The Importance of an Evolutionary Worldview (Quote of the Week)
It’s important to have a spiritual path and a spiritual practice that gives us access to the infinite source of our own being as spirit. But at the same time, it’s also important to embrace a very progressive and leading-edge perspective on the evolution of culture. For example, there are individuals living in traditional cultural contexts who might be very expert meditators but when they come out of their meditative state will still uphold and advocate worldviews and perspectives that would seem extremely outdated and inappropriate in a modern and postmodern world. While meditation and spiritual practice are important in order for us to find access to spirit, it is equally if not more important to reach for an evolutionary worldview—one that will enable us to embrace the world of progress and cultural development in such a way that our spiritual enlightenment is able to carry real meaning and transformative power in our own time.
Filed Under: Consciousness • EnlightenNext Editors’ Blog • Evolutionary Enlightenment • Evolutionary Spirituality • Quote of the Week
Certainly a good quote for those of us who are spiritual in understanding culture and evolution. I very much question what you say about progress as I reckon we can’t ultimately say about such, and doing so strikes me as being another type of belief.
Hi Phil, re: ” I very much question what you say about progress as I reckon we can’t ultimately say about such, and doing so strikes me as being another type of belief.”
If I may submit, the progress would be that instead of the attempt to gain personal Enlightenment in traditional spiritual practice on the whole, the mind-shift of realizing that individual spiritual work for attaining Enlightenment is now maybe less the objective than the collective realization that humanity being interconnnected, we individuals are all parts of the Web of Life. With this 21st century realization, we are collectively rather than individualistically attempting the betterment of the world and trying to manifest the kind of future we would want for the welfare of all humanity, the environment and our future.
Frank, I think you nailed the concept that was put forward by Cohen. Similar to Wilber’s state vs. stage distinction. Yes the cognitive line includes world view, social paradigms, etc. and must be involved heavily in cultural/social change/evolution. In the below pasted-in version of a post from Integral Life, I distinguish three main modes of spirituality, and suggest that all three be acknowledged, honored, and cultivated if we are to have a form of spirituality that consistently moves us forward individually and collectively. The post also takes a stab at explaining how this 3-in-one view of spirit unfolding helps account for the difference between “horozontal enlightenment” (Wilber’s term for mastering meditation, but without translating the enlightenment into stage advance) and “vertical enlightenment” (in which, according to Wilber, you spiritally grow into higher structural stages of integration).
“soul” does state, “mind” does “world view,” etc. “love” does community/world-enacting.
Here is the meat of the post (minus the introductory comments):
The Multiple Choice Test of Faith:
“23. Faith is developed from/by:
a. love
b. peace
c. truth
d. all of the above
e. none of the above. ”
The correct answer (IMO!):
Love is not the answer.
Peace is not the answer.
Even truth is not the answer.
The answer is both d. and e., all of the above and none of the above.
Here is why:
Love God (wholeness) with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul.
Means honor/follow God with all three functions of
Seeing there (mind/truth), Getting there (heart/love), and Being there (soul/peace), but none alone nor not all three simply pasted together – only all three woven together in an integrated fashion.
Darrell
Frank, The following is an excerpt from a paper by Arthur F. Deikman in a 1973 anthology entitled The Nature of Human Consciousness: A Book of Readings, by Robert E. Ornstein. I used this excerpt as well in my (as yet unpublished) book Allsville Emerging: Creating and Experiencing a New Culture Together. The excerpt seems to really fit with what you and Cohen said.
“The crises now facing the human race are technically solvable. Controlling population, reducing pollution, and eliminating racism and war do not require new inventions. Yet these problems may prove fatally insolvable because what is required is a shift in values, in self-definition, and in world view on the part of each person – for it is the individual consciousness that is the problem. Our survival is threatened now because of our great success in manipulating our environment and acting on others. The action mode has ruled our individual lives and our national politics, and the I-It relationship that has provided the base for technical mastery is now the primary obstacle to saving our race. If, however, each person were able to feel an identity with other persons and with his environment, to see himself as part of a larger unity, he would have that sense of oneness that supports the selfless actions necessary to regulate population growth, minimize pollution, and end war. The receptive mode we have been discussing is the mode in which this identification – the I-Thou relationship – exists and it may be needed to provide the experiential base for the values and world view now needed so desperately by our society as a whole.”
