What does culture feel like?

My visit to Australia is coming to a close after giving talks in Perth, Sydney and Canberra and leading a weekend seminar in Sydney. On the flight from Canberra to Perth I had time to reflect more on everything that has happened over the past week before flying out tomorrow. As I have been writing about in recent blog posts each event that I conduct does seem to add something to the last. The event in New York was an exploration of the post-modern culture that we are all a part of. In Copenhagen we looked into the new values that might become a part of whatever post-post-modern culture we create together. Here in Australia what we explored was the characteristics of the field of consciousness and the new sense of identity that begins to form as we recognize ourselves to be not separate from the circumstances around us.

During the weekend in Sydney we had a particular moment when - for me at least - this sense of being non-separate from the field of consciousness was particularly heightened. I was explaining a metaphor that I have used many times before. I was describing how human beings thinking that the consciousness that they experience originates somehow within them is like a radio mistakenly thinking that the music coming out of its speakers is coming from inside itself. As I mentioned this is a metaphor that I have used many times, but this time it seemed to take on a life of its own. Soon I was using it to explain different aspects of Evolutionary Enlightenment that I had never seen before and I was imagining creating a children's show based on the metaphor. It was a very high energy, serious and fun discussion that swept us all up in its excitement.

Later during our lunch break I was thinking about the fact that it would be easy to think of that metaphor as having immerged from me. In fact, it was obvious that even though I had been the one who brought it up, it had immerged out of the energy and intention of all of us in the room. If all of the participants had not been so engaged with me in listening I would never have felt the inspiration or freedom to have that particular analogy "pop-out" with so much vitality and clarity. As I thought more it started to become self evident that whenever we speak what comes out of conversation is never a product of just one person in the conversation, but is the product of the whole conversation and everyone's participation in it. If I were sitting by myself in a room I would never have come up with that metaphor in the same way.

When we returned after lunch the first thing that someone commented on was the metaphor that "I had come up with." As I explained what I had been thinking about we did seem to elevate into a higher view of what was happening between us. As we spoke I could see very directly how each of us was contributing to the sum of what was happening in the room. Some were not speaking, but everyone seemed to be giving real attention and open interest to what was happening and that was also a contribution. In fact it became clear that there was no way to not contribute and I began to feel, and I think others did as well, the ecstatic and at the same time almost unbearable realization of true interconnectedness. It is the feeling that you already are fully here, that what you do already has an affect and there is nowhere that you could possibly go where you could be separate. In truth even if someone were to walk out the door...that would have an affect!

Sometimes in life we want to feel like we don't matter, like what we do doesn't count yet because we have not yet decided to participate. We might not feel ready or willing to be responsible for the affect we have on others. To the part of us that doesn't want to be responsible for being human the kind of interconnectedness we were exploring feels like too much.

This weekend in Sydney certainly did  seem to take the weekends in New York and Copenhagen one step further by rooting them in a direct experience of human interconnectedness - which I would say is a direct experience of human culture.