Whole Self: A Concise History of the Birth and Evolution of Human Consciousness

By Kendrick Mercer

Kendrick Mercer's Whole Self tells the story of the birth, evolution, and history of human consciousness and its impact on the human psyche. This is the most powerful unfolding force on the Earth, with the potential to lead us either to annihilate ourselves by generating conflict or to work together wisely and in common purpose. The story begins with our elemental state of being, Whole Self, which is a natural, instinctive, intuitive state of being that has been refined in our biology over billions of years of evolutionary life experience as it was handed down from ancestor to ancestor, generation by generation, in an unbroken chain. Following a prehistoric disaster, our early ancestors then adapted the capacity for abstract reasoning. Unfortunately, their shift in cognitive ability had a major drawback: It introduced fear into the human minds, along with the response to fear, control. Both issues are the major sources of our suffering today.

Our generation with its advanced understanding of the brain has the great evolutionary opportunity to find ways to combine the best of our post-Shift reasoning with the capacity for spontaneous and joyful life lived in harmony with nature and all living beings on our planet that is our birthright. In reawakening to Whole Self as individuals, we gain the ability to perceive the unspun truth of each moment and the capacity to respond spontaneously and appropriately to it with minimal effort and confidence. Collectively, we gain a path to peace, prosperity, and better mental and emotional health.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9780997955422

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INTRODUCTION

Deep inside of every human today is an elemental state of being, Whole Self®. Whole Self is the natural, instinctive, intuitive state of being that has been chiseled and honed in our biology over billions of years of evolutionary life experience as it was handed down from ancestor to ancestor, generation by generation, in an unbroken chain.

Kendrick Mercer

We live in an astonishing time for seekers of truth. There has never been such a cornucopia of scientific knowledge available to us about the living world and our place in it. The Earth is a beguiling, blue green ball of fragile beauty, every nook and cranny of which explodes with life. Petty human squabbles over natural resources, national boundaries, political doctrines, and religious creeds should surely vanish in the knowledge that this living marvel, surrounded by infinite emptiness, is our shared home. We human beings, we cosmic assemblies of molecules that feel, think, and marvel at our own existence, we alone can rise above our petty human conflicts and restore balance to Earth.

The deeply held views that people express and fight fiercely for are encoded by us from our parents, families, communities, and culture. If we wish to be free of conflicts in the future and promote harmony, we must approach these conflicting views as deeply held encodings, not simply as ideas. These conflicting encodings must be addressed, challenged, and destroyed by exposing them to scientific truth. Earth is in the midst of an emergency so extreme that it is imperative we address the causes of the harm and imbalances in our world now. Arguments and violence based on our encodings reflect our turbulent past, and we alone can rise above them to see and protect the beautiful harmony and unity of the whole to which we belong.

In a very short time, there has been a transformation from having incredible ignorance about ourselves, our world, and the universe to a new state of comprehension. It was only a few hundred years ago when the greatest intellects believed that the Earth was the center of the universe and the sun revolved around the Earth. In the nineteenth century, those on the cutting edge of science believed the Milky Way was our entire universe. Since then, cosmologists have discovered that there are billions of galaxies, each with its own individual character, all racing away from one another at unbelievable speeds. Within the last two centuries we have also discovered the wonderful process and mystery of evolution. In the twentieth century, we learned that E=MC2 and were introduced to the double helix of DNA. We now know every form of life comes from the same basic DNA.

Compelling discoveries and technological innovations are compounding at a phenomenal pace. Astonishing breakthroughs are being made regularly in cosmology, genetics, medicine, biology, and general science. A new breed of evolutionists is emerging able to capture the workings of evolution in real time, using DNA to uncover and rewrite previously unknown human history. This picture, so painted, of cutting-edge discoveries and knowledge, is breathtaking in its wealth of detail, which ranges from the subatomic to the universal scale.

As a seeker of truth, I am not interested in dogma, fantasy, belief, or fiction. I don’t want to be entertained, I want to participate. This is field day for those of us who are eager to learn. It is a joy to be alive during this period of geometric expansion of truth, knowing we can still look forward to learning so much more.

At this time in history we have a new and profound understanding of the remarkable cocoon of safety our beloved planet provides. We live in a vast universe where all hell is breaking loose. Stars are exploding, stars are dying, stars are being born, space is filled with deadly radiation, and galaxies are flying around at 650,000 miles an hour. We, on the other hand, live in a profoundly safe, nurturing, naturally harmonious haven called Earth. Some have called Earth the Goldilocks Planet because of the harmonious balance of all the forces at play to make it habitable. How life first came to exist on Earth will eventually be scientifically answered along with the others of life’s mysteries. If we can maintain the natural environment long enough, our wonder and fascination with these incredible truths will inspire us to increasingly revere our planet, and most importantly, to revere the opportunity to experience life itself.

Deep inside of every human living today is an elemental state of being, Whole Self. Whole Self® is the natural, instinctive, intuitive state of being that has been chiseled and honed in our biology over billions of years of evolutionary life experience as it was handed down from ancestor to ancestor, generation by generation, in an unbroken chain. At rest, Whole Self is a tranquil state of quiet confidence. In action, it enables us to decipher the truth of each moment and respond spontaneously and appropriately to that truth with minimal effort. Over time, evolution has enriched this elemental state of being, enabling humans to be the only animals that adapt to, and survive and thrive in every type of environment on Earth.

Sixty thousand years ago—a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms—consciousness evolved and made a massive leap forward. We evolved a second, higher consciousness.

noun / con•scious•ness /

An organism’s awareness of its own self and surroundings1

Gerald Edelman, in 1987, in elaborating his theory of neuronal group selection, talks of two kinds of consciousness: primary consciousness, which involves an awareness of the present, and higher consciousness, involving awareness of the past, projection into the future, and the ability to see patterns in their totality of one’s behavior, past, present, and future.2

As a reaction to this advanced consciousness, human desire and focus shifted from Whole Self’s evolutionary design for survival through understanding, harmonizing, and cooperating with nature to a new fear-based and more controlling direction. As a result, Whole Self was slowly repressed, overshadowed, clouded, and sometimes shamed as animal-like behavior.

Today, the fear-based focus of our brains leads us to try to control and avoid everything that our ability to reason abstractly can imagine, including the prospect of our own deaths, injury