Life Supportiveness

Being life supportive means aligning one’s intentions, thoughts, priorities, and actions to live ecologically (i.e. without negatively affecting other people and things around oneself) in one’s family, community, environment, and ultimately on our planet; being dedicated to the well-being of the world through the re-invention of oneself and the expansion of one’s own consciousness.

The concept of life supportiveness is not just confined to protecting and revitalising the environment, but is also deeply connected to our humanity and spirituality. Being life supportive implies re-establishing one’s connection to the world, not only to other human beings, but also to animals, the environment, and natural resources.

The term originally comes from the field of medicine, where the expression “life support” “applies to any therapy used to sustain a patient’s life while they are critically ill or injured, as part of intensive-care medicine.” Similarly to the therapy and machines in medicine that support and sustain a patient’s life, one’s life-supportive practices and lifestyle sustain and support all forms of life on Earth.

The Importance of Being Life Supportive and the Power of Individuals

Being life supportive raises one’s level of consciousness. As everything in the Universe is connected (based on the concepts of nonlocality and quantum entanglement in physics), when this happens, the quality of consciousness of the collective is raised. The more one raises and expands one’s own consciousness, the more one can influence the collective.

This idea is based on the well researched and tested theory of “tipping points”, thoroughly covered in the book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference , by journalist Malcolm Gladwell. The author defines a tipping point as “the moment of critical mass, the threshold,” and explains how “ideas, products, and messages spread like viruses do.”

The author based his theory on the 1967 “ Small-world Experiment,” by social psychologist Stanley Milgram, who instructed 160 students in Nebraska to send letters to a stockbroker in Boston (whom they didn’t know personally) by passing the letters to people they believed close to the target. According to the study, it took an average of six links to deliver each letter. Gladwell was particularly interested in the fact that just three friends of the stockbroker provided the final link for half of the letters that arrived successfully. This led to Gladwell’s theory that certain types of people are key to the dissemination of information, and this is one of the essential elements for a tipping point to occur; the author calls it “The Law of the Few.”

The theory was tested on real life trends that went viral and global, which were initiated by a handful of people who did little things in the right context (e.g. the tremendous rise in popularity of the Hush Puppies shoes in the 1990’s, or the great drop in the New York City crime rate after 1990).

The same principle applies to the context of life supportiveness. When more and more people start exhibiting higher levels of consciousness in their daily lives, they have the power to influence and reach out to more people still, and this ultimately brings forth an era of peace, cooperation, and sustainable growth, where humans have a deeper and more meaningful sense of connection to everything in the world and they can evolve ecologically with animals, plants, and the environment. In other words, being life supportive ensures humanity’s upward evolution. And the current global context is propitious for a tipping point to occur, given the multi-systems crises humanity is facing at this moment in time.

Living Life-Supportively

Life supportiveness is an individually-driven movement to promote a global transformation. It entails embracing a new living paradigm that supports life on Earth. This naturally implies an individual and collective shift from the way man is living today through a re-contextualisation of the current worldview and a re-prioritisation of values in life. It involves a redefinition of success and happiness, which includes altering one’s daily priorities and focus. In other words, life supportiveness branches out into all aspects of one’s existence.

Such radical change is only achievable when one starts with inner transformation; once the world within is changed, this will be reflected in the outer world, in one’s behaviours, actions, and overall way of life.

Understanding that man lives in a systemic world where nothing is separated nor functions without affecting other systems is essential for being life supportive; it reminds one to create a plan to pace and lead oneself into a new living paradigm and, most importantly, to sustain the desired change.

Daily Life-Supportive Actions

The book Choices of Now presents several actions that one can take on a daily basis in order to be life supportive.

• Living in a way that focuses on preserving and nurturing living things—loved ones, pets, plants, nature—rather than non-living things. Shifting one’s priorities away from objects and making time for living things daily.
• Practicing meditation on a daily basis and bringing the positive feelings that arise from these practices into one’s daily routine.
• Paying attention to one’s thoughts and emotions about the world and people—being compassionate and caring.
• Adopting a plant-based diet and sustaining it. It promotes health, reduces the impact of healthcare on society and economy, reduces greenhouse gases, protects biodiversity, and promotes humanity and spirituality.
• Putting one’s relationships, health and personal enrichment at the centre of one’s life; moving away from a hectic work-focused existence.
• Reducing water, electricity, and petrol consumption—this lowers water tables and one’s carbon footprint.
• Buying ecologically; moving away from buying things one wants—clothing, accessories, electronics, phones, computers, goods that promote status—; buying only what one needs;  -buying from companies that sell products and services that are aligned to eco-humanitarian principles.
• Working with / supporting organisations, individuals, and groups that help victims of natural disasters, poverty and diseases, war and terrorism; helping governments and non-governmental groups to develop and implement new social, economic and environmental policies that promote life-supportive programmes and activities.
• Putting meaning back into one’s life and defining one’s life’s purpose; what one dedicates one’s life to has a profound impact on the way one leads one’s life and ultimately shapes the collective civilisation, the environment, and people’s evolution.

