Raising consciousness for a new world
Newsletter - September 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.
Information, Facts, Truths and Falsehoods
Bob Staretz
Information can be based on anything including fictions, opinions, beliefs or truths. Anyone can fabricate and promote a fiction. These stories require very little effort to create and to spread. All that’s needed is an imagination and the motivation to do it. Falsehoods are often created because of hidden or unspoken intentions relating to status, power, influence, control or monetary gain of the person or group promoting them over some other individual or group. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to discern fiction from truth especially if it is repeated often enough or told by a so-called authority or respected person or institution in our lives. And now, with modern technologies, it’s easier than ever to create and disseminate fiction masquerading as truth.
Promoting information based on truth requires much more effort than falsehoods. It has to be researched, analyzed, validated and verified. In the process related information has to be verified or tossed out. These are all tasks which require much more effort than creating a falsehood. Promoting truth is much more time consuming, demanding and expensive than spreading a convenient fictional account no matter the subject. Sometimes truths can be hurtful but without discernment of truth from fiction, there can be no real understanding nor opportunity for improvement of the human condition.
The scientific method is a methodology that has been developed and refined over the last 350 years to discern truth from falsehood about the natural world. An observation of some objective aspect of nature is made and a hypothesis (an educated guess) is then developed to determine the cause of the observational results. The hypothesis leads to an actual experiment in a controlled environment to determine if the hypothesis can stand up to further scrutiny. If the hypothesis is experimentally falsified either the underlying assumptions, the experimental procedures used to validate the hypothesis, or the interpretations of the results are invalid. A new hypothesis must be developed. Rewash, rinse and repeat.
How to Awaken the Masses
Bob Staretz, Douglas Bonar, Carol Roberts
Point
What is so disheartening in today’s world is that main-stream media pays little attention to the polycrisis (eight major challenges humanity is facing in the 21st century) the suffering it will cause and the dim future it will bring about for future generations. Worse still is that it is ignoring how these interacting feedback loops cause exponential change and how that alone keeps quickening the magnitude of the forthcoming disruptions... Most disconcerting of all is how national and regional governments and institutions are actively now misleading us and moving us in the wrong direction...
Unfortunately, not too many, and certainly not enough, people are feeling the same depth of concern about the future, for their children, grandchildren and future generations yet to be born, as well as all living creatures that we share the planet with and for our precious earth. So many are distracted by the lure of sex, food, media, sports, entertainment, personal issues, family issues, relationship issues, economic woes, addictions, and a host of other distractions.
In much of our current endeavors, it is easy to see that we are engrossed in ego and have separated from and have forgotten the core of our being. This is, in part, our mission going forward via our website and other social media - helping people remember and reminding them of their essence.
In this day and age of ego-centeredness and gross distraction, we've forgotten our inherent connection, our intra-connectedness, with each other, with the living earth, and with Source/Essence. And this must be the focus of all planetary citizens going forward.
The Emerging Power of "We"
Awakening to the Evolution of Community
Linda Sechrist
Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s suggestion that the next Buddha would likely not take form as an individual but rather as a sangha, a community practicing mindful living, led many people to ask, “Why a community?” The author of more than 100 books that explore the Buddha’s core teachings on mindfulness, kindness and compassion, Hanh clarified the meaning of sangha as a good community necessary for helping individuals learn how to encounter life in the present moment, resist the unwholesome ways of our time, go in the direction of peace and nourish seeds of enlightenment. Even the best intentions, he noted, can falter without such a group of trusted family, friends and co-practitioners experiencing mindfulness together.
A Migration to Forming Community
Today’s trend toward collaborative processes and opportunities for transformation through online communities is made easier by the availability of affordable video conferencing providers such as Zoom, as well as online platforms such as Facebook and MeetUp. Although many groups form for marketing, political, civic or social purposes—allowing participants to share values and common interests—thousands more gather as online intentional communities associated with personal growth and spiritual awakening.
Myriad individuals have been able to experience some aspect of community through international organizations such as Hay House and the Shift Network and platforms offered by enlightened luminaries such as Dr. Deepak Chopra, whose conscious content on his website and wellness-focused mobile app is intended to extend the reach of his ideas on health and social transformation for millions of people.
To Know the Future
Bob Staretz
Why try to know the future
Of that which cannot be known?
Or what the astrological charts may say
Of my destiny or yours?
Don’t waste your time,
Let go of your desires and your expectations.
What will come, will come,
Whether known or not.
We are all products of Nature,
And tools of its wishes.
Only Nature knows
The purpose of our lives…
So, enjoy the beauty, embrace the joy, the heartache,
The suffering, and the magic of all that is.
For one day, when we return to Source,
We shall finally know the meaning of it all...
