Raising consciousness for a new world
Newsletter - August 2025
A portal for information and tools about conscious evolution of wholeness
At Groking Wholeness, we believe in the transformative power of integrating mind, body, and spirit to foster balance within oneself and one's surroundings. Changing oneself is a prerequisite to changing one’s surroundings or society because personal growth creates the foundation for the broader impact.
Change Your Perspective / Change Your Mind
Bob Staretz
"The greatest tragedy for any human being is going through their entire lives believing the only perspective that matters is their own."
Doug Baldwin
Lunar module pilot and navy Captain Edgar Mitchell ScD (PhD in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT) ventured into space in January 1969 as a part of the crew of the Apollo 14 mission to the moon. Seeing Earth from the perspective of deep space, Edgar saw a lush oasis of life surrounded by the hostility of a cold velvety black emptiness of space. He saw no country boundaries carved on the Earth’s surface. He saw one earth, one atmosphere, one body of water, one pool of finite resources; the entirety of it shared by all life on the Earth. He also saw what looked like cancers spreading across the face of the globe and in its atmosphere. – population growth out of control, pollution, wars, famine, poverty, pestilence, environmental degradation, weather extremes, extinctions and resource depletion. From space he recognized in a very visceral way that the Earth was our only home; that we are all part of the Earth, and that we evolved from one interconnected planetary ecosystem.
Once back on Earth, on reflecting on his trip in space, he realized that every living creature on Earth has always operated mostly by pure subjective awareness (raw experience) and is driven by evolution to live and to survive primarily by instinct (archetypical behaviors). As a result, all life on Earth has always existed in harmony and maintained a natural balance with Nature; that is, all except for humanity.
Around 30,000 years ago humankind began to utilize higher-level of conscious processes of symbolic thinking, of language, of memory and of self-reflection to re-represent actual experience within our minds – We used the memories of our experiences to evaluate and analyze our past actions as well as planning for our future. With these meta-conscious abilities, we formed myths about the Earth’s creation, speculated about how Nature worked, invented technologies and have been refining all these ever since. We began to prosper and flourish around the globe. However, when we began doing all these things, in our ignorance, we also began breaking the harmony and sustainability of all interacting processes that had endured on planet earth since life began evolving on earth.
The way we perceive and interpret the world - through our sensory mechanisms and our endogenous mental processes (thoughts, emotions, intuitions, etc.) – all are integral parts of our conscious experience. Everything we have ever experienced is stored as our memories (although we sometimes may have trouble recalling them without the proper cognitive associations). Intuitively, we know that our memories and knowledge of the world are incomplete and filled with errors and assumptions caused by our limited or biased perceptual abilities, inadequate and imperfect knowledge, archaic beliefs, and outdated cultural and societal conditioning.
We do not understand nor have the perceptual nor cognitive abilities to perceive or experience reality (Nature) as it actually is but that we have become very proficient at modeling it to predict how it will behave. That’s what science is all about. Our models are not 100% accurate, they don’t have to be, they just have to enable us to survive in a hostile or challenging environment. In science, they just have to be accurate enough to mimic what nature will do; for example, how to put a man of the moon with a few mid-course corrections to steer us along the way.
But models are not the territory, they are just maps of how Nature behaves. These models have allowed us to predict and even control many aspects of Nature. Unfortunately, modeling can also lead to false or only partially valid assumptions and beliefs by taking them too literally. These misunderstandings and convenient fictions often turn into biases, and misinterpretations. When that happens, we begin to favor information that confirms our preexisting notions and ignore those which don’t.
Edgar often quoted Einstein "on solving problems with a different kind of thinking than that which created those problems to begin with" – as a part of our desired conscious behavior. The key to knowledge, wisdom and true understanding is about more than just gathering evidence and using logic and reasoning to make inferences about Nature. It is also about questioning long held assumptions and beliefs, using insightful intuition, about being open-minded and about being willing to change perspectives. It is about having the ability to change long established perspectives and seeing things from different viewpoints. It is also about experiencing and not just intellectualizing or assuming the veracity of old and so-called longstanding “truths”. In other words, it is all about understanding our consciousness, our experiences, our memories, the content of our consciousness and our behaviors...
Meta-consciousness and self-reflection offer us the means to understand ourself both within our place on the Earth and within the Universe. It also provides us with the ability to harmonize once again with Nature. When we do these things, we find that we are part of Nature and we are its way of knowing itself. It also implies that we are an integral part of a Universal Consciousness that is much grander than we ever could have imagined otherwise.
As Edgar recognized many decades ago: We are all connected, with each other, with all living beings, with the Earth itself and with the entire Universe. We are all one in a very real and literal sense bound together by our collective and interacting consciousness. Each of us are an aspect of the Universal Mind that is the scaffolding for the entire Cosmos and everything contained and experienced within it.
