Evolving our minds for a sustainable future

We live in a dizzying era of creativity that expands the definition of what is possible every day. Human beings have evolved to become masterful co-creators in the natural world using innovation and ingenuity throughout history to solve deep-rooted problems, becoming almost too masterful in creating alternative spaces to nature. We utilize our creative vision today to find ways to mitigate the impact of our active human development. To be successful we also require an integrative framework, a holistic metaphysics to guide our future development. For most of history we have been explorers of our world, now we must be curators and live with intention.

Curist Mind recognizes the role of personal transformation as a principle cogwheel to move society onto a sustainable future trajectory. Recognizing our role as co-creators in the world is part of the solution to many of our current crises. To see the intricate order of life and our connections at all levels of self, society, even cosmos, helps move us in this integrative direction. Understanding the delicate dance of life and living offers a perspective for meaning in our lives, growth in our communities and a vision for the future. The evolution of our mindscapes have been the pathway for development of self and society since the beginning of human history. Today, establishing a holistic mindset remains one of the principle pathways to establish a fulfilling life and a sustainable future. It is how we create resilience on an individual level and synergy for societal change.

Evolution is the sweep of the creative process in nature from which our minds emerge. This creative movement began to take shape in a variety of forms that ultimately led to the development of cognition and intelligence in nature: Hierarchical systems of sentience and awareness built upon one another and shaped by the ecological niches of varied environments. The intertwining of neurological evolutionary development, establishing more complex neural networks with evolving mammals, and the development of mental processes to anticipate and survive interactions in nature over millennia began to shift evolution inwardly forming more complex landscapes in our minds, generating consciousness . As our co-creative capacities grew with each manipulation of our environment, so did the depth and scope of our mindscapes, leading to the establishment of complex societies and the tool crafting capable of advancing aspects of daily living. Furthermore, with the introduction of critical psycho-technologies throughout history our mindscapes have evolved; imagine how wall drawings, oral history, written languages, the invention of zero, meditation, metallurgy, the printing press, etc., have shaped human development (see the work of John Verkaeke). Evolution began to shift towards social and mental development through the expansion of human consciousness. To this day, we continue to expand the mental landscapes that inscribe culture, art, science, and our varied psycho-social and interpersonal dynamics. The evolution of our mindscapes also shape our sacred spaces and our evolving understanding of the universe. Along with the growing familiarity with different cultural belief systems, we begin to solidify an organic connection with the internal collective unconscious and the expansive cosmic consciousness. Our minds have essentially evolved as a bridge between the physical and the ethereal realms of existence and encapsulates our sacred connection with the universe.

We are of nature, but have come to set ourselves apart from it, able to understand (to a large extent) the makings of the universe (partly through contemplation) and of ourselves (partly through introspection) more fully when combined with the extent of our cultural wisdom, current knowledge and information which grows at an exponential rate in our digital era. This is the gift of humanity. As with all gifts, our strength as intelligent co-creators of our world is also the source of our weakness, as a double-edged sword bringing about our current malaise; partly caused by our disconnected world, now even disjointed living in a hyperlinked world. One where change is too rapid to assimilate and adjust to. But change is the ground of reality, of creative energy.

We are creative beings first and foremost. Creativity and novelty constitute the metaphysical ground of all that comes into being. Human beings have been co-creating our world to the point that our modern, urban life generates obstacles to healthy living. Many of our social and personal challenges stem from falling out of rhythm with the natural flow of life in general. We are, after all, created by the natural forces of evolution, made up of innumerable systems that rely on relational (frequency-based) forces working in resonant synchronicity. We are born of this earth as terrestrial creatures that require these energetic connections to our natural environment in order to thrive, and we need our ethereal ventures into our growing mindscapes to reach higher levels of Spirit-filled connection.

