxiety” and the “polycrisis,” a condition of systemic disease where  everything collapses together in a tangled mess of troubles. 

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Bill Isaacs

The Quest for Wholeness

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"...there is no forging of a new world without creative pressure and creative fire."

by Bill Isaacs
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We are all participating in a vast creative cycle that is the culmination of many centuries of unfoldment, all aimed at the ascension of human consciousness. This goes well beyond the idea of human progress. There have been numerous changes in human experience over the past millennia, which may be viewed as improvements. The primary causes of human difficulty have diminished or turned into manageable challenges, namely famine, war, and disease. Although there are immediate examples of all three, overall these have been demonstrably lessened. However, there are many new problems, some of which carry far more catastrophic implications. We also live in a time that is more interconnected than ever before, where technology is advancing at a pace never before seen, and where we have an unprecedented level of globally shared experience. At the same time, we appear to be at a threshold where the confluence of challenges now arising is more intense than anything we seem to have known before. All these changes are arising together. 

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Bill Isaacs

Healing the Fever

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“...the attitude can be, we can get through this, but not by doing the same things we did to get here.”

by Bill Isaacs
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It really is quite something to just pause and take note of the vast cycles in which we are participating, to note the largeness of what is unfolding. It is some small miracle that we are here now consciously able to perceive and participate in all of this.

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Bill Isaacs

Coherent Light

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"Our job as human beings is to be creators. At the center of this is thinking. To think is a creative act."

by Bill Isaacs
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I recently visited Las Vegas, Nevada. Coming from the east, you fly over Lake Mead. Lake Mead is in trouble. Its condition is very apparent from the air. There is a large and evident gap between where the water level used to be and where the water level is now. Surrounding the lake are layers of exposed rock that were previously under water. Ribbons of color snake around the perimeter, tracing the contours of the rock strata beneath, each layer a different hue of red, brown, and yellow: its hidden past uncovered.

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Bill Isaacs

Rendezvous With Destiny

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"It is remarkable to begin to sense the stature and power behind the changes that are coming and to recognize the very personal and direct responsibility we have. "

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By Bill Isaacs
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Human beings live in the world of time and space. Being on the planet, we can’t avoid it. But if we reflect on this, we can also come to see that we don’t only live in that range, but have access to something more, to a level of experience that transcends the demands and immediacy of the world. We may, if we choose, come into the presence of the eternal flow of life here and now. This is a puzzle, a paradox, because somehow both are true at once. Part of what it means to live in the world of time and space is to pay attention to the cycles that operate within the range of our immediate responsibilities. There are of course many ongoing cycles at many levels, impacting our immediate lives, our society, the physical planet, the solar system, and beyond. There are also cycles operating at more subtle, invisible levels: pulsations and tides of memory, for instance, that flow through individual and shared awareness.

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Bill Isaacs

Intimations of Stature

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"The orchestrated power of the whole is bringing about the emergence of stature and with it, the possibility of rethinking how to handle what is unfolding. "

Courtesy 'Unsplash'

by Bill Isaacs
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Awareness that there is one creative flow, one creative order, animating, orchestrating, giving life, and powering everything is not always so easily accessible to human consciousness. This doesn’t mean it’s not the case. There is a great deal of power flowing through the whole. Power is a term that is ill understood. The human translation is more aptly put as force: the attempt to move things according to one’s liking or to a design deemed to be good, efficient, desirable. The undue use of force has a word in English: violence. But the entirety of human doing from a certain standpoint, anyway, is all about force. It takes something to relinquish that orientation and to discover the nature of power, which is something altogether different. The access point to power is humility. There is no other access point.

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Bill Isaacs

The Whole Is Always in Action

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"When nothing is done, nothing is left undone."

Solstice Moon - courtesy National Geographic

by Bill Isaacs
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Human beings have the capacity to sense and participate in vast cycles—vast at least relative to current human consciousness. For instance, the Solstice is upon us. Simultaneously in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, a change in the light is occurring, a shift of planetary cycle. We participate actively in these creative processes whether we fully realize it or not.

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