The Physiology Of Nirvana: Jill Bolte Taylor’s Stroke Of Insight
Linda Sechrist
(Originally published in Natural Awakenings magazine - May 2012)
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D.
At 37, Harvard-trained anatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D., was enjoying a very successful career when a blood vessel exploded in her brain’s left hemisphere, and everything changed. A true scientist who was fascinated by the breakdown of her brain functions, Taylor became the witness to her stroke, which initially left her unable to talk, walk, read, write or remember anything prior to that occurrence.
As her left brain shut down, Taylor lost her processing capacity for all language. With her mind suspended in newfound silence, she experienced a sense of deep peace, along with an inability to visually distinguish edges and boundaries between herself and the outer world. Taylor recounts many profound realizations and intimate understandings about the left and right halves of the brain in her personal memoir, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey. This inspiring story not only demonstrates that it is possible to rebuild the brain after trauma, but also that anyone can tend the garden of the mind to maximize their quality of life.
What was one of your most profound realizations?
In the absence of the normal functioning of my left orientation association area, I could actually see that my skin was not my physical boundary. As a result of such a glorious state of blissful realization that I am—as we all are—connected to everything and everyone around me, I no longer see myself as a single, solid entity, separate from I also now wholeheartedly believe that the feeling of deep inner peace, which we often seek for outside ourselves, is neurological circuitry located in our right brain. This circuitry of deep inner peace is constantly running and always available for us to hook into. To do that we have to be present—right here, right now. The feeling of peace is something that happens in the present moment—not something that we bring with us from the past or project into the future.
The more aware we are of this right-mind inner circuitry of deep inner peace, the easier it becomes to purposely take a breath and choose it over other response. Don’t criticize yourself when you have difficulty accessing the consciousness of your right mind circuitry, because you are simply doing what you learned as a child. Simply be good to yourself and remember that, “Enlightenment is not a process of learning, it is a process of unlearning,” which is what my good friend, Dr. Kat Domingo, proclaims.
Both of our hemispheres work together to generate our perception of reality on a moment-by-moment basis, which means that we are exercising our right mind all the time. However, when we learn to recognize the very subtle feelings running through our body when we are connected to the present moment, we can begin to train ourselves to activate it on purpose.
Give an example of how you do this.
Remember that you are part of a greater structure—an eternal flow of energy and molecules—from which you cannot be separated. Knowing that I am part of the cosmic flow makes me feel safe, and my life as heaven on Earth. It’s impossible to feel vulnerable when I cannot be separated from the greater whole. Although my left mind thinks of me as a fragile individual capable of losing my life, my right mind realizes that the essence of my being as eternal life. Someday, when I may lose these cells and my ability to perceive this three-dimensional world, my energy will be absorbed back into the tranquil sea of euphoria. Focusing on this leads me to feel grateful for the time I have here and committed to the well-being of the 50 trillion brilliant cells that are all packed together and working to bring the essence of who I am into the world.
Does this mean that we have the autonomy to choose our thoughts in response to our visceral emotions?
I’ve learned to make my decisions based upon how things feel inside. There are certain emotions, like anger, frustration or fear, that feel uncomfortable when they surge through my body. I now have a relationship with what is going on inside my head. I use my left mind, through language, to talk directly to my brain and tell it that I don’t like a particular feeling and don’t want to hook into the neural loop that keeps it on continuous play. Essentially, I now have much to say about how I feel and for how long.
Addendum
In 2012, I interviewed Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D., author of My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey. At 37, this Harvard-trained anatomist was enjoying a very successful career when a blood vessel exploded in her brain’s left hemisphere. It changed everything. A true scientist who was fascinated by the breakdown of her brain functions, Taylor became the witness to her stroke, which initially left her unable to talk, walk, read, write or remember anything prior to that occurrence.
In 1996, when her brain exploded, as she explains in her TED talk, her left-brain shut down and Jill lost her processing capacity for all language. With her mind suspended in newfound silence, she experienced a sense of deep peace, along with an inability to visually distinguish edges and boundaries between herself and the outer world. She recounts many profound realizations and intimate understandings about the left and right halves of the brain in her personal memoir. This inspiring story not only demonstrates that it is possible to rebuild the brain after trauma, but also that anyone can tend the garden of the mind to maximize their quality of life.
Before our conversation, I’d ravenously devoured every word on the 181 pages of her book and watched her TED talk twice along with the millions of other individuals who were undoubtedly as fascinated as I was. As I’d read the last page, I felt like I always did whenever I ate one of my grandma’s homemade cinnamon rolls. I wanted “more”. I wanted a personal connection to a walking, talking miracle. Because through the consciousness of her brain’s right hemisphere Jill had visually been able to see and feel herself as an energy being connected to the energy all around, I was over the moon about interviewing her. This was my opportunity to hear in Jill’s voice and words a confirmation of one of my epiphanies regarding enlightenment as unlearning and what I intellectually understood but my eyes couldn’t yet see.