Developing a strong understanding of the role of cosmic consciousness in sustainability leads to solutions for most of our crises. I'm not suggesting that we need to return to some bygone era of living off the land. But we do need to reconnect with nature, even if that means structuring it into our day as nature therapy, so as to literally recharge our mind, body and soul. We also must learn to move our bodies in flow states to dissolve our sense of an individual self into the energetic ocean of oneness that defines meditative healing states. There are essential nodes in nature, specific metaphysical connections, that have evolved with the development of life on Earth that we can tap into which explains the power of nature to heal us at all levels of existence. We can tune-in and develop our mindscapes further to establish a healthy way of life.

We continue to expand our cosmic consciousness by deepening the mind with knowledge, expressions of the human condition through the arts, and especially important, the expansion of the psyche through various meditative and spiritual traditions. The mindscapes that have emerged over time, across people, cultures and systems of thought (seen through the sweep of intellectual history) lead us to these ethereal spaces of understanding, into a metaphysical space of understanding the universal impulse of creative, ever-shifting relationships. Object-relations, established through oscillating patterns that make up our world, crafts our ontology, or all that which exists. We can best connect-up with this shifting ground through a flow-state, with activities that allow us to move into our minds (disengaging our cognitive states that presuppose attention) into a dissociative space that is more energy-centrist and internally expansive. This is the ground of the metaphysics of healing, that of a Curist mindset. On an individual level, we must learn to engage our mindscapes and help evolve our connection with the energetic ground of our being. My notion of Spirit activism, or eros-imbued action, comes from this understanding of energy in nature. We enter a realm of caring, of values, that provides meaning and moves us beyond ourselves when we incorporate a cosmic consciousness into our worldview that honors the first principles of creativity in nature.

The development of our minds is not a unilateral or universal process, as intellectual history highlights. But with broad strokes one can see that since our human species began to develop culture, depict life through art and expand our worlds through written language, we have developed parallel worlds of higher-order consciousness and creative mental spaces. I call these mental landscapes our mindscapes. These creative spaces most recently have produced smart technologies, altered states of healing (psychedelic therapy), and is finally giving thought en mass to consciousness and deeper questions of life with the development of AGI (and synthetic life): In tandem with the growth of our cosmic consciousness, that powerful and humble perspective of our role in the grand universe. There are, of course, all the harrowing examples of what our mindscapes can produce. Focusing on the positive side, the sacred spaces we contemplate and create are very much part of our well-being, that is the ethereal aspect of our existence connecting our primordial and terrestrial development to a deeper evolution of our mindscapes.

In many respects, aside from the microscopic world of viruses and bacteria, we are no longer evolving mainly in the natural world. Our world shifts drastically in the reverse direction as we lose biodiversity at an exponential rate. Evolution now mainly takes place through us as we create new things in the world, and generate discovery and novelty within the expansion of our mindscapes, more quickly than throughout any point in history. We have reached a level of cosmic consciousness that expands our minds internally and out into the reaches of the universe as our development of meditation and reflections on our ancient traditions meld with a fluid view of reality. As a new physics emerges, we continue to explore and expand the depth of our existence. Furthermore, as we explore psychedelic therapies for mental health and personal transformation, these mindscapes grow in depth and breadth and we begin to see the intricate layers of connections that shapes us, from the energetic ground on up into the ethereal realm of cosmic energy. But we would do well to create a balancing act and reintegrate ourselves with the natural energy that sustains us, in order to create a sustainable and ethically-guided approach to rapid change. One that we can harness for our personal well-being and social development by recognizing the natural environment as a key component.

A new evolutionary branch of co-creation emerges with the rise of artificial intelligence. In fact, the ingredients for the next singularity to emerge are already at play in the makings of AI consciousness. The speed at which AI developments currently take place, on average every 6 months in the field of reiterative machine learning, especially artificial general intelligence (AGI), overwhelms the environment and humanity's ability to absorb the rapid changes: Much like the environmental factors a century ago that became too fast-changing for society to keep up with, leaving us unable to recognize the disruptive trends of our current climate crisis. The use of AI has been with us for decades now. It is the backbone of our smart world. But we have not created AI ethics policies in most public spaces that can keep up with the technological developments and address deep rooted problems of social justice and environmental harm that emerging technologies inherently create. The promise of AGI for medical purposes is fantastic and will benefit so many people. But the ethical and future implications of developments such as Neuralink need to be discussed, and policies for responsible development should be implemented as we attempt to keep up with the fast-paced development of research and application.