Darrell
How beautiful! Spiritually informed / empowered Evolution! I would call that a higher kind of Evolution.
Hi Andrew,
I am in the evolutionary worldview course and this week’s material really brought it together for me so I get it when you say that we need to “embrace the world of progress and cultural development in such a way that our spiritual enlightenment is able to carry real meaning and transformative power..”
We need to move from reaction to conscious action in our evolution but we can only do that by awakening to what is really happening both around and within us.
Now my dream of escaping from the world to a peaceful existence in a log cabin by the lake is forever dashed..
:)
Hi Eden, re:
Basically, evolution assumes that a particular trait or activity must provide a benefit for the organism that has or does it, or the trait or activity will not persist.
I believe our outward evolutionary modifications will be less obvious but that human transformation is now more inner, psychically and psychologically, and where evolution is taking place. Tech and science are important factors in this modification.
I see that developing higher consciousness and attaining the spiritual realization that peace rather than the warrior mindset that leads to settling differences is going to obviously be crucial in human development. If we fail to evolve in this way, we will go the way of the dinosaur. Maybe in an apocalyptic cataclysm or with a long, drawn-out, unpleasant planetary decline.
I believe evolutionary consciousness is pointing out the interconnectivity of all Creation in a holistic way and to not recognize this is deterring the realization of a collective consiousness that humanity must unite in peaceful ways to better the status quo or suffer the consequences I’ve mentioned above.
Robert Kennedy’s quotes on the subject:
“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.”
“It is not enough to understand, or to see clearly. The future will be shaped in the arena of human activity, by those willing to commit their minds and their bodies to the task.”
“There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why… I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”
Keep on keeping on!
Best, FL
Hi Eden, re: “Now my dream of escaping from the world to a peaceful existence in a log cabin by the lake is forever dashed..”
Ah, you’ve gotten and taken rightly EN’s call to get engaged in the world rather than being on the sidelines!
Maintaining personal peace is also part of the deal, not to lose that if it can be helped. Being peaceful in the eye of storms is important and helpful, no?
WOW! This really is an appropriate time for this quote. I just published an article about the same thing.(http://www.evolver.net/user/mapmakers_amy_schlotterback/blog/clearing_fear_and_opening_emotional_energy_forces)
As a young, educated, driven…child of the future, I am eager for mankind’s unfolding, ever evolving creation. I have finally started to lift the blocks that were disabling my ability to dream and look ahead. This transformation in perspective, from the created to the creator – is resulting in thought turning into manifestation much quicker than ever before. I am embracing new ideas and even far-fetched concepts with Love and an open heart…and the creations of the future are therfore reaching to new heights.
Thanks for your continued guidance, Andrew.
I wonnder if traditional spirituality and that path toward Enlightenment failed to include the concept of collective connectivity except in an implied indirect way so that EnlightenNext is a recognition that connectivity, of humanity’s progression toward Enlightenment is to recognize we are in this together and must act and envision a collective effort.
EnlightenNext, by using the term “Next,” is that recognition, this is not our forebear’s “Enlightenment” but an expansion of it. The most most of us can do in our lives is to attain Spiritual Awakening that will commit us personally and collectively to the higher consciousness that will bring about a bettered humanity and planet.
Frank, A book by Werner Lange, called Social Spirituality, addresses the social branch of spirituality very well. But I think this 2004 book was self published, and possibly difficult to get hold of. Lange is a sociologist and minister who is a professor at the college my youngest son, John, attended – Edinboro University, Penn. Lange tracks the social (or as you say, connective) branch of spirituality back to the Social Gospel movement in the early 1900′s, and also cites earlier (much earlier- ancient) cosmological theologies as origins of the concept of a social spirituality. He also mention’s Mathew Fox’s Creation Spirituality (a book published in 1994) as an important thread in the narative about the social aspect of spirituality.