Cosmic Musings
Douglas Bonar
Journey of Atonement and Awe
I recently returned from what I’m calling a journey of atonement and awe. My partner, Teresa, died in May. My journey commenced in taking her ashes to her family members in Michigan. I flew to Michigan for a family Celebration of Life, and drove back to Florida over a ten-day period, stopping occasionally to be with friends and family. During the longer drive segments, I drove in silence (admittedly, other than employing GPS which made the trip so easy!). No radio or other distractions. Being mindful and intent. This was a sacred and purposeful journey.
Atonement is at-one-ment. Understanding, embodying and applying our oneness, our connection, with a living earth and her inhabitants, and with a conscious universe. The wisdom of the earth and the cosmos flows through me, for me, as me. In Sanskrit, Tat Tvam Asi. That art Thou. It’s a portal into the new story of interbeing which is heralding a potentially thriving future.
It was a journey of celebration, remembrance, allowing, introspection, and agency. Understanding and allowing a full range of emotions and experiences. The drive through the mountains especially filled me with a sense of wonder and awe. Awakening the senses. Again, allowing the full range of feelings and experiences. Bliss. Being at one with nature, with self, and with the cosmos. Listening, intently, to the internal and eternal wisdom. Occasionally crying with grief and remorse (no spiritual bypass here) balanced by “happy tears” of appreciation and gratitude. Allowing forgiveness, inspiration and healing. Welcoming and embracing my co-creative future.
I’ve come to realize that this is our life journey. Isn’t it really? We all feel pain and some degree of suffering. We’re so often wounded during childhood by family, community, and, into adulthood, by a nefarious culture. We sometimes remain centered in suffering. As the Buddha informed us in the four noble truths, there is a path to transcend the suffering. I’m referring to this path, for me, as the path of atonement and awe. I consciously centered myself on this path as I drove south, and now, as I write, in the wisdom and compassion of the true Self, embodying nature and divinity. Forgiving transgressions to and from. Living in wholeness. I’m recounting the mantra that I introduced in a prior musing: healthy whole holy home. Our life journey may be centered in the awe and delight of sensual pleasures, and the complementary responsibility of Dharma, asking, “As all is connected, what is mine to do?” It is a choice when we embrace our wholeness. Certainly, more on Dharma in future writings. Allowing it all. D…
Medicine Since Rockefeller: The Flexner Report
Carol Roberts
How did people treat maladies before the age of modern medicine - I call it Rockefeller Medicine? Why Rockefeller?
In 1913 the Flexner Report, commissioned by the Rockefeller Institute, described the state of healing in the US at the time. At the time, there were doctors in the lineage of Harvey and Hippocrates, but there were also faith healers, homeopaths, herbalists and midwives. There were snake oil salesmen and “quacks” - German salesmen promoting mercury fillings to dentists. Some of these practitioners were practicing valid healing modalities, some were promoting worthless, or even toxic and poisonous, remedies.
The Flexner Report was produced by educator (not a MD) Abraham Flexner, to sort out the scientific wheat from the chaff, so to speak. The report became the basis for what we refer to now as “evidence-based medicine”.
Since then, modern medicine has become so narrowly focused and so pervasive, that no one thinks of anyone to go to but a Medical Doctor or perhaps a Doctor of Osteopathy when they have any sort of problem. Medical schools teach students a certain way to diagnose and treat, that is increasingly technological, scripted and mechanized to the point where everyone has forgotten any other way. Petroleum based drugs, radiation and surgery are the ONLY options. Protocols must be followed or doctors could lose their license.
Consciousness, It's More Than You Think
Bob Staretz
Once, in rural central Florida, a man named Ted lived alone in the countryside. His only company was a small dog that had lived with him for a very long time. This dog was a great companion and a wonderful and dedicated friend to Ted. After many years the dog, like all living creatures, made his transition. Ted, with a heavy heart and feeling of tremendous loss, went to a local church in town to meet with the minister. He asked the minister “Reverend, my faithful dog and my best friend recently died. Could you possibly have a brief service to aid in the transition for his passing?”
Realizing how set in their ways his congregation was and not wanting to offend them but yet wanting to ease Ted’s pain, the minister thought for a moment and then replied: “We just can’t have services for an animal in this church, but I’ll tell you what, there’s a new denomination on the other side of town, and I’m not sure what they believe in, but maybe they’ll do something for your beloved pet.” Ted replied “Thanks, I’ll go to that church right now. By the way, do you think $50,000 is enough to donate for a service?” Upon hearing this, the Reverend quickly replied “Why didn’t you tell me the dog was a member of this denomination?”
The moral of the story: Isn’t it amazing that, in spite of long-standing traditions, beliefs or habits, how quickly we can change our minds when we are motivated to do so? The key is to see things from a new perspective, whether self-imposed or pushed into it from the outside. In whatever way it happens we must be open-minded about questioning our beliefs and habits so we have the motivation to change.
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