Diversity – Cultural, Biological and The Matrix

In the movie The Matrix , Morpheus says to Neo, “You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

This has been mostly a “red pill” life for me. Like Neo, while becoming aware of and experiencing the underpinnings of reality, those insights often come up against belief–walls.

Unlike the ego-oriented heroes in many of our video game-type movies where the hero gains status by eliminating enemy after enemy, Neo enacted the true Mythic Hero’s Journey by heeding the call, engaging in a road of trials, gaining allies, overcoming obstacles, being shattered then re-woven, and eventually reaching the hot-bed of consciousness. He does not bask in that place of amplified power, but re-enters culture as an orchestrator of both realms to re-green the landscape of the world.

If I were to re-imagine The Matrix, I would replace the self-absorbed AI (artificial intelligence), who keeps everyone asleep, with an evolved and loving cooperative consciousness that cheers everyone on during their own awakening. In this Matrix, everyone would write the software probabilities for their own life experience, individually and en masse, and then forget they had. There’s a good chance each person would make the heroic choices that best serve the learning experience they are currently there for. If not, they get to try again and again, because within the cooperative consciousness each individual is their own “The One.” When each person finds and follows their mission and purpose, they contribute not only to their own fulfillment, but also to that of the world. Eventually, more and more people would wake up and realize their role as conscious co-creators and contribute to re-greening nature and culture. With that, the health of the planet and people would naturally follow.

Until then though, the game is to intentionally forget connections to other life as well as biological processes and interactions in the natural world that maintain life. Individuals forget or ignore the original emotional identification with wind and storms and consider it the sheerest nonsense that collective thoughts of charged emotions contribute to powerful natural events. They turn their backs on that deeper knowledge which then allows them to experiment with other novel, creative idea constructs. This results in a dazzling but unsustainable, human-built environment, eventually forcing individuals to realize that like prodigal sons and daughters, in order to survive as a species in a living world, they will have to return to original cooperative awareness… but bring the best ideas back with them.

As self-conscious human beings we are using only a fraction of our potential. Each of us can draw from an incredible spectrum of biological memories coded in our personal humanity from the experience of countless cultures around the world through time. Dr. Jean Houston, (scholar, philosopher and researcher in human capacities, and one of the foremost visionary thinkers and doers of our time,) says;

“The breaking down of membranes between cultures promotes a seeding and cross-fertilization of the genius that is within each, and allows a rising of the depth-world – both inner and outer – with greater strength than when they were first forged in the childhood of humanity.”

Locally, we played with that concept during our public planting in April at the Kennedy Woods Savanna in Forest Park – Cultural Diversity Re-weaving the Web of Biodiversity. The participants voiced ancestry from over 21 countries, and the Earth Chant part of the experience-deepening opening ceremony, (listen below) carried African and Middle Eastern flavors. We enhanced the reconstructed savanna ecosystem by planting 1500 native grass plugs and 300 Eastern Blazing Star prairie wildflowers, seeded in 2018 by fourth, fifth and sixth graders. Mother Nature gave us a beautiful day and has been watering our new planting ever since.

“We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own – indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder.”  — Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya and the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Listen to the Earth Chant sung by this years participants and accompanied by talented local musicians.

Below are a few of the images of the dedicated public planting team at the 2019 Kennedy Woods Savanna Spring Planting event.