AI ethics policy is lacking in most educational institutions that now face the challenges of ChatGPT in the classroom/homework realm. The law is always woefully behind development, now especially so in the IP realm, with questions of copyright and personal infringement of primary concern in the courts, along with the existential questions of artistry and artistic expression taking place in the social stratosphere. As of now, the general public is not really part of the conversation, or at least the conversation is not stopping tech giants from moving at full speed to be the first to market. We can not stop humanity's desire for knowledge or its creative drive. But we have a responsibility to how we invest or leverage our world's natural resources. In our large, diverse geopolitical landscape, decisions of this kind (curbing AI development or carbon emissions) reveal how complex a process it is for our international community to work in unison to solve problems that span all borders, as climate forums demonstrate. And there will always be those who push to blur ethical lines. (I encourage you look at the legal argument for Locating Nature : Making and Unmaking International Law)

A curist mindset provides an ethical lens through which to act necessarily to curb the impulse to innovate without considering all entities or existential threats; to state clearly that just because we can do something does not give us the green-light to proceed without giving way to ethical or sustainability concerns. In order to create a sustainable mind-frame, we must see the powerful relationships that exist in nature for the foundational structures that they represent, and honor their role in sustaining life. Systems built on these metaphysical principles of interdependence through object-relations naturally thrive. When we align our actions within a holistic framework we can guide the arc of our actions. The bottom-line is that financial gain can not continue to set the tone for our haphazard way of living and future planning. Tech companies and other powerful entities in our society are not capable of setting the tone for sustainable living. But we can. We have the means at the level of our communities and educational institutions, with robust local and national regulatory support, to help balance economic initiatives and create sustainable practice through community engagement around these systemic issues. Individual empowerment through community development guided by a holistic perspective is the only way to counter the emotional and ethical bankruptcy that darkens most corners of the world.

The cosmic view of our place in the world that a Curist mindframe focuses on also provides an ethical compass, a gauge, to assess and address the current paradigm shifts taking place in our society. In particular, the self-preservation scenarios that AGI and our climate crises present, but also broad-sweeping concerns prompted by the meaning crisis we face. Inequality plays out in society, in education, public health, women's health, and in particular mental health. Many of the social justice issues we face are tied to the dynamical systems at play in our society, that connect-up with how we live, and more subtly, how we perceive the world.

We must see the Real for what it is, an ever-shifting set of relationships, in order to bring our world into sustainable alignment. A curist mind honors the inter-dynamical systems that make up our world. We recognize the ways in which we each have a role to play in the larger systems that make up our family, our local communities, up to our society and its culture (and subcultures). We construct these spaces, and these same spaces shape who we are, and again, how we impact our world.

The urgency of now must move us into action. Action here comes in the form of self-love, self-care translated as wellness (cultivating our mind-body-spirit-energy flow). The Self-focused and balanced approach to living a sustainable life allows us to hear what our passions are, what drives us to grow into our better self, and in the quiet that emerges when we settle our anxieties and questioning, we hear our intuitive voice. Intuition and intentional living allow us to craft our passions and strengthen our communities by showing up and developing our authentic Self. An energetic connection with nature helps us build healthy lives and highlights a path to heal society; opening a way to create personal happiness, craft meaning and establish sustainable growth. Spaces where this curist mindset thrives will develop stronger, more just communities to then bolster the younger generation among us, helping them to find their path and give back at an amplified level of interaction. Organically creating change and a sustainable way forward.