What is now, has not always been so. Time brings change.

Change is inevitable.

And perhaps at no other time in the history (or pre-history) of mankind has the process of change been as pronounced as it is now. That process is accelerating. It’s not slowing down.

Our parents were born into a world where a phone was a big old thing, fixed to a wall with a round dial and a single function. And their parents were familiar with the device.

Today we have smart phones with touch screens that’ll do just about anything, including accessing the Internet, a vast web of information, so intricate and so versatile, our parents have a difficult time imagining what exactly it is.

In fact, no one can be absolutely certain what it is. Or where its limits are.

If indeed this vast network has any limits at all…

What limits?

Consider the vast expanse of the universe.

We just don’t know. We are only beginning to scratch the surface. We can no longer clearly define boundaries. Through our telescopes and other instruments we have observed more than we’ve ever dreamed was possible. And we have observed but a fraction of what’s really there.

And this is our challenge now. Time has brought the changes that were necessary for us to learn how little we really know.

Will we learn that lesson? Will we learn to let go of pre-conceived ideas, will we learn to truly start learning, or will we hang on to our world of established norms?

Because the world in its current state is still a world of establishment.

While, in reality, this world, this universe, is emergent.

Like life itself, the universe has never been established as necessarily existing in any particular form. It continually re-emerges into new forms. There’s absolutely no reason to believe that the sun will rise the same way tomorrow just because it has done so countless times before. We do so simply as a matter of convention. But it is not a fact.

The fact is, change is all we can be certain of. And some day in the distant future, the sun will not rise the same way it did yesterday.

Nothing is established except that which will change. This is how the universe works. It’s just that our current perspective is too limited to appreciate this epic truth.

And because of that limited perspective we’ve created a world-view that is contrary to reality.

Our society has never welcomed new truths or new understandings. Take the infamous example of Galileo, who was endlessly harassed for suggesting that the Earth was not the centre of God’s universe.

And even today, science, the supposedly hallowed domain of new discoveries, has been usurped by the human tendency to cling to established norms. So much so, that new and strange-sounding ideas are simply dismissed, without even the slightest effort to investigate.

Those people who suggest that the cosmos is saturated by an intelligent energy, that the universe might be a living entity, are simply dismissed as crackpots, or worse, as heretics.

So what if an idea sounds crazy? All great truths sounded crazy at first. And evidently we haven’t quite learned our lesson yet. Because everyday people are being ridiculed for talking about strange things.

Two decades ago astronomers doubted that they would ever find many planets orbiting around other stars. It was thought that our solar system was somehow special. Planets were thought to be a rare occurrence that happened here and perhaps only in very few other places. And this was all based on our limited perspective.

While in reality, without being aware of it, we are limitless.

In the last twenty years alone, hundreds, if not thousands of planets have been found outside this solar system. Planets have been discovered to be quite a common occurrence. Some planets have even been likened to earth.

And history is littered with examples for us to learn from. In 1895 Lord Kelvin, a highly respected scientist and president of the Royal Society said that “Heavier–than–air flying machines are impossible.” Less than ten years later he was proven wrong.

When will we learn not to accept what we now know as the ultimate truth? When will we learn to truly start learning? When will we widen our perspective to include the limitless?

When?

Many things need to happen.

We will need to step into the church of inner space. We will need to re-examine every aspect of our culture. We will need to stop taking things for granted. We will need to stop relying on the way things were.

We’ll need to abandon our education systems and adopt systems of learning.

The very concept of a modern ‘education’ implies that the process can be completed. We’re teaching our children that one day they will reach a point where they will be ‘educated’ and they will have the right to say “Now I know. No-one else can tell me anything new.”

While nothing could be further from the truth.

Those that consider themselves ‘learned’ will struggle with the coming changes.

As history has clearly illustrated, time and time again, the only thing we can be absolutely certain of is that we can be certain of absolutely nothing. The future will bring change. Change truly is the only constant.

Which is why the future belongs to the learners. Not the learned. The future belongs to those that are open to new information. Those who welcome the unknown. Those that are not limited by their own ideas.

Those who believe that they’ve learnt all there is to know live in the past. They will point to what has already been and say that because it has always been so it will always be so. They are experts in something that is fading away.

Because, without the past who are they?

The unknown. And that is a truth that very few of us can handle. Without limits we struggle to define ourselves. And without definition we’re afraid of being nothing.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Without limits we are everything.

The number of minds in the universe is one. That’s the emergent truth changing our world.

We are all part of one mind. We are God’s mind. The deer and the hunter, the atom and the galaxy, the sunlight and the leaf, the Muslim, the Christian and the Atheist. We are all that intelligent energy that permeates everything. Limitless.

We are so vast in our true nature that we cannot truly ‘know’ who we are. Not unless by knowing we mean to say that we are constantly learning.

And this is beyond frightening to a culture of educated people who rely on borders for control, definition and purpose.

It’s unbelievable. It’s frightening. And that’s why the learned will ridicule the idea for as long as they still feel superior enough to do so. But the reality is that they are up against forces beyond their control.

Changes are inevitable.

And we are now entering the highly accelerated stages of this process of transformation in the human perspective.

Those who think they know everything that there is to know, will resist change for as long as possible. They will try to convince others into believing what they believe, they will make them feel inferior, or they will ridicule those that don’t. It gives them a momentary feeling of superiority, strengthening their belief that they really do know what is what. But the effect is temporary. And the faster things change the more desperate they will become. Until they let go of knowing, and start learning.

Learners will adapt. Learners will help one another. Learners will create a brighter future for mankind.

Humbly. Without fanfare or a need for recognition.

Because true learning brings with it humility. The more we truly learn, the more we realise how little we really know. The less we know, the more we learn. And by learning we improve the world. We make this a better place to live, not by repeating the mistakes of yesterday, but by learning from those mistakes.

The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. – Albert Einstein

The future belongs to the learners, not the learned. To those that want to know, not to those that think they do know.

Know this: In a universe that is vast beyond our wildest imagination, we can never truly know anything. We can do no more than observe and learn.