In the movie, “Barbie,” we enter a world that seems like a paradise – and a pink paradise at that. Every day is perfect. Everyone is happy. All the houses are open, there are no windows and doors, so obviously the weather is always perfect. It’s also apparent that even though every Barbie and Ken (and even the Allans) have fabulous wardrobes, they’re not shy about changing those clothes in homes everyone can look straight through.
In Barbie’s world there are parties all the time. Everyone is friendly, optimistic, and cheerful. It’s such a paradise, that apparently no one has to actually eat any food, even though they go through the motions of making a breakfast that consists of hard plastic waffles and empty coffee pots. In short, this place may have the physical trappings of the world we’re used to, but with different rules. Nobody ages, nobody gets too fat or too thin … and the women are apparently in charge here. What could be better? Oh, maybe the fact that no one dies.
One day, though, while the Barbies are enjoying one of their ongoing parties, Barbie has a thought she’s never had before and asks her friends: “Do you guys ever think about dying?”
This one question plunges her into a journey to the real world, where she discovers all the things Barbie-world is missing, including real food, depression, confusion, evil, and yes, death. In the end, Barbie realizes she wants to leave paradise to fully experience being human.
Why in the world would anyone do that? It appears that Barbie has made a choice to devolve – to leave paradise and enter into a hellish landscape of human experience. What if, though, it wasn’t her choice? What if we live in a world that is ever-changing – moving from a paradisical one into more and more states of de-evolution?
What if, after reaching a state of total de-evolution, we emerge upward into a progression of more and more enlightened ages until we find ourselves once again in that paradise?
This idea – that we devolve from a paradisical world to a fully de-evolved world, and back into fresh periods of evolution, finally returning to that paradise – describes an ancient tradition from India called “the yugas” or “the ages.” Sri Yukteswar expounded on this idea in his 1894 book “The Holy Science.” In this system, there are four yugas or ages that either descend or ascend depending on where our galaxy is in relation to the center of the universe. This is a very involved part of the story, so I’ll just say, when we are closer to the universe’s center, we’re in a more advanced state of consciousness, and as we orbit away from that center, our collective consciousness devolves.
There are four yugas that descend and ascend – Kali Yuga, which is our lowest point of consciousness, Dwapara Yuga (the time of energy – which is where we are now on the ascending side of the yugas), then Treta (the mental age), and Satya (the age of consciousness). One cycle of the yugas – both descending then ascending – takes 24,000 years to complete.
The cycle of the yugas isn’t unique. Other cultures and traditions have split our existence into ages. The Greeks talked of the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages. Norse mythology describes an age of peace, an age of the development of social orders, an age of increasing violence, and a degraded age of cruel winters and moral chaos ending in Ragnarok – the end of the world after which paradise is restored. The Celts, the Hopi Indians and the Zoroastrians also had similar divisions of four to explain the ages.
According to this cycle, however, we are currently in an age of ascending Dwapara Yuga, which began around the year 1700 as we emerged from Kali Yuga, which began around 500 A.D. Kali Yuga was our lowest point of consciousness, where all we were interested in was the material world. Life was short and brutish, and times were violent and cruel.
If we look around our world today, we might think we haven’t come that far. Despots are on the rise in many countries. In the US, many see this next election as a last-ditch effort to save our representative democracy as one candidate represents our traditional way of doing government and the other promises to be a dictator on “day one.”
We are right to be nervous about the future. Lives hang in balance. We are all affected tomorrow by the decisions we make today. No pressure.
It’s not just governments that cause us heartburn, but there’s a true burn going on within our climate as the waters warm, the polar ice caps melt, and summers – as well as winters – become hotter and hotter. There may well be areas of the world that are uninhabitable as the years go by, swallowed by oceans, or turned into scorching deserts. It’s a picture that tempts us toward depression, toward loathing of our fellow humans and perhaps a desire to give up any effort to make changes for the better.
