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Co-Creating Our New Earth

By Rodrigo Cayres

World peace? A new era of cooperation among all nations? The eradication of poverty? Millions of us have had such hopes and aspirations only to be pulled back to “reality” on hearing the latest news of ongoing warfare, souring relations between countries, or the rise in homelessness and poverty.

And we are right to believe that those issues will never be resolved. A healthy dose of skepticism over the prospect of seeing an end in sight to those issues is needed so we can open up to a new thought. Rather than focusing on fixing the old, we are ready to consider something truly new.

For 1,500 years, brilliant and well-meaning people proposed innumerous solutions to fix unending issues with the geocentric system, until a new thought was contemplated by the likes of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton: Earth is not the center of the universe, and the planets revolve around the sun.

In view of all this, it’s not necessary to feel depressed or despondent. I hear Jesus saying, “Be encouraged rather than discouraged” that we are ready to accept that the current model of the world is unfixable. What to do when we find ourselves in a situation beyond repair? Start anew. Or when we cannot fix what was done? Create anew. Or as Jesus would tell us, “paint a new picture.”

The current world has to “disappear” so that a new world can arise, just as a caterpillar must disappear before the butterfly can emerge. Beyond the disappearance of the old world lies the birth of a new Heaven on Earth.

The current world’s issues cannot be resolved because such a world’s foundations are the sands of specialness, fear, and the illusion of separation. It’s centered on the personal self—the body-mind that seems to give us an identity. The New Earth’s foundations are the rocks of oneness, love, and the awareness of a shared being.

But it would be unhelpful to think that a New Earth can be created by a few leaders, or that it requires careful planning for outer changes. Here we need to stay grounded in causes rather than attempt to work with effects. As Jesus put it in The Age of the Heart,

“People will stop waging war, not as a result of a series of agreements or treaties, but as a natural manifestation of the new universal consciousness… This need not wait. It is something that you, yourself, must manifest in the world now.” (The Age of the Heart, Ch.11: A New Heart)

Wouldn’t it be a waste of energy to try to change what appears on a screen where the images are projected by a data projector? We need to change the data, the inner contents, before we can see real changes reflected on the screen.

“The thought system of the truth realizes that the external world is but a reflection of the internal world.” (A Course of Love, T3:18.10)

We go within to find the causes of what we see in the world. It’s time to look with loving awareness into our own inner conflicts, self-judgment, the shame and guilt we feel about certain incidents in the past, the lack of communication between mind and heart, the disconnect between the human and the divine in us, the restlessness of mind, the addiction to thinking and doing, the sense of unworthiness and inadequacy, the imbalance between the masculine and feminine energies within us, and so on.

“The power of love is the cause and effect that will change the world by returning you, and all your brothers and sisters, to who they are in truth. This cannot be done from without but must be done from within. It is the transformation that is caused within that will affect the world without.” (A Course of Love, D:Day10.33)

The emerging New Earth is no utopia. But thinking that a change of political parties, world leaders, or the collapse of a dictatorial regime is going to bring about world peace is utopian. Current methods of dealing with world issues do not work because they only deal with symptoms without addressing their cause.

“The arising of a new heaven and by implication a new earth are not future events that are going to make us free. Nothing is going to make us free because only the present moment can make us free. A new heaven and a new earth are arising within you at this moment, and if they are not arising at this moment, they are no more than a thought in your head and therefore not arising at all.” (A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, Ch.10)

Peace in the outer world is the effect of dwelling in inner peace. The New Earth starts from within by returning awareness to the shared being that gives us a real identity—an identity that is timeless and universal. This call to live from the truth of who we are goes to everyone, not just to a selected few. This is an invitation for us all to co-create our New Earth.

Our true Self is naturally free from fear, as it does not know death, disease, or decay. Rather than a temporary feeling, love is then realized as the ongoing awareness of us all sharing a common source, which places us in the condition of siblings equally gifted with the opportunity to experience the formless Self, which is pure presence, in physicality as individual expressions, much in the same way that light is dispersed through a prism to express its individual colors.

But make no mistake, ending inner conflicts and having greater awareness of love’s presence in us are not enough in and by themselves to create a New Earth. The need for sharing in unity and relationship with others whose awareness is expanding cannot be overemphasized. Hear these words of wisdom:

“You may live a more peaceful and meaningful life, but you will not become the savior I ask you to be, or the architects of the new world of heaven on earth that I call you to create.” “When you fully realize that sharing is necessary you will have entered the dialogue. When you have fully surrendered to the fact that you can’t come to know on your own you will have entered the dialogue.” (A Course of Love, T3:14.1; D:Day15.1)

“You are here to make one another known and in so doing to know oneness.  . . .Realize how necessary dialogue is. Many resist this stage of development because they feel they have achieved inner knowing.  . . .They have achieved a goal consistent with their concept of inner knowing and mistaken this as knowing the Self. Movement is necessary to know the Self.  . . .The easiest way of all to slip from knowing to not knowing is through stagnating in a ‘known’ place.  . . .Entering the dialogue keeps you in constant contact with the unknown and with unceasing coming to know.” (D:Day15.15-18)

Thus inner peace, which surpasses all thinking, and love, which surpasses all feelings, are the root causes that will give rise to our New Earth. Together we are discovering how to recognize genuine peace and love, embody them in daily life, and stabilize or sustain this embodiment when faced with perceived challenges or opposing forces.

“Alone we can do nothing, but together our wills fuse into something whose power is far beyond the power of its separate parts.” (A Course in Miracles – Original Edition, T-8.V.36)

Sustaining awareness of love’s presence is not about rejecting or hiding what is yet to be returned to love. It’s about embracing all that we see in us now, including all our seeming imperfections, trauma, pain, anger, and the like. Being at peace even with conflict and embracing with compassionate awareness all aspects of our being human will bring forth the inner alchemy—the transmutation of loveless energies back into love.

“Love is higher than opinion. If people love one another the most varied opinions can be reconciled – thus one of the most important tasks for humankind today and in the future is that we should learn to live together and understand one another. If this human fellowship is not achieved, all talk of development is empty.” (Rudolf Steiner)

As John Lennon and Yoko Ono put it in Imagine, we hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.