The Earth Dream

By Rudra Shivananda

For the last four hundred years, successive waves of immigrants have made their ways to the shores of USA, in search of what we have since called the American Dream. In the days of the early settlers, they may have abandoned their European homes because they hungered for religious and financial freedom. Certainly, the “new world” promised them a level of equality that could not be achieved in the more structured societies controlled by an elite of nobilities. It was freedom from unjust taxation that triggered the “Boston Tea Party” demonstrations and ultimately led to the war of independence from the British.

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Over the centuries, the financial motive has been a consistent motive for new settlers – the early Chinese immigrants were lured to the “golden mountain” as indentured servants to work on the railroad and other labor intensive programs. In our life-time, it has been the legal immigrants and the illegal migrants from Mexico lured to provide labor for the fields or other non-attractive work. However, whether it was the Dutch, German, Swede, Irish, Polish, Italian, etc., the most enterprising and driven people journeyed here and made “yankee ingenuity” and success the catch-word and envy for the rest of the world.

In the 20th century, the American Dream has been defined as the freedom of the consumer – to be able to purchase whatever you desire. To own one’s own home is an aspect of this Dream and unfortunately led to the financial crisis of three years ago. The accumulation of wealth is still an important part of the Dream and this has been responsible for an increase in materialism, if that is possible to imagine.

We live in an ultra-materialistic society where everything, including spiritual success is measured in wealth. Let us switch gear for a moment and up our consciousness to look at why we are here, I mean, why have we been born as human beings on this earth. If we look at the soul as an immigrant, then somewhere in the distant past, we re-located to this earth, to be born here, life-time after lifetime as human beings.

We may have started out at something a little less developed as an early mammal or primate, whatever. The fact is that now we inhabit a human body.

We had a reason – what dream did we have to come to this earth?

It is certainly true that the human body has developed the capacity for pleasure but there is also the flip-side of pain from accident or sickness. We may have the dream to come for the enjoyment of the senses, but this has not been satisfactory for those of us who have developed their souls to a high degree. These beings whom we call the sages have announced a different dream – the evolution of our consciousness – the capacity of the human body and mind to help evolve the soul to the ultimate freedom of Self-Realization.

If we decide that our initial dream to come to earth was to enjoy ourselves, then certainly the American Dream can be part of this, since we are geared towards the pleasures and comfort and every desire imaginable. However, if we suspect that we came here to find a higher truth, to realize our highest potential, then the current American Dream is not in-line with our soul’s Earth Dream and we need to make some adjustment to our version of the American Dream so that it is not at odds with the soul’s purpose here. Unfortunately, the mass consciousness is not yet ready to realize this truth and so those who try to live their Soul’s Dream will become strangers or aliens in this land of consumerism, of materialism.

We can work towards changing the overall consciousness but this will be slow and so those who have realized their true nature and gone on before us have worked to bring about shifts of mass consciousness at different junctures – the most recent was in 2012, as we have all anticipated. However, it is best to keep in mind that the shift in consciousness will help those who are ready for it but may have negative impact on those who resist it.

This will actually cause a greater polarity and larger gap between those who live their Soul’s Dream and those who want to live the old American Dream. Let us pray for a New American Dream that aligns to a more spiritual purpose.