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Man's view of the universe
is a reflection of man's view of himself. As a toddler, you were the
center of the world. Then you grew up to discover (with surprise) that
the world does not revolve around you. Some, of course, get arrested in
the pre-Copernican age and view of the world.
In people's perception, the Earth was the center of the Universe until Copernicus developed his heliocentric model with the Sun at its center. Galileo
improved the telescope, observed Jupiter and the Milky Way and
described celestial movements that were contrary to the Church's
doctrines and hinted at an even bigger Universe. He was tried by the
Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy" and spent the rest of
his life under house arrest. Luckily, discovering a new scientific
paradigm today is not likely to land you in house arrest, although you
should not be surprised to face a mountain of resistance and derision at
first. The even greater risk we face today is that we hold ourselves
back - we put ourselves under house arrest by refusing to embrace a new map of the world.
In 1922, using the best telescope of his time, Edwin Hubble
observed the Andromeda Nebula and realized it was much too distant to
be part of the Milky Way and was, in fact, an entire galaxy outside our
own. Hubble's findings fundamentally changed the scientific view of the
Universe. While most ancient cultures held the concept of a flat Earth, Pythagoras realized in the 6th century BC that the Earth was not flat but spherical. Copernicus
placed the Sun, not the Earth, at the center of the Universe. And with
Hubble's discovery, the Universe grew beyond the Milky Way galaxy.
A Shocking Discovery
The Big Bang theory was
initially proposed in 1927, though it would only get its name, the Big
Bang, 22 years later. During 1929, the year of the big market crash
which ushered in the Great Depression, Hubble observed that the distance
between galaxy clusters was increasing. Not only was the Universe
bigger than our local galaxy, it was expanding as a consequence of the
Big Bang about 14 billion years earlier. For several decades, the
reigning paradigm was that the Universe had expanded but was now slowing
down. Leading thinkers believed the Universe had to decelerate as it
cooled down from its initial heated explosion. When scientists set out
to measure the rate of deceleration they were stunned. To their
amazement and horror, Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess
led teams that discovered in 1998 that the expansion of the Universe
was not decelerating but was in fact accelerating. This discovery shook
and shattered the foundations of cosmology and physics yet again and
captured the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for the three scientists.
Acceleration of Universal
expansion means the Universe is pumping extra space between celestial
bodies at an accelerated rate. Imagine looking out your window and the
houses next to yours are getting farther and farther away at an
accelerating speed. That's what's happening to celestial bodies and
galaxies when they "look" at each other through their windows. They are
being pushed farther and farther apart at a faster and faster rate. The
discovery was astounding and required scientists to rethink their
models. The shift to a universe that accelerates its expansion required
the same rethinking of everything that the shift from a geocentric to a
heliocentric system required. The discovery produced a new set of
questions: What is causing this acceleration? What is the Universal
expansion accelerating into? What will happen as expansion continues to
speed up and acceleration continues to accelerate?
As Above, So Below
Scientists now believe the
acceleration is caused by dark energy. But no one knows what this dark
energy is or where it comes from. Mathematical formulas suggest that
dark energy constitutes about three-quarters of the Universe. This means
we are only scratching the surface of understanding the nature and
make-up of the Universe. For all we know, dark energy could be contained
in another invisible dimension or series of dimensions-a universe
within a universe or series of universes invisibly hiding inside each
other like the Russian Babushka dolls.
Here is the game-changing
question: If "as above, so below," meaning you and I are a mirror
reflection of the Universe, is the implication therefore that each of our universes also contains huge invisible energies and potential?
Possibly you too are a
universe within a universe, with three-quarters of your potential as yet
invisible and unrealized. Okay, it's a little hard to wrap or bend your
mind around this idea, but here is a way to begin to explore and come
inside yet another paradigm shift.
Pulled by a Future State
Every few years along your
journey from childhood to adulthood and then through your professional
career you get to a point where you look around one day and the world
seems different. Your view of it has changed. Like your first day in
high-school, or the first time you left home, or when you got your first
job, or when you became a parent, and so on.
Then there are other, more
subtle changes, not triggered by external events, when your perspective
simply shifts. You wonder whether something around you has
changed, or if you've changed to be able to see what was always there
but has only revealed itself to you now.
