So How Did Our Culture Loose This Natural Rhythm With Life?

Barbara-Lynn Freed, Contributing Writer
Waking Times 
From the dawn of history to the advent of the Roman Catholic Church, the veil between the worlds was much thinner than it is today.  This meant that the people enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the natural spirits of the heavens, and land, making their lives interdependent with the Law of Right Relationship that says everything is alive, is interconnected and that the sacred dwells in everything that exits.
These truths were reflected in many ancient civilizations by bonding their King’s life with the fertility of the land.  Here, if the King was in ill health, so too was his kingdom.  His subjects would become sick and their crops would fail.  To ensure the safety of the people, these cultures practiced ritualized killing of their kings after a set term in office.  Thus, the office of kingship was there to serve the people through honor, fair play and eventual self-sacrifice, thus preserving the natural flow of nature.
Until the white invasion of Australia, male Aborigines became more deeply connected with the Law of Right Relationship and the local landscape during puberty rites.  During spiritual trance, a picture of the land was painted on a boy’s body so that spiritually and symbolically he and the land became one.  In this way, on walk-about, he would have a true sense of direction and knowing of where to locate water.
Today, indigenous shamans still connect with this Divine harmony by becoming one with their totem animals, receiving divination or guidance for inner-work and to serve their tribe.

So How Did Our Culture Loose This Natural Rhythm With Life?
A chief feature of western culture is that all our core beliefs are based on separation.  A clear example of this is seen in the adage “Know thyself “.  Here we conceive and apprehend our world through the eyes of the individual rather than working collectively within a group. These independent self-conceptions tend to emphasize our uniqueness, or individuality, instead of emphasizing our interdependent or interconnectedness within a group setting, or with nature.  Our self-esteem is met by clearly defining our personal goals, as opposed to our Eastern and Indigenous counterparts who find personal honor in working with their collective societal and family purposes.  Because of this type of individualistic thinking, it is harder for the average westerner, to comprehend how life and nature are interrelated.
Beginning with the Greek philosopher Plato, and then reemphasized by Descartes in the 17^th century, the philosophy of mind/body separation, has played an enormous part in Western thinking and in shaping our culture. This way of thinking along with the notion that thought and time are linear actions, instead of natural cycles, have paved the way for science to become the religion of the West, where man and nature are considered to be machines. These thought patterns have divorced us from the spiritual truths that all life is sacred and everything is interconnected, as well as, cyclical.
Our egocentric philosophy drives us to put our needs first, and deludes our thinking that our culture is supreme to all others.  Western governments work under the premise that might makes right and third world countries are merely primitive and savage.  We rule with a dominant hand, rather than one of cooperation and compassion.  Instead of seeing that we are all equal on the circle of life, our aggressive, arrogant, hierarchical view of the world, allows us to work through fear, power and control.
Believing in infinite expansion through limited resources, our culture has brought on ecological devastation, war, racial prejudice and national pride.  It is as though our stern society has become a disease, devouring everything in its path.  Through our small mindedness, we have confused Oneness with Sameness, wiping out diversity through our ever-growing monoculture.  We seem to have become hypnotized by our own cultural ideology, and sadly, even when one sees clearly what is going on, there are few cultural outlets in place for fundamental change in the system.
We have been taught to focus on the external for answers, instead of looking within ourselves to find meaning in our lives.  Rather than seeing the Divine as a life force that permeates our Being, the natural world and cosmos, western religions view God as being separate from man.  And in the US, this is again reflected in the separation of Church and State.
An emphasis on empirical thought has allowed science to take the soul out of life by thinking we are God. We have altered life’s natural harmonics by transplanting organs, experimenting with genetics, and creating artificial life.
Our youth, no longer learning wisdom traditions from their elders, pay homage to computers, educational systems, movies and TV.  Trees that were once experienced as being sacred have been transformed into mere commodities to be planted and raped.
Having no concept of what truly sustains us, we have lost our understanding to give back to what gives to us. And in this way, have become disconnected with the land, its fertility, and the oneness that sustains it.
So how do we bridge the gap and reset our pieces of reality?
We can do this by rediscovering and applying Nature’s natural rhythm in our lives that is evidenced as a universal, regenerative pattern found in all life on earth and in cosmic phenomena. Archeology has shown us, that a sacred proportion was used in ancient art, architecture, and pottery for millennia. This regenerative sequence, creates a pattern of order, harmony and beauty in nature, and is commonly known today as the Golden Proportion.  A living pattern of life, it reflects the wisdom of The Law of Right Relationship that says that all things are related and the Divine spark is in everything.

This Golden Proportion is based on a harmonic ratio of 5:8 and can be illustrated as a line being divided into two unequal segments.  The smaller one is representing the proportion of 5, and the larger one is representing the proportion of 8. In this Magical Ratio, mathematicians have found that the smaller segment is related to the larger one in the same proportion that the larger segment is related to the entire line.  
Another way of illustrating this Divine Proportion is through a rectangle that is based on the 5:8 ratio.  When a square is taken from it, a smaller rectangle of the same proportions will be left.  This Divine Process can be repeated indefinitely, while also producing a logarithmic, equiangular, regenerative spiral that is inherent in all growth patterns in nature.
This spiral is Divine because as it grows with each successive curve, its shape is unaltered.  It is as though nature and all life on earth is hard wired with this Golden Proportion, for it is not only seen in material objects such as nautilus shells, sunflower heads, hurricanes, DNA, and crop circles, it can also be seen in the intangible such as music, population growth, stock market growth and decline, or the way a hawk spirals down to hunt its prey.
In fact, all life on earth is created when two opposing, Divinely Proportioned Spirals come together.  This regenerative pattern is the basis for the principle of duality, and is represented by the Yin and Yang symbol.  As a union of two complementary opposites, it represents the Law that says from multiplicity there shall be one.
Another way the Divine Proportion can be illustrated is through a mathematical sequence called the Fibonacci Series.  In this magical sequence, each number is the sum of the previous two.  1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144,233,377…  This Golden Ratio, called Phi, is represented by the Greek letter Φ. It is interesting to note that this number series is seen as being irrational. This means that the ratio of the successive pairs is approximately 1.618033989… and its reciprocal is approximately 0.618033989… Because this ratio can only be approximated and never fully expressed as a whole number or fraction, it is seen as infinite and intangible, and hence, a Divine Proportion.
How do we recreate our world working with the Golden Mean and Spirit of Life?
Right now one of the only ways this sacred proportion is currently reflected in our everyday lives is through the size of our Greenbacks. It is ironic that as we stand on the brink of destroying the natural world forever, our importance of money has been emphasized with nature’s sacred proportion.
Obviously, we have a long way to go in retraining ourselves to see and accept the sacred in all life, but wouldn’t be grand if we could begin this process by including the Golden Proportion in our building codes as they were in ancient times? Then having a sacred vibration in our homes and work spaces would offer a pleasant, harmonious, resonance to help us feel more inclined to be productive in our livelihoods and relaxed in our lives. Perhaps then, these feelings of peace and harmony with the natural order would be able to filter down into every aspect of our lives and we would once more live in Right Relationship with all of creation.