Are We Evolving?

Only when we make conscious choices

An inspiring blackboard message I spotted outside a business premises in Eric Street Shopping Centre, Cottesloe, while on holidays. We only have this one life so let's make conscious choices.

I’ve often wondered whether birds fly because they have wings or whether they have wings because they fly.

In other words, what came first: the feathered protrusions which enabled them to experimentally launch into space, or an inner compulsion to rise above the ground which was so strong that it caused miniscule body changes over millennia until finally it was a possibility?

I suspect it is the latter, and that’s because so often when we have the means to do something, we don’t; and when a desire to do something that seems currently impossible arises, we find a way to create or learn what we need to in order to accomplish it.

For example, I have two good legs, but I’ve never climbed Mt Everest because I have no desire to do so. However, I have filled countless pages with various arrangements of words because I want to find a way to express what sometimes seems inexpressible.

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It was Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher from Ephesus, who observed more than 2,500 years ago:

The only constant in life is change.

This is still true.

Change is clearly visible in my life.

My lounge room walls were once white. Now they’re postbox red. A giant willow growing by our winter lake fell last year and has been replaced by a young London plane tree. My youngest grandson is turning two this week and has learned to say Thank you and has discovered he can also use the word No. This morning swallows suddenly appeared and set about busily inspecting their annual nesting sites in the eaves. Last night I saw another fine crow’s feet line beside my left eye.

It seems that all existence is driven by a desire to change, to move, to evolve.

Some changes occur around us without our desire. They come from a natural wellspring over which we have no control. But some changes come from our personal inner wellspring of consciousness.

Conscious Evolution

Conscious choices are the only real choices.

I only really make a choice when I am conscious, when I am mentally within an empty, silent space of alert awareness, which opens a conduit to universal consciousness.

Most of my choices are unconscious – just reactionary and habitual responses based on past perceptions, reactions, beliefs, and petty circumstantial thoughts that I’ve decided are eternal and true.

If I’m doing unconsciously what I’ve always done, nothing conscious is happening.

When I make a conscious choice, that is where creativity and originality lie. That’s where the evolutionary process plays out beautifully. That’s where, if I were a wannabe bird I'd begin to sprout minuscule wings.

Conscious choices are fresh and new. They’re unburdened by the past and not driven by the future. They arise in the Now.

Conscious choices carry the most power. They’re even more powerful than evolutionary force, although at a deep level that’s where they come from.

If I’m not making conscious choices, I’m not contributing to the evolution of human consciousness. I’m like a potential bird refusing to grow a sprinkling of feathers, or a fully-fledged bird refusing to fly.

Evolution always involves change and change is an inevitable part of life.

Evolution is inevitable.

Conscious evolution is up to me.

With love, Marlane