Here is an excerpt from Werner that I (with his permission, by email) included in my (unpublished) book Allsville Emerging:
“At the center of the social gospel is the concept and reality of the kingdom of God. Much like The Spirit itself, the kingdom of God has both an individual and a social dimension: both a material as well as nonmaterial manifestation; and both a heavenly and earthly residency. …Clearly, the kingdom of God demands fulfillment of both the physical and spiritual needs of humanity. However, it also projects not only the centrality of the spiritual, but the economic conversion of society once the spiritual is the social focus. Instead of an economy based upon the search for and maximization of private profit, the godly search is for social righteousness and its maximization. Rather than a society enriching the few at the expense of the many, there is a society that uses all of its resources to promote the common good through abolition of material poverty and elevation of spiritual wealth.”
Darrell
Sometime back I had read a quote, “Don’t be so heavenly bound, that you are no earthly good.” Seems to work well with your quote Andrew..and I agree with you, spirituality looses its significance, if we cannot hold our heads on our shoulders correctly.
Hi Prerena,
That’s a really neat quote you share. TY for ” “Don’t be so heavenly bound, that you are no earthly good.” It really underlines what Andrew has talked about with his article above.
Aloha, Frank
Prerena, Thanks for that quote. I hadn’t heard it before. Rings true to “faith without works,” etc. And does fit very well with the main theme of Andrew’s post.
Darrell
The only thing which “gives us access to the infinite source of our own being” is BEING ourselves. Can we ever be our Being if we keep running away from our center of being Here and Now through embracing future perspectives, does not matter how “very progressive and leading-edge” we call them. A perspective on the evolution of culture or whatever perspective is simply a thought, a mind product, a mind construction; though our own mind creation, hence man made, not Existence made, God made. Every kind of worldview or perspective is illusory, man mind made on the basis of the past conditioning and programming of human mind. Mind can only project on the future its past memory and own narrowness and limitations, because human mind is a bio – mechanism, not a living being, not the very core being God created. By projecting your being into mind illusions of whatever kind – worldviews, faiths, beliefs, perspectives, you actually project yourself into ephemeral balloons of falsity and non existentiality. When those self made balloons explode out there in the fresh air of the reality, then you feel lost, hurt, miserable. That is how you create misery and suffering around yourself – by non accepting reality as it is, the way it is, but trying to project it the way you want it to be. There is only one Creator of Existence and that is God, Tao, Brahman, Allah, The Absolute (whatever you may name it, named it will not be IT!).
That is what true meditators know and they have come to that knowing through experiencing their own being. To experience one’s own being, one has to be constantly aware and this awareness is what meditation is. Meditation is awareness and it transcends all cultural contexts, traditional as well as modern and post modern. Meditation is to come to know that you are not limited by time perspectives – neither old and outdated nor modern and post modern. The meditator knows that what today seems inappropriate because it is old, yesterday was modern and innovative, the leading edge. What today seems the evolutionary leading edge tomorrow will be inappropriate and outdated! Therefore the meditator transcends both perspectives and through understanding reaches the Kingdom of God, the Ultimate reality of God, whereas no time is, no space, but only the Being. Then you are Home, in the center of Your Being.
Aliya,
You say: A perspective on the evolution of culture or whatever perspective is simply a thought, a mind product, a mind construction; though our own mind creation, hence man made, not Existence made, God made.
But everything is Existence made, God made. You divide the world up into false categories when you say that Life and Existence is a beautiful blessing but the products of the human mind are crap. The mind IS God, no less than any other manifestation…there IS no Other.
I understand your vexation with the common tendency of people to not accept reality as it is. I call this escapism and our entire culture is steeped in it. What we are escaping from is our personal accountability and responsibility to ourselves and others. We are hard wired to feel responsibility–our survival is built on it. We exist as social beings, not as isolated entities and have a need to give back to life. We take and we give. The escapism part lies in thinking that one can just take. It’s this that makes people into cowards.
Evolution is a given–it doesn’t need a movement! Life is always seeking more life. If it follows weak and false notions of what that means, it finds itself at a dead end. If it follows strong notions that accurately map what does exist, then it succeeds. That is, even though everything is Light, God, Existence, we can make judgments–we do this whenever we select what we want for ourselves.
