In a Perfect World: Man in Relationship with Self

By Ellema Albert Neal EdD

As the industrial-information age comes to an end, an era of evolving consciousness is beginning to emerge. In a Perfect World: Man in Relationship with Self, serves as a springboard for men to take a journey that leads to self.
The first book in a trilogy, this volume will help you rediscover, come to know, and love yourself more deeply. You will call on the powers of witnessing, alchemy, and creativity to change your life and shape a new reality. Learn how to:
• heal and transform self-limiting beliefs that may cause you to shut down;
• tap into the divine masculine often and when it counts;
• transform without risking the relationships that matter most;
• let go and give back with discernment and accountability.
Book two will show you how to integrate your evolving consciousness, humanity, and divine masculinity with your interpersonal relationships. Your experience and quality of life can joyfully erupt, flourish, and grow. Book three guides your transpersonal embodiment of unity consciousness with community, society, planet, and beyond.
The Perfect World trilogy will help you avoid knowingly or unknowingly contributing to the potential cataclysm our children and grandchildren must solve to survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Mar 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665719810

Ellema Albert Neal EdD

Ellema Albert Neal, Ed.D. is an author, coach, and technology leader. She earned a Doctor of Education in leadership for change with an emphasis on phenomenology, somatics, and communicative leadership from Fielding Graduate University. She also earned a Bachelor of Science degree in leadership from Union Institute & University as well as a computer programming and systems analyst certification and degree. She has worked as a software developer, consultant, and technology leader for forty years.

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Copyright © 2022 Ellema Albert Neal, EdD.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Archway Publishing

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture quotations are from New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Graphic images and cover design by Theresa Wilmot, Wilmot Designs, LLC

Interior Image Credit: Ellema Albert Neal, EdD

Author photo credit: Upfront Photography; 206 Caldwell Sugar Rd, Youngsville, LA 70592

ISBN: 978-1-6657-1982-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-1980-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-1981-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022903968

Archway Publishing rev. date: 03/29/2022

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Heart, Mind, and Soul

Collaboration and Commitment

The Plan

What to Expect

Chapter 1 The Game

First, I Must Evolve

E Pluribus Unum

Integral Yoga

Psychic and Spiritual Education

Vital Education

Mental Education

Physical Education

The Intrapersonal Relationship of Ego and Shadow

The Duality and Beyond

Mindfulness Meditation

Humanity’s Future

Atomic Consciousness

Chapter 2 Why Play a New Game?

The Self-Actualizing Nuclear Man

Twenty-First Century Worldview Awareness

Cause and Effect

Cognitive Dissonance

Attainable World within Reach

Spooky Actions

Chapter 3 What Game Are We Playing?

Healing Hands of Light—Case Study in Shifting the Paradigm

The Age of Consciousness

Physics of the New Age Paradigm Shift

On the Problem of Empathy

Detachment

The Problem with Detachment

Self-Similarity and Diversity

Diversity

Self-Similarity

Human Unity

Spontaneous Order

The Age of Aquarius

Play the Game

Chapter 4 Who Plays This Game?

Life’s Big Questions

Coaching and Accountability

Self-Coaching

Conscious Alchemy

A Consciousness Atom for a New Age

Dimensions of the Consciousness Atom

The Alchemist and the Ego

The Alchemist and Twenty-First Century Worldview

Chapter 5 How to Play the Game

Spiritual Phenomenology

Phenomenology and Coaching

Conscious Alchemy Framework

Epiphany

Perceptual Intelligence

The Plan Is Now Yours

Appendix A: Alchemy of the Soul

Appendix B: Precarious Reality Survey

Appendix C: Age of Consciousness

References

To Walter.

You spent your life becoming a better man.

Illustrations

1. Twenty-First Century Precarious Reality and the Nuclear Man

2. Age of Consciousness and the Entoptic Man

3. Self-Similarity across Intra-, Inter-, and Transpersonal Relationships

4. Twenty-First Century Spontaneous Order

5. Consciousness Atom

Acknowledgments

My heartfelt gratitude goes to the group of consciously evolving men who shared their personal stories and survey responses for this book. Your generosity and participation were an inspiration. Thank you for your contribution to humanity and willingness to be vulnerable, candid, and caring.

