Raising our consciousness:

by Sister Carolyn Law


In April I completed training for certification in Brain Integration Technique. I asked Susan McCrossin, the developer and trainer for this healing method, how she was led to her teacher, applied physiologist Richard Utt. Susan related that in the mid-1980’s, while working for a computer software company, she took many personal growth courses and workshops. She decided that her life’s goal was to help raise the consciousness of the planet. Furthermore, she would do this by working on herself in order to be a good influence on others and, thirdly and practically, she wanted to work in alternative healing. Within months she was on the path and within a year she was working full time on her dream.

To raise the consciousness of the planet is a lofty goal. We might be more familiar and more comfortable with the phrase “To make the world a better place.” This is indeed what we as Franciscans do in our small ways throughout our ordinary days—step by step, stone by stone, through kind words and kind gestures. Hopefully, we are all working on our dream and on a dream that contributes to making the world a better place.

Bill Plotkin, in his book “Nature And The Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness And Community In A Fragmented World”, writes about his dream of raising the consciousness of the human community. He proposes that our society and culture is egocentric and “adolescent” and that what we need to do is move into an eco-soul-centric culture. By eco-soul-centric, he means living out of our true inner depths and in deep harmony with the Earth. The book is an unfolding of this theme.

While I have only begun to digest his ideas, I am sure that St. Francis and St. Clare lived out their true soul-calling in deep harmony with the Earth. They have inspired us for 8 centuries with their radical adherence to Gospel values and to the profound joy in the love of God for us, God’s human and non-human creatures.

May we each know our soul’s calling. I pray that each of us, step by step, stone by stone, kind deed by kind deed, is unfolding into our soul’s essence. The world community is better for the soul and spirit we bring to it.