Awakening West?
Quite a few these days believe that we are seeing a larger scale awakening, in the west and around the world. To me, this seems to be a projection of the potential, unfolding or more mature awakening in the people holding these views. Nobody is immune to blind projections, not even when an awakening to selflessness has taken place.
And of course, no matter which thought we believe in, we can find lots of apparently convincing evidence to support it. When we believe a thought, it is the job of the mind to support it and prop it up.
In this case, the evidence may be we who are interested in these things tend to hear about and meet lots of people who have awakened or are in an awakening process - far more than we did just five or ten or twenty years ago. But there are of course simple explanations for this. We are far more interconnected these days, especially through the internet (websites, blogs, listserves, etc.) And in my case, I didn't even know where to look in the beginning and it has taken time to uncover all these people I now know or know about.
To know if there really is a larger scale awakening process taking place, we would need large scale studies, grounded in solid science, and uncovering trends over several decades. I personally don't know of any yet.
There may indeed be a larger scale awakening, or not, but to believe either way is a blind projection. It is wishful thinking. It is free fantasy. At least until there are some good studies out there showing trends over time. And even then, it would still just be a story.
My only business here is my own awakening, and not even that.
Labels: awakening, collective