With special appreciation for these colleagues in the conscious evolution and human potential movements. To Cheryl Jones, thank you for authoring a special message for readers of this book featured in Chapter 1. To Sunni Boehme, Rev. Sean Harvey, and Edward L. Hennings, thank you for your personal interviews and permission to quote those interviews in this book. To Steven Dynako, thank you for beta reading and sharing your distinctive perspective on consciousness and human development. To James Knight, remembering your part in my doctoral somatics praxis and appreciation for your continued support of this book. Finally, to Dr. David B. Haddad, thank you for your contribution to the phenomenological body of work and practice. Thank you for your support and for sharing your work with me for the readers of this book.

A multitude of thanks goes to the business owners and talented experts for their encouragement and hard work. Special appreciation for tech officiants Robinson Cook and Benny Pekala of Birdwell Solutions, Nancy Lucchesi, the App Mama, Maggie Mangan, best-selling author and leadership coach, Theresa Wilmott, Wilmott Designs, graphic art and cover design for the book, and the team at Archway Publishing. I could not have done this without you.

Sincere and humble appreciation to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and the Gaia Foundation for your unceasing love of humanity and planet. To Angela Maria Feitosa Mendes, please accept my love, appreciation and solidarity with you, your family, and the beautiful rainforest you call home. Thank you for granting permission to reproduce your father Chico Mendes’s letter describing his dream of the future which has become a rallying cry for the Youth of the Future Festival each year.

Finally, this year is the 150th birth anniversary of Sri Aurobindo. May his contributions toward the conscious evolution of humanity continue in form, spirit, and practice. Because of Sri Aurobindo and his spiritual collaborator, Mother Mirra Alfassa, I am renewed in life purpose, restored in spirit, and overjoyed to add my voice to the conscious evolution movement.

Introduction

The In a Perfect World trilogy of books is a strategic roadmap for men who want to become better men. Our world is rapidly changing and full of disruption. The rate and magnitude of change threaten mature American men’s accomplishments, social value, belief systems, identities, and relationships. Professional and personal life-changing events create a dilemma for men who must urgently answer the age-old question, Who am I? Suddenly, a hard to define uncertainty has turned life upside down. The assuredness of what has worked in the past will work again has been lost. Men feel a burning need to reinvent themselves. Who can expect to survive tumultuous times without the evolution of consciousness?

I have worked and studied with men, leaders, and mentors. Most of my professional and academic lives have been operating and leading among a male majority. Almost everything I know or have done has been informed or judged by a man or group of men. I have a doctorate in education and an alum of Fielding Graduate University School of Education for Leadership and Change emphasizing somatics,¹ phenomenology,² and communicative leadership. I run a coaching advocacy business and continue to enjoy the fruits of a decades-long STEM³ career. From my perspective, I have seen men’s roles and responsibilities change dramatically. Doors are closing on those clinging to the old and opening to those embracing the new. An evolutionary imperative is at hand.

Men are still very much in charge. Humanity cannot collectively evolve without men fully onboard. Evolving does not mean becoming unrecognizable to family, friends, or coworkers. We can create a new reality and future without fear of breaking what works. I wrote the Perfect World trilogy to guide you as you consciously evolve as yourself with others for the world. When you read this first book of this trilogy, you will rediscover, come to know, and love yourself more deeply. You can become a whole, conscious being who is aware and comfortable with the divine aspects of masculinity. You will call on the powers of witnessing, alchemy, and creativity to change your life and shape a new reality.

Book two will show you how to integrate your evolving consciousness, humanity, and divine masculinity with your interpersonal relationships. Your experience and quality of life can joyfully erupt, flourish, and grow. Book three will guide you on your exploration of the unity consciousness.

You are one and a part of an assured future for yourself and humanity. Each book in the trilogy consists of doctoral-level academic research. Select male readers who care deeply about humanity review and comment upon the research presented in these books. They volunteer their perspectives, share personal stories, and critique the content before it goes to print. Together, these consciously evolving men and I commit to your success.

The Perfect World trilogy will help you avoid knowingly or unknowingly contributing to the eminent social, climate, and economic cataclysm our children and grandchildren must solve to survive. Your adult children and colleagues will no longer avoid relying on your advice or stop confiding in you because you seem outdated and out of touch. You will no longer be a part of the precarious worldview that has created systemic inequality, scarcity, suffering, and death among people, living things, and the planet. Centuries of tradition, power, and control have replaced human and divine identities, distorted reality, decreased planetary life force energy, and made it seem impossible to survive outside any other mental or economic paradigm. Leave this behind, and a drive for excellence and purposeful living will be yours.

