Kneel at the Doorway of Your Heart to Usher the Dawn of a New Era

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It seems to me that more and more people are becoming less identified with their thoughts and the self, and more aware of their connection to something much greater. At first I wondered whether it was because that is what had been happening to me over a number of years, a bit like when I’d want something as a child and then I’d suddenly start seeing that thing all over the place.

However, listening to Scott Shute , the Head of LinkedIn’s Mindfulness and Compassion Programe, he was citing the growth of mindfulness practices in recent years. He was saying there was only 5% of Americans who practiced some kind of mindfulness just a few short years ago, compared to a growing 15% today, and many more who are familiar with the term and have tried mindfulness practices.

Dr Jean Houston talks about how we are at the end of one era but not quite in the new era, rather we are standing on the precipice and she invites us to leap across the chasm. In Jean’s terms we are moving out of the era of the “local human” and into the era of the “quantum human”.

I certainly feel called to help usher in this new era. A world in which people are more aware of the thoughts and feelings that define their boundaries and, simultaneously, connection to all else, is the one I came for, the one I champion.

Jean says “speak like angels and use words like wands”. In my view, C.S.Lewis was a master at this. When he writes in The Magician’s Nephew, the prequel to The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe about the birth of a new world, Narnia, it gives me goosebumps.

The children discover a place, a wood between worlds, where everything is peaceful and calm. This place is a portal to many worlds and they find themselves in a new world unborn. When they arrive there is nothing, just blackness, no stars, no sound, no sense of anything. They are naturally drawn to sing to keep themselves cheerful and sane and, after a while, they hear another sound...

“In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing...it seemed to come from all directions at once...its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise ever heard.”

“Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars...single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world.”

“If you had seen and heard it, you would be quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it was the first voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.”

“The voice on the earth was now louder and more triumphant; but the voices in the sky, after singing loudly with it for a time, began to get fainter... far away, and down near the horizon the sky began to turn grey. A light wind, very fresh, began to stir. The sky, in that one place, grew slowly and steadily paler. You could see the shapes of hills standing up dark against it.  All the time the voice went on singing.”

“The eastern sky changed from white to pink and from pink to gold. The voice rose and rose, till all the air was shaking with it. And just as it swelled to the mightiest and most glorious sound it had produced, the sun arose.”

This revealed the singer, the mighty Aslan, the creator of this land. He went on singing in a more gentle, rippling lilt, creating grass, plants and trees, and then the song changed once more, it became far wilder and – from this – the first creatures appeared. 

As I think about Jean’s proposition to leap across the chasm and cling to the ledge of a new era, I think of those children sitting in the darkness breathing life where once there was nothing and witnessing a whole new world appear.

I think of the cumbersome impossibility of trying to disentangle and reengineer the outdated societal systems we live with, and instead I imagine those behind me, my face to the new era, listening intently to the voices that are singing it into creation. That is where my attention must lie, and where my own voice must ring out.

In this world  between worlds, I think the heart is the quiet stillness – C.S. Lewis’s wood between the worlds – and in it we find the portal to our quantum self, and thus this new era.

Sarah Blondin describes this portal as having an umbilical chord to the divine (or greater intelligence or whatever word you feel most comfortable using for something bigger than ourselves). To cultivate this she says:

“It is practice and it is discipline. The heart knows its worth and needs to smell the sincerity on your breath and glimpse earnestness in your eyes, it needs to know you are kneeling at the doorway of your heart”.

I recognise in my own journey the many divine experiences I had by sheer grace in the year before my mum died. Since then I have been busy working to unshackle myself from my story so far, to unpeel the layers of experiences that have generated self limiting beliefs, unhealthy relationship patterns and chronic health conditions.

But, as Jean Houston says, this is the local human. There is a broader part of me – the higher self, the quantum human – that knows no such shackles. While recognising and honouring the challenges as the local human, it feels time to turn my attention more to the part of me I’ve always been aware of, but not lately been so focused upon.

As Jean describes beautifully, this is the part of me that says “I lure you with love into the universe and I pour myself into you”.

At this dawning of a new era, I feel it’s important to look into the shadows of that local human to free myself of unnecessary burden, but equally as important to practice sensing into that broader part of me that notices the serendipities of life lining up in so many subtle ways.

That broader part of me knows, expects even, to co-create this new era of human evolution with many others and the universe itself.  As Sarah Blondin asks, so I would ask you, how much time are you spending kneeling at the doorway of your heart? How much time in your day do you nurture that quiet stillness within you? Let us usher in this new era together.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How Can I Create a Better World?, Be an Evolutionary (Rather Than a Revolutionary), Base Your Actions on Love Not Fear, and What Do You Want The Prevailing Global Culture to Look Like? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.