If you imagine what it was like for your ancient ancestors to live as hunter-gatherers, perhaps you might imagine just how difficult life was for them. Then again, you might also imagine just how magical the world was to them. Surrounded by plants and animals of astounding complexity while living in thriving ecosystems, daily life was more complex than it has since become in the industrialized world. Indeed, the complexity of what it takes to thrive collectively in a richly intricate and changing global environment is why our species developed the especially complex brains that allowed us to become the dominant species on our planet.
To our ancient ancestors, their world was inherently sacred — because their world was clearly a miracle that they were born into. It was obvious to them that human beings belonged to the world, created by the world rather than creators of the world. Humanity was a tiny portion of a vast and holy planet. This is why temples and places of worship were the earliest enduring structures to be built by human beings. They provided nomadic groups with stable places to worship that which is stable, such as the cycles of life, Sun, Moon, and stars.
What changed was not that our world became less sacred. What changed was that we increasingly ignored the sacredness of our world. The complexity and interconnectedness of life on Earth was ignored in favor of consuming our planet’s resources. The complexity of our planet was ignored in favor of the simplicity of our man-made systems of trade and commerce.
What is actually happening is that humanity has begun the process of resacralizing our world, the process of treating our world as sacred once more. When people stop distracting themselves with global games of money, status, and power, what is left is the magical complexity of our entire, actual world. This is why to be holy means to be whole.
In the first part of this series, it was pointed out that you and I are like bacteria on the skin of our Mother Earth, which is like a cell in the body of our galaxy, which is like a cell in the body of our Universe. Yet, that analogy was rather limited. In fact, our Universe is infinite in body, mind, and spirit.
In the same way that you are more knowing, powerful, longer-living, and intelligent than any of the cells that compose your body, our Universe is omniscient, omnipotent, immortal, and more intelligent than we as human beings will ever be able to comprehend. In reality, our fully alive, omniscient, omnipotent, infinite, and hyper-intelligent Universe is God, Source, Great Spirit, and every other name we have ever used to label the fullness of divinity. In truth, you and I are living aspects of God, just as your cells are living aspects of your body.
How can we not honor and trust the loving wisdom of our more powerful, knowledgeable, and intelligent planet? To ignore the wisdom of our planet is merely to indicate one’s ignorance. Our world is holy, as we are holy, as God is holy.
What is actually happening is that humanity is becoming increasingly aware of the truth of our existence. We are beginning to value increasing our awareness of reality more so than abiding in our ignorance. What is actually happening is that humanity is beginning to bow down to the reality that all is God rather than continuing to bow down to the idols of fame, fortune, and power. This is why humanity is beginning to resacralize our world and welcome spirituality without the dogmas of religion.
The increasing awareness of our species, often referred to as its awakening, is spiritual by definition. In contrast, the word “religion” comes from the Latin term for reconnecting or binding together once more. Religions were created by our species in order to reconnect ourselves with the truth of divinity. Yet, reconnecting is only possible for those who are not connected already.
As long as we align ourselves with the truth of our place within the totality of divinity, we remain connected to it, with it, and within it. By resacralizing our world — and indeed our Universe, what is actually happening is that we are obviating our need for religion by our true and very real interconnection with God.