Life supportiveness and consciousness

David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D., in his book Power vs Force, The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior, approaches the subject of life supportiveness from the perspective of human attitudes and emotions which are directly linked to the individual and collective consciousness. Dr. Hawkins based his work (1965 to 1994) on the science of kinesiology, on discoveries in advanced theoretical physics and the nonlinear dynamics of chaos theory.

Kinesiology, or muscle testing, first gained scientific attention from the work of Dr. George Goodheart, who found that benign physical stimuli such as beneficial vitamin and mineral supplements would increase the strength of certain indicator muscles, whereas hostile stimuli would cause those muscles to suddenly weaken.

In the late 1970s, Dr. John Diamond refined this specialty into Behavioural Kinesiology where indicator muscles would strengthen or weaken in the presence of positive or negative physical, emotional and intellectual stimuli.

Dr. Hawkins’ research took Dr. Diamond’s technique further, by discovering that this kinesiologic response conveys man’s capacity to differentiate not only positive from negative stimuli, but also anabolic (life enhancing, or life supportive) from catabolic (life consuming) and  truth from falsity.

Dr Hawkins came to the conclusion that “the individual human mind is like a computer terminal connected to a giant database. The database is human consciousness itself, of which our own consciousness is merely an individual expression, but with its roots in the common consciousness of all mankind.” This information allowed the author–through millions of kinesiologic calibrations on people from all walks of life–to analyse the full spectrum of the levels of human consciousness “Calibrated levels […] represent powerful attractor fields within the domain of consciousness itself, that dominate human existence, […] define content, meaning and value, and serve as organizing energies for widespread patterns of human behavior.”

Dr. Hawkins developed a Map of Consciousness, which is a numerical scale whereby one can measure life supportive from life consuming, positive from negative, power from force and truth from falsehood. Dr. Hawkins believes that every word, every thought, and every intention creates a morphogenetic field, or attractor field, and that these energy fields can be measured by the process of kinesiology.

Each level of consciousness correlates with “specific processes of consciousness—emotions, perceptions or attitudes, worldviews and spiritual beliefs.” All the behaviours, attitudes, thoughts and feelings associated with levels below level 200 (courage), including Shame, Guilt/Hate, Apathy, Grief, Fear, Desire, Anger and Pride, are considered to be life consuming, or life destructive. A person with a level of consciousness above 200, will display behaviours, attitudes, thoughts and feelings which are life supportive. The levels above 200 till 1000 include Neutrality, Willingness, Acceptance, Reason, Love, Joy, Peace and Enlightenment.

Life supportiveness and spirituality

Spirituality is defined here as the quality of going outside and beyond oneself in a genuine desire to serve others and ultimately the world. It does not imply that one ought to have a religious affiliation. When one’s actions and thoughts are oriented toward bettering others’ lives and the environment and not acting solely in one’s own interest, one can be said to live in a manner that supports life.

Intentions are part of one’s spirituality; an intention is defined as a deeper desire or purpose behind a particular outcome or behaviour. It is directly linked to the values that govern how one acts in order to achieve one’s goals, therefore an intention is at a higher level than an outcome.

Intentions guide man’s daily attitudes and behaviours and therefore when one upholds life-supportive intentions, this will be reflected in the way one leads one’s life; in other words, life supportive intentions help manifest life-supportive attitudes and behaviours. It is therefore important, when one wishes to have a life-supportive existence, that one sets life supportive intentions for oneself.

According to Gregg Braden – scientist, visionary and scholar, New York Times best-selling author, former astrophysicist and geologist, internationally renowned as a pioneer in bridging science and indigenous knowledge – human beings have the capability to influence the physical reality of the world, to manifest the intentions they set at thought-level by creating a feeling in the heart that is congruent with the thought corresponding to the intention. The heart is the organ that generates the most powerful electromagnetic field in the human body (not the brain, as it was previously believed) and when one creates a certain feeling in one’s heart, that feeling influences the self-esteem and there is an effect from that that changes the electrical and magnetic field in one’s heart and that literally changes what the world is made of. Science is now showing that when one changes the field the atom is in, one really changes the atom, in other words, one alters physical reality. (The Divine Matrix, Bridging Time, Space, Miracles, and Belief, Gregg Braden)

Humans are able influence the world around them through the intentions they set (a thinking process) that are in alignment with the feelings they create in their hearts and the way they embody those intentions and feelings via the conduit of a field of energy that connects all matter in the Universe. Max Planck, the founder of quantum physics, has proved that space between matter is not empty, but full of a living, pulsating essence, which he called “the Matrix” (“All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.” Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], speech at Florence, Italy (1944).

According to Gregg Braden, it appears that this field is “a mirror between one’s inner and outer worlds, a bridge that gives one what one gives it to work with. (The Divine Matrix, 2007)” This field of consciousness has been given different names by various personalities:

-“Collective Unconscious”, by Carl Jung

-“Database of consciousness”, by Dr David Hawkins

-“The Field”, by Lynne McTaggart

-“The Matrix of all Matter”, by Max Planck

When the information from the human heart goes outside of one’s body, it enters the field of energy that connects all matter and this field mirrors one’s intentions and feelings back to one’s own self.