If you notice, the stronger choices that we make are so by virtue of their greater inclusivity. It is this that is the evolutionary imperative–to widen the field of connected being.
Caroline,
The most poisonous and dangerous bondage for human beings is to believe as you do that “The mind IS God, no less than any other manifestation…there IS no Other”. That is not only an existential nonsense but also a very dangerous non sense. Mind is created by existence as an instrument of Your Being, as a servant to you, not as a Master of you, who imposes on you its products – the ego, the illusions, the projections, the identifications. You are not the mind, you are not any of mind products – you are not your thoughts, your beliefs, your prejudices, your logical conclusions. You are infinitely much more and when you enclose yourself within your mind narrowness and limitations you cut your being out of Existence. That is why a person who identifies him/herself with his mind remains partial, split, schizophrenic. Only such a person, who remains identified and enclosed in his mind, is the real escapist. Can there be any greater and more suffocating escapism than escaping your own Being and trying to find isolation and “security” in the mind predictability and certainty, which serve the cowards so perfectly. The truly responsible human being is not the “social” being, but the one who realized completely his own inner Being. We, human beings are not born “social” or antisocial, we are born Being(s) and that is who we are. Therefore, the most authentic responsibility is the responsibility towards your inner most core Being. Only a human being who is responsible towards his own being can be authentically responsible towards the other human beings, because he will know that the inner Being in him is also in the others innermost center. This truth cannot be revealed to you through the mind stuff, because it is illusory and superficial, it cannot comprehend the utmost fundamental Truth of Life. The Truth of Life is such that it can in no way be intellectually perceived, but only lived and experienced. Only through living this Truth will you know that You and Life are One and there is nothing to” be given back to life”. Your awareness as a Being is enough to celebrate and savor life, no other giving is needed.
Have you ever heard the Sun to say to the Earth: “You owe me!” or the rain to say to the thirsty fields: “You owe me!”? Life, Existence is not a bargain, a business deal. It is a love affair, whereas we are all lovers, not business partners.
So are you advocating for people to BE and then just rest there in that state in some cave? Or BE and relate to others in what would be a culture? How are you going to relate and work together to address being alive and the needs that come with it? Are you going to assume that this BE state will think for YOU and you alone within your BE state will have all the answers or that all the people in the BE state will miraculously mesh in perfection? Just BEing won’t cut it nor will it deal with war or protect the boarders which allow you to try and attain BEing or lets you just BE. There is a very large and actively happening/in progress world out there with a mixture of people who do and do not get along, with world problems which include the environment and population and resources. What you said sounds great and beautiful in a sense, but I’m not sure if its practical….
Dear Orion,
I advocate no thing, no teaching, no religion. The only thing I do is to remind you that you ARE. Apparently you have forgotten that you ARE, because for you to BE is to “just rest there in that state in some cave”. Do you see the cunningness of the mind, which can create confusion out of natural phenomena whereas confusion is not possible in existence? Human beings have forgotten what it is to BE. For them TO BE IS TO THINK. That is the greatest ever delusion of mankind. Because when you do not think, it appears to you that you have to stop being, you have to just sit in a cave – what else can you do then? :)
But you make things even more delusional – for you even this “Be state has to think for you”, because you cannot imagine you can exist without some thinking somewhere there done for you! You see how tricky mind is – it has convinced you that without the mind you cannot exist.
Then tell me where was your mind when you were born, or when you got ill, or when you fell in love, had your mind ever been able to create any of the most decisive existential moments in your life – birth, death, love?
On the other hand, is not the mind narrowness and ego, which create wars, borders, nations, states (where in Existence have you seen border’ lines drawn, or bombs produced?), is not the human mind which harms the environment with its greediness and narrow thinking, with its practicality?