This morning, though, I’m here to tell you that like Barbie before the thought of death occurred to her, I am optimistic, not just about our personal futures, but the future of humankind in general. Why? Well, as the booming voice in the movie trailers say: “Imagine a world …”
In this moment, I want you to imagine a world where we have moved on from greedy self-interest that seeks to feather its own nest without regard to how our actions to get more for ourselves affects the welfare of others – be they human, animal, plant, or mineral. Imagine a world where we understand that while we appear to live in a place filled with matter, what underlies that matter is energy – a life force that flows through everything. Whatever seems solid is really moving with that life force whether it’s a table, a Tesla, or our toes.
Imagine a world where, when we understand the nature of this ever-moving life force, we can learn how to control it to heal disease, end wars, feed everyone on the planet and raise everyone to a level of prosperity that seems unimaginable at this moment.
We can imagine this world quite easily when we adjust our thinking about history away from a linear timeline that began with “primitive, skin-wearing spear-throwers, to anxious, clothes-wearing car drivers.” (Selbie & Steimetz p. 140) A better way to think about our evolution is to look at it through the lens of the yugas. Humanity does not move in one straight line upward toward perfection. Instead, we move in a circle – ascending and descending in consciousness as we move toward or away from that center – the lifeforce of our being. This movement is explained by the yugas.
As I mentioned, we are now in an ascending age – Dwapara Yuga – which means we are in the age of energy. In Kali Yuga, all we understood was the material world, but now we understand that underlying all matter is energy. Everything is made of energy – I’m made of atoms, you’re made of atoms, so is the Sun, the Stars, the Moon, even everything that seems solid. Every table is just made of very slow-moving energy.
There was a time in history when we could not imagine this world that we live in now. The internet, cell phones, television, radio, airplanes, men on the moon, artificial intelligence, these are impossibilities to those before us in Kali Yuga. Even now, given all of our technology, we can hardly imagine a world of Treta of Satya Yuga that might bring about new realities of telepathy or teleportation, or perhaps Barbie’s paradise. Right now, we’re simply struggling to imagine a world where everyone is fed, clothed, and housed and climate change or political unrest isn’t threatening our very existence.
I’m optimistic, though, because, if the yugas are correct, we are in a time where not just the individual consciousness, but the collective consciousness of the world is ascending. We are still being pulled back by those under the influence of Kali Yuga’s material focus. There remain those who are greedy for material possession and power and they are holding back our ascension but hear the good news today – they will not prevail.
As we begin to move further into Dwapara Yuga, we will learn how to focus our energy to create a better, more compassionate, and equitable world. Sri Yukteswar’s formula for this age is “self-interest x awakened intellect x energy awareness” – which means that greedy self-interest will eventually give way to a more enlightened self-interest and our energies will be directed toward one another instead of finding ways to simply enrich ourselves.
What makes me hopeful is that we have the power to hasten that enlightened self-interest by using our awakened intellect and energy awareness. As A Course in Miracles, reminds us – we are the light of the world. That is our function. That is why we are spirit incarnated in this world. As that light, we have the power speed up this ascension.
Asha Namaswari, a teacher and disciple of Yogananda reminds us: “We must never underestimate our power because this world is really consciousness. “The power of the light is the future. Darkness and confusion, even though it still has a grip, is the past. Our job is to build that future. It starts within us.
It’s for us to understand our own divinity – and once we understand our own divinity to see it shining in each other’s eyes. Then we become the instrument of Divine Mother. We become the comforter.”
As authors Joseph Selbie and David Steinmetz write in their book on the Yugas: “Our enlightened future is certain, but our path to it is not.”
We do, of course, have the power to destroy the world – and we have seen that climate change and pandemics have a way of shaping our collective destiny as well. We have seen how greedy and power-hungry people can bring despair, destruction, and discrimination into the world. But Selbie and Steinmetz encourage us not to be overwhelmed by the chaos of the world. Instead, the state of the world makes it all the more urgent for those of us who can see our collective power to bring the world into a higher consciousness be about our imperative work.