Throughout the ages humans
embraced new understandings of the universe and of life. In a similar
way, we continue to evolve our map of the world and of ourselves through
our personal journey. But not only the map evolves. At the same time,
we now know, the Universe accelerates by some invisible dark energy that
we are not yet able to detect or pinpoint. Isn't that exhilarating? The
implication is the Universe is moving towards its future state in an increasingly faster way.
Now, how will you
internalize this idea? How can you and I accelerate towards our future?
What would be a way to live an accelerating-universe-like life?
How will your life look when you are universe-like, accelerating towards
your future state?
It sounds wacky but come
along with me for this mind-bending exploration. Imagine a life where
the gravitational pull of tomorrow is greater than that of yesterday.
You get up in the morning and define yourself more by what you are becoming today and next month than by who and what you were last year. Do you realize the transformative power of living into your future, free of the gravitational pull of your past?
Every major breakthrough and
innovation in technology, medicine and design was made possible by
people who did just that-they leaned into the future by harnessing the
power of an accelerated universe. Walt Disney and Steve Jobs operated in
and created an accelerated universe to transform the world. The Wheels of Innovation accelerated our universe. The world and your
experience in it were significantly accelerated with the explosion of
the Internet. Curiously, the discovery of the accelerating Universe
coincided with the advent of the Internet. We were learning to tap the
invisible power of cyberspace at the same time that we discovered the
Universe was filled with invisible "dark energy." Here again, our
experience was a mirror image of our view of the Universe.
Accelerating Your Universe
Imagine this invisible
energy is agenda free. It can be released into creativity and
destruction. The destructive and creative cycles are intertwined. Rapid
technological innovation created new businesses and quickly destroyed
others. New modes of communication enabled new social phenomena and
disrupted powerful regimes. The Facebook and Twitter revolutions
engulfed the Arab world and empowered emergent movements throughout the
globe. They all represent the nature of an accelerating universe,
appearing from seemingly nowhere and quickly gathering energy and
momentum to surprise all people involved.
What about you? What
invisible energy powers you? What is the gravitational pull that drives
your world? Your universe accelerates when you put action over
perfection; live in the moment, free of the good opinions of others;
forgive quickly, and dare to imagine what can be and act on your beliefs
with conviction.
Your universe can accelerate
in ways that will surprise you and everybody else. Let me very briefly
point a few examples of what becomes possible as you practice living
into your accelerated universe. Each of these needs a couple of
workshops to bring to life and concretize the practices and strategies
involved:
- Transformation - You can decide to transform and let go of old habits instantly. You have the power to cause accelerated transformation.
- Forgiveness - You can choose to reconcile and forgive instantly, which brings an amazing acceleration to your endeavors.
- Problem Solving
- We all have the capacity to solve intractable, complex problems. This
requires that like the accelerating Universe, the power that propels
you to a future state is greater by an order of magnitude than the power
that compels the old or ancient state.
- Collaboration
- We can dramatically accelerate the collaborative journey from
ideation to the creation of results that produce value and meaning.
- Growing young
- This is the significance of this paradigm shift and where it gets a
little more difficult to grasp. Imagine that while you grow old, another
part of you is growing young. Living into an accelerated future means
you are growing young, not in chronological terms, but in how your
potential and ability to create an impact continues to exponentially
grow. You need to meditate on this for a day to begin to grasp how this
opens up your creative and leadership potential.
Universe-like Person
To become Universe-like and
accelerate with your invisible energy potential, you need to agree to
move forward even though three-quarters of the future is unknown. This
is the situation we are in. The difference proposed here is to embrace
the future's dynamic opportunity for you in the way you lead your
professional and personal pursuits. Once you embrace this new paradigm
and way of looking at the world, just about everything gets redefined,
including the meaning of work, creativity and innovation. The essence of
work, creativity and innovation is to concretize the invisible, to
bring out of darkness into light, to turn invisible energy into manifest
actuality.
Now it's your turn. Turn the
Key. Engage the potential of your accelerating Universe. Imagine the
impossible becoming possible and the difficult turning elegant and
graceful. That's what Steve Jobs showed us. Encourage the people around
you into renewal. Allow yourself and others to be made anew in a new
day. Live into and create new transformative futures.
© Aviv Shahar
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