Are we divided inside? If we are divided inside, there is no way in hell or heaven that tomorrow we're not going to have a divided world. It doesn't matter if we've got the best intentions in the universe; what really matters is the state from which we act.
­ Adyashanti

Today more than ever it has become imperative that we view ourselves in context to the greater whole. For more of us each day, the personal has become the political and the political more personal than many of us find comfortable. Thanks to modern media, the various wars being fought abroad bring the pain of loss into our own living rooms and hearts, and more parents, irrespective of belief systems, are echoing the same sentiment, "This could be my child" (fighting, dying, tortured, in physical or psychological pain). Many of us feel this anguish down to our bones, for how can we separate our own matter from that of Mater/Mother Earth? How can blood spilled upon her soil be restricted to imagined boundaries? Are nations not divided by the boundaries of men, and are not these lines of demarcation the very source of unending suffering and strife? If the Mother within us can feel the pain of children halfway across the world, whether or not we inhabit male or female bodies, we can intuitively, compassionately feel the pain of the Earth Mother. If a dolphin or whale will beach itself in response to vibrations and frequencies felt from the depths of the ocean, how could the agony of our fellow human beings not echo in the recesses of our own cellular structures?

Yet might there be a hidden redemption in sight, rolling away the stone of our unconsciousness like the living Christ emerging from the eternal silence of the tomb of death, illuminating what was once even more fearfully referred to as "the other side?" If so, perhaps it is that now more than ever before, despite the burgeoning numbers of planetary occupants, we collectively begin to view ourselves sans boundaries, our humanity held in common, uniting us with all living matter as One. Futurist and social architect Barbara Marx Hubbard offers, "The planetary crisis we're facing is an awakening signal. If we don't shift our consciousness to feeling oneness, connectedness, the field, we can destroy ourselves. We are all members of a living body - we all are cells in the planetary system, and whether we know it or not we are being connected rapidly by that system."

If a hundred monkeys can learn to wash potatoes when distanced apart from one another by continents (which might as well be worlds apart for the jet-less, boat-less monkey), there is hope for our own complex species to unite in peaceable world community. The global networks are in place; indeed, we have a world-wide web. Even the Irian Jayans, one of the last indigenous races on earth to be invaded by the culture of the West, know a television from a camera. We can go to the tiniest island somewhere in the Pacific or somewhere in the recesses of Bhutan and email home our travel stories. We can do this thing. We have the technology to bring about the end of ignorance and separation between peoples and countries. What it takes is willingness and an open heart and a lot of action from a lot of everyday people piercing the veils of corporate greed and getting down to the business of utilizing existing systems for peace rather than war; for uniting instead of separating; for informing rather than dogmatizing. We may feel helpless in the face of huge institutions such as governments and fanatical world religions, but we are citizens of this world. We are also consumers, and for better or worse can make a huge impact on the systems that serve and at the same time depend on us for their survival. Now more than ever before, our individual choices are globally felt.

As we observe ourselves and/or our children leaving home, traveling across the nation or to distant lands and even marrying outside religious and cultural norms, we can begin to notice, through tears of loss and separation, a vast network establishing itself all around us. We humans don't much care for change, and separation from loved ones can be agonizing. Yet surely we can begin to see how this is playing out from a greater global perspective, from the purview of developing human consciousness. From the dawn of civilization, we have been moved to discover what lies on the other side of the mountain. This urge to expand, to know, then to possess, to populate with like kind, to segregate and stake out familiar territory, to defend and protect, define and delineate, describes, in rapid sequence, how we arrive at our challenges today. Nothing but change is the constant here, and once we have stampeded ourselves into this narrow canyon, the only way out is the limitless bounds of the open range, once again.

At the same time we are learning that physical expansion has its limits, that we need to get along with all the ponies in the pen or be destroyed ourselves. We are learning to rein in the judgmental, condemning mind, thanks in part to East meeting West in a profound leap into global unity. The Western mind has been overfilled with so much information that discernment has become a big issue, and quieting the cacophony of colliding paradigms seems paramount to ingesting yet more rhetoric. Our consumption has painted us into a corner from which many of us begin to emerge by simply sitting in quiet contemplation. It is in this place that we begin to tune into a common frequency, and this channel clearly broadcasts the same message in myriad forms over and over again, like an aurora borealis undulating across the inky night sky. It is the unity channel, the one spot on our inner dial that comes to us free of static and distortion. Its frequency is attuned to One world. One love. One heart. One mind. When we become adept at this practice, and it might take some time; when we are able to sit long enough to move beyond the anger and grief of "Why is this happening (to me, us them)?" - we are able to move into a more receptive mode where we instead allow the wisdom and guidance of the Mystery to instead inform the question, "How may we serve?"

In the quest for the Holy Grail, the innocent Parsifal sets out on a journey to heal the suffering fisher king which in turn will heal the kingdom. All he needs do is ask, "Whom does the Grail serve?" But time and again, "Parsifal takes the gifts of consciousness but fails to reply with his own act of consciousness." (Robert Johnson's The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden). "As Gawain tells King Arthur at the Round Table, 'We have won everything by the lance and lost everything by the sword.' This is to say a high and noble value is to be won by discrimination, sacrifice, healing, and the work of consciousness; but everything will be lost by that brute force and power that the sword represents."

We have eaten of the fruits of this earth, looked away as our fellows from far across the globe sweat and toil for our sneakers and our silk. It is consciousness that has granted us both the ingenuity to devise the instruments for healing as well as those of enslavement and destruction. We can surely keep eating from the tree of knowledge, but a wound in our humanity will still bleed until and unless we dare to ask the question, "Whom does the Grail serve?" When we choose service, we accept our humble position as global citizens, for the kingdom of heaven lies within this earthly home.

Back to our story of the innocent, where Parsifal finally understands he needs to participate by simply asking the question which, by the way, does not even need an answer! Service is service for its own sake. "The healed fisher king dies after three days. This is a strange ending to his part of the story but it can be understood that the wounded part of ourselves can be left behind when it has served its function in the development of the mature [human being]." This maturity is developed personally, as each of us understands our part in offering selfless service to heal an ailing global community (our kingdom). As steadfastly as we bravely encounter our fears of what is "other," we are likewise flayed open in order that we might share a common heart, a common mind, common dreams and aspirations. It is through engaging our practice of nonjudgmental service that we begin to see the power each of us brings to the whole, and how the collective is transforming.

Our nation is young, like a temperamental adolescent who has not yet developed the wisdom gained through life experience. We have the energy and the drive; now what is needed is the maturity that selfless perspective and service can grant. When we learn to walk the roads we have wandered in theory, it may feel like we, as Parsifal, wander alone. Yet if we dare wade into this stream of earthly unity, we may delightfully discover that all are swimming in the same direction.