Conscious evolution is not limited to the concerns of living; it extends beyond earthly life and challenges the ingrained belief that death is the inevitable end of life. It is a bold vision. Those who explore the idea do not shy away from the unthinkable. Conscious evolution is the domain of unthought ideas. I believe in you, and I have faith in you as a creator. Together, we will evolve for ourselves with each other.

When I was a child, my most beloved influence was my grandfather. You will learn more about the profound spiritual impact he had on my life. My first love in this life was my biological father. He was a foreign war veteran and business owner who danced like Fred Astaire. The course of my life changed forever when my parents divorced. My mother remarried a man who was ill with depression and alcoholism. His first wife had committed suicide, and he had lost his infant son in a car accident that was partially his fault. I dedicate the first book of this trilogy to this broken man. I watched as he evolved from a man to fear into a man to love. His unyielding effort and ultimate triumph over alcoholism made it possible for those he had hurt to forgive and deeply love him. I have seen the best and worst that men have to offer on personal, spiritual, academic, and business levels, and still, I believe in all of you. I know the humanity, compassion, love, and leadership you are all capable of. My greatest fear is that I will witness the men of our generation laid to waste and stuck on past versions of themselves.

Heart, Mind, and Soul

You want direction, meaning, and purpose to light your heart, mind, and soul. The precarious command-and-control reality has perverted masculinity into an anticreative force of self-destruction. While this path rewards some with temporary status, money, power, entitlement, and extravagance, it comes with a permanent price of pain, suffering, and death.

Significant numbers of mature, American men feel fragmented, disconnected, and out of sync. Many require compassion and healing. They find little relief in the twenty-first century social reckoning. Men are scoffed, persecuted, and shamed for behaviors that once were considered normal and in some cases were admired. Society has now decided to encourage men to question and resist the sociocultural norms inconsistent with life’s direction, meaning, and purpose and punish those who have blindly followed its lead. The need to control has kept many men from evolving spiritually and emotionally. When one person is unwilling to grow, it affects everyone around him.

I was hardly a stranger to spiritual, extrasensory, and paranormal phenomena. I have had my share of extraordinary, inspiring, and insightful otherworldly encounters. Among the most significant was an out-of-body dream experience that occurred about thirty years ago. I received a clear message from my grandfather, a divinely masculine man spirit, that, First, I must evolve. I tried to follow him across the space-time divide but was unable to.

After twenty years, I longed to be in the spirit again. I had given up hope that it could happen again on its own. I was determined to make it happen again, and I dedicated myself to daily spiritual practice for as long as it took. It turned out the magic number was four years.

My morning routine began at 5:00 a.m. and ended at 7:00 a.m. I unknowingly learned to expand my consciousness to receive, translate, and transcribe knowledge and wisdom from the annals in the earth and stars called the Akashic records. Although I had no prior exposure to yoga or Indian philosophy, I became aware of it from reading these mystical records.

One day when I was meditating, I felt a tap on my head. My consciousness widened like a body of water does when a pebble falls into it. The Indian national hero and sage Sri Aurobindo entered my consciousness. I did not know who he was but later identified him on the internet. I asked a coworker from India and discovered that his life works furthered an advanced theory and practice for conscious evolution. Determined to learn more, I committed the next six years to academic study to develop and apply doctoral-level research to my ideas on leadership, spiritual pragmatism, and self-actualization as a conscious evolution strategy. Much of what I discovered is the foundation of this book and trilogy.

Collaboration and Commitment

I wrote the Perfect World trilogy in homage to the exceptional men I have known, loved, and worked with. Years of time, energy, and resources have contributed to the integrity and quality of this book. I selected a group of men to provide their views on the content’s recency and relevance. Demographically, the men were a diverse group, aged forty-nine to sixty. All lived in the continental United States. These characteristics were the minimum required to participate. The ultimate decision to select a man for the team was his enthusiasm and readiness to embrace the concept of intentional evolution. Together, we created a roadmap for men to self-assess, self-instruct, and self-direct lives of abundance, reach, and impact.

I expect that you have many things in common with the men who contributed to this book. Like them, I invite you to offer appreciation and gratitude to the twentieth-century versions of yourself as you bid him farewell. The twenty-first century is here, and the time is now to awaken the divine masculine and welcome him into the waiting world. The shadow aspects of masculinity have been elevated and normalized over centuries and have become socially conditioned as appropriate male behavior. These preconceived notions no longer serve men, humanity, or the planet. They limit everyone’s capacity for evolution and growth. Be admired for centuries to come for the effort and commitment you are making now.

The Plan

In a Perfect World: Man in Relationship with Self is a twenty-first century conscious evolution