I was starving for the kinds of powerful stories that convert Doubting Thomas’s and had been wishing that someone would invent the spiritual equivalent of an x-ray machine that I could step behind and get an image of the energy body that is really what I am. Since no one had invented one, Jill’s experience was my “next best” thing. Despite my yoga practice, absorbing my spiritual teacher’s wisdom and personal experience, I still had to suspend my conventional belief system about the body to stretch my imagination and instead embrace what I’d learned about chakras, the third eye, auras, and energy fields. Jill, on the other hand, had lived through heaven and the hell of seven years in recovery to tell her story, which I wholeheartedly believed.
The world is truly a better place because this conventionally trained brain scientist tells a true-life story that most doctors and researchers would otherwise consider ridiculous woo-woo. I’m eternally grateful to Jill who grateful to have interviewed. My fascination and interest in energy, and the pursuit of understanding the energy body as well as energy fields began when I first read Hands of Light by Barbara Brennan.
Since I interviewed Jill, she wrote another book, Whole Brain Living, in case anyone is interested. And, I have never ceased reading about or watching videos on YouTube that might give me a deeper understanding of the body’s energy field as well as the meridians, ley lines and vortexes that constitute the energies of the earth, which is why I interviewed Shelley Darling, author of Navigating Home, a book about dowsing. There’s just so much to explore.
Cosmic Musings
Douglas Bonar
I spent two hours this morning listening to conference plenaries. The international conference, Global Turbulence: Sources and Solutions, is hosted by the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS) along with co-partner, Human Security for All. I’m presenting on a conference panel later in the week on the topic of changing the way we think. I’m excited!
One takeaway from today’s experience: We (you, me and many others) now understand (grok) the scope of the polycrisis and probable consequences. And we are coming together, in islands of coherence, to address the situation, not solely from the consciousness that led to the situation (paraphrasing Eistein), but rather embodying our Gaia/Cosmic Consciousness. We grok that we are connected to the living earth and her inhabitants, and to the conscious universe. This is the emerging worldview that will save our collective asses. I heard this theme emerging over and over again with many speakers. It gave me a feeling of heightened confidence and affirmation of my course.
Why, you say, musings? Because it allowed the thought Gaia/Cosmic Consciousness to emerge into the field of consciousness, aka: the morphogenetic field, and the noosphere. I had never seen the term before and never wrote it before. It’s now in the field. We’re here to connect to the intelligence of a living earth and conscious universe. Trust the process. It runs through us, for us, as us.
Catch the link of words: I am musing and I am amusing. A hint that you’re in alignment with the field, there will be accompanying feeling of joy. I enjoy musing. Downloading from the universe. Playing in the collective field. And, alas, feeling the suffering of the many. It’s all there.
I write this in tribute to one of the Masters. Joanna Macy died two days ago. If you haven’t read any of her remarkable books, I urge you to do so. I especially recommend for this day and age, Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy. As a Buddhist and an Ecologist, Joanna knew our relationship with a living earth and with each other. Joanna’s voice and her wisdom are coming to me now from her appearance in the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium through the Pachamama Alliance. She reminded us that in the face of the suffering, to allow the feelings of anger and fear. Don’t be afraid of them as they are a measure of the great love that we feel inside. She reminded us of our compassion.
Remind me to write more about the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium in later musings. It’s been real, D…
A Walk in the Woods
Carol Roberts
Spotlight on Nature - Improve your health through engaging with the Natural World
Many of us are terrorized, outraged and scared of the climate situation. We think maybe we can think our way through but it may be too late, and what does that mean?
I have another option to offer - go out and acquaint yourself with some aspect of the natural world that maybe you haven’t engaged before - a regular walk in the woods, a daily dose of sunshine, try to get your rhythms in sync with the rhythms of the cosmos.
You will be grounding (normalizing your energy flow and sending a lot of negativity into the ground, which can absorb it). You will feel better in your body.
The sunshine (in appropriate doses for your skin type) is not a toxin but a balm, a nutrient, a gift from God for your pleasure. It’s not just Vitamin D, but we make endorphins in our skin with solar power, and we fire up our mitochondria with full spectrum light!
Listen to the trees and the wind instead of podcasts when you walk, observe the birds nesting and the squirrels chasing one another at impossible angles and Grand Prix speeds.
Then return the favor, and read the Earth Charter. It is a constitution for the New World we can choose to put together. In fact many nodes already exist in the Web of Life that can and will regenerate the planet. All it takes is each of us doing our part.
CLR...
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