When the intentions one upholds are life supportive, it means that they give life, because, as explained above, humans have the capacity to alter the physical world; and by contrast, when one has intentions that are life depletive, one has the capacity to destroy or take life. For example, an intention to be compassionate and kind will be expressed through attitudes, behaviours and actions that are in line with it.

The experiment that proved that space between matter is not empty, but that everything is connected to everything else was the Quantum Entanglement experiment in Geneva, Switzerland in 1997, when scientists took single photons and split them into separate “twin” particles with identical properties. Then they fired both particles away from each other in opposite directions through specially designed fibre-optics chambers. At the end of these long pathways, the twin particles were forced to choose between two random but exactly identical routes. Without fail, in every trial the particles made precisely the same choices and traveled the same paths. This proved that the 2 particles were connected to each other energetically, which means that once matter is physically joined, even when it becomes separate, the energy still connects the parts; computer models suggest that all the particles of the universe that are now expanding were once all connected.

Life Supportiveness in Alignment with the Nature of the Universe 

According to Brian Greene, American theoretical physicist and string theorist, one of the reasons why life on Earth is possible is because Earth is at 93 million miles away from the Sun. If it were closer, the planet would be too hot for any form of life to exist and if it were farther, it would be too cold and again, no form of life would be possible. In other words, Earth is at this particular distance from the Sun because it yields conditions vital to our form of life to take hold, or our Universe has conditions hospitable for our form of life to exist; our Universe is life supportive. [You can watch the TED talk here: Why is our Universe fine-tuned for life?]

Another argument that the Universe is life supportive is that “the earth’s axis of rotation is tilted 23¹/₂ degrees relative to the perpendicular of the earth’s plane of orbit.” If the Earth had no tilt, and the axis of rotation remained perpendicular to the plane of orbit, “there would be no seasons and the surface temperature at any point on the Earth would be the same during July and January. The equatorial region of the planet would be intolerably hot all year and the poles would remain […] cold. Ice would accumulate at the poles. The weather patterns would be stationary with permanently positioned warm and cold air masses. Some areas would continually be very humid while other areas would be arid. Only the mid-latitudes would be comfortable for human habitation and suitable for cultivation. Only about one half of the presently farmable lands could grow crops.”

If Earth had double the present tilt, “temperature extremes between seasons would be much more pronounced. Even the mid-latitudes would have unbearable heat in the summer and frigid cold in the winter. Most of Europe and North America would experience very prolonged darkness in the winter and very prolonged daylight in the summer. Life on most of the earth’s surface would become intolerable.”

“The earth rotates once every 24 hours producing the interval of time called “day”. If the earth rotated more slowly, we would have more extreme day and night temperatures. Other planets have “days” which are many times that of the earth, producing scorching daytime heat followed by freezing nighttime cold. The normal daily routine of plants and animals would be impossible if the earth day were much shorter than that of the present. The 24-hour day seems to be optimum, serving to evenly heat the earth.”

[…] “The present tilt causes seasons with associated fluctuations in weather, producing a maximum amount of farmable land and pleasant seasons. The present rotation of the earth helps to uniformly heat its surface and cause winds and ocean currents.” [The Institute for Creation Research, http://www.icr.org/article/61/]

Life Supportiveness and Intentions

The concept of life supportiveness is approached by Tony Burroughs in his book The Code, 10 Intentions for a Better World. According to the author, every human being has the capacity to create that which he wants in his life by intending it, therefore the intentions that one upholds will manifest that which is expressed in the respective intentions.

The author states that one can support life by refraining from opposing or harming anyone, by allowing others to have their own experiences and by seeing life in all things and honouring it as if it were one’s own. By taking a defensive stance, one is actually creating the scene for an attack, as one’s thoughts are creating the future, and when one is opposing someone else, they are picturing that person doing something bad to them; this is a thought that is working its way into the stream of one’s daily experience. Therefore, one needs to make a choice which thought one should place one’s attention on.

Tony Burroughs claims that “The highest priority for humanity is to support life,” and since one is becoming that which one holds one’s attention upon, one “would be wise to support life” in all that one thinks and says.

Another way to support life, according to the author is to spend some quiet time alone every day. “Those who meditate daily are much less likely to become involved in conflicts; they’re calmer, less excitable and more apt to see things from a higher perspective.”

“If you really have a genuine fondness for your life and the lives of all those with whom you share this beautiful earth […]together, we can put our thoughts to their best use by envisioning (and thus beginning to create) the dawning of a new day when all people are walking on the Earth freely, when all children born here are assured of living out their natural lives to completion, where the elderly are loved and cared for and where we are all being given everything that we need. “

Yet another thing one can do to support life is to begin to think and act more globally, to align oneself with humanity as a whole instead of continuing to hold onto one’s allegiance to a particular nationality, which is just another way of dividing people.

Another thing to support life is to get outdoors more often, to take a closer look at the beauty that surrounds us and consider that every part of nature is alive; if one approaches nature with love, it will recharge them.