Even Barbie understood this as she says in the movie: “I want to be a part of the people that make meaning. Not the thing that’s made. I want to do the imagining. I don’t want to be the idea.”
How do we become part of the people making meaning? We study, we learn all we can about the present age we’re living in. Dwapara Yuga is a time of great learning. Our science and technology are growing at a rapid pace. There is still plenty of peril, but the more we understand that we are in a period of ascension, the more optimistic we’ll become about our role in saving this world.
Then we put that knowledge into practice. We can do that in an outward manner. We can protest, write, and lobby our lawmakers, vote for those who seem to want to move humankind forward toward equity, love, peace, unity, and compassion. The most important thing we can do, though, is to go within. We cannot produce a world filled with peace, joy, love, and compassion if all we find within ourselves is war, depression, hatred, division, and indifference.
Going within and creating a world in our heart and mind that is peaceful, joyful, loving, and compassionate will create that world outside of ourselves. This is the power of the lifeforce energy of Dwapara Yuga humans.
To move us toward higher consciousness, we use our lifeforce, our divine and universal energy to develop our own higher consciousness. We do this through meditation, mainly, but also through study, prayer, gathering with others of like mind and spirit to uplift ourselves and magnify our power. We do this through supporting others who are walking this path with us.
We also do this by reaching out to those who we may consider “other” and challenging ourselves to see who they truly are. They, too, are the light of the world, they are just not conscious of their power, yet. Once we can see the light within even those we consider as doing evil in this world, we will take a giant leap in bringing about that higher consciousness that moves all of us upward.
Imagine a world, my friends, not when every one of us reaches this place, but when just enough of us do. Because all we need is to create that tipping point where the lower consciousness of Kali Yuga is finally forgotten, and nothing can stop our ascent back to Barbie’s paradise.
You can call me delusional, or a Pollyanna if you wish, but if you remember the ending of Pollyanna, she is hit by a car and is unable to walk. When her spirits flag because of her new disability, all the townspeople rally to her side, because her optimism and encouragement changed their lives. In the end, Pollyanna is restored to health. This is how our spiritual work grows. Even if we begin to lose hope, we gather a community around us that will lift us up and remind us that we are on the upward swing. This is how we are the light of the world.
Some days, like Pollyanna, my optimism flags. I am concerned about the coming election cycle and what might happen, no matter whether I like or dislike the outcome. I worry about laws that have stripped away the rights of women, transgender people, and others. I worry that things will get worse before it gets better. And it might. But here’s the good news … it WILL get better. We may have to reincarnate again further up the ascension to see it, but this world is irreversibly headed toward universal enlightenment.
We have a choice. We can either hinder that enlightenment or hasten it.
If you want to hasten that enlightenment, then I invite you to join me in shining your divine light into this world. Go inside, cultivate that world of peace, love, joy, unity, and compassion. Then, when you do act in this world it will have so much power that it will uplift the whole of humanity. Remember, this is a matter of when, not if, because “our enlightened future is certain.”
So, I invite you to imagine that paradisical world to which we are ascending and know, at your core, that you can speed up its arrival. Today and every day, channel your inner Barbie and be determined to be “part of the people that make meaning, not the thing that’s being made.” We are called to do the imagining, to be the light of the world that leads us all into an age of love, joy, compassion, unity, and peace. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, we may not physically see that promised land of Barbie’s pink paradise, but just knowing that its arrival is inevitable, then it becomes all the more urgent for us to be the ones who are actively working to bend that arc of history toward justice.
And that will make the whole world say, “Oh, Yeah!”
Read more of my work over at The Motley Mystic Substack.
Music for the Journey:
Indigo Girls – “Closer to Fine”
Candace Chellew is the founder of Motley Mystic as well as Jubilee! Circle, an interfaith spiritual community in Columbia, S.C. She is also the author of Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians published in 2008 by Jossey-Bass and the founder and senior editor emeritus of Whosoever: An Online Magazine for LGBTQ People of Faith. She is also a musician and avid animal lover.