Aliya, I think I found a way to say yes to both you and to Mr. Cohen on this “matter.” Somewhere in (I think) Thomas Merton’s book, Mystics and Zen Masters, he distinguishes a triune of spirit that implied (as I recall) a branching or splitting of spirit into the modes of “seeing,” “doing,” and “being.” I have not been able to find the section where he says that yet, but I know he said it! Recently, in a sermon at the church I attend, the minister used the biblical passage about “love God with all your heart, all your mind, and with all your soul”. I had always taken that to me love God a lot, or fully, and that the passage was intentional rhetoric to convey that idea. But when I heard it the other day in the sermon, I was convicted with the belief that the 3 things – heart, mind, and soul – actually conveyed an earlier understanding about how spirit expresses itself, and understanding that, like so many others, may have gotten lost in the dust of religious and theological history. My mind connected the 3 things to Merton’s 3 modes or aspects of spirit, and here is what I came up with, and am, to this day, very comfortable with (It seems to still ring true to me):
“love” in the passage probably is a slight misstranslation that really meant “to align with,” “to follow,” or “to honor” God. And “heart would be the spiritual branch or vessel of the kind of “love” we earthly beings experience everyday (although at various levels of purity and integration). Heart is an energy center or strand for “love.” Love is one of three ways to express and to be “spiritual.” Also, it appears to me that love is spirit’s way of doing. We think hands only “do,” but spirit does with love.
“With all of you mind” means the seeing function. Soul means the being function you speak of. D
I have said numerous times on this forum something that Sri Aurobindo insisted upon, and I insist upon: you cannot have a true evolutionary worldview without having a true spiritual worldview.
You cannot fully understand evolution until you have an integral spiritual understanding, that is, one that includes both the static and dynamic aspects of all of the universes, all more limited views of their functioning, including those of Western science, and one that integrates all spiritual practices into a larger picture that includes an understanding of their roles in the universe’s dynamic aspects.
Merely telling a Buddhist monk to embrace an evolutionary worldview might move him out of his isolation, push him out to do something in the world, but unless it is accompanied by an integral spiritual worldview and a spiritual practice which reflects it, he will most likely do very little to move the world beyond where it is. At best he will be a Bernie Glassman, aiding the poor as St. Vincent de Paul, Mother Theresa, and many others have done, or embrace some cause to right the wrongs of the world as he is able to see them. Those may have been great and necessary endeavors in the world’s past, but they have not been able to eliminate the ills of the world, nor will they be able to eliminate them now. In order to do that, ultimately we must have an integral spiritual worldview and practice from which an evolutionary worldview and action arise.
That’s a great point, John. What comes across in your statement is the fragmentary view that we have of reality. Yeah, the Buddhist monk can do his little bit and someone else can do their little bit, but to what avail, ultimately?
But what if there were a World Soul? What if everything that everybody did at every moment affected that World Soul?
Hi again Carolin, re: “You divide the world up into false categories when you say that Life and Existence is a beautiful blessing but the products of the human mind are crap”
I harp on the idea that we humans have the potential to be “our real selves” but until a spiritual Awakening Event is attained, this potential remains dormant for most, unawakened and unrealized. For me there’s a difference between a Self and a self, unawakened.
By Awakening, one not only realizes the full spiritual potential and our consciousness is heightened to the responsibility of committing our Selves to the betterment of the world in a realized way. It’s possible to be spiritual w/o that Awakening but with that attainment, it’s much more committed, IMO and personal experience.
To all: May I ask if you’ve had an Awakening or not?
Hi again Caroline, re: “the Buddhist monk can do his little bit and someone else can do their little bit, but to what avail, ultimately?”
If each person does his little bit, that’s better than nothing, isn’t it? At least the efforts should be with the objective of bettering the world or attempting it. We all aren’t called upon to make momentous impact on the course of human events but with the collective efforts of humans, like with voting, each personal act becomes incorporated in the collective effort.
Are you familiar with Milton’s sonnet “On Blindness”? There’s the line “He (We) also serve only stand and wait”.
Two thoughts:
1) When devoid of ideas, it’s well to do nothing till a good idea dawns.
2) Watching to see how events play out with the hope of having those in position to act meaningfully is OK. With our internet and emails, we can give feedback if that can help the cause.
Your question is something all of us frustrated in seeing there’s so much that needs attn going unattended in a meaningful way.
But hopelessness is for losers who give up and stop caring.
I should have added that if we want to truly understand and express the Divine Shakti, we have to surrender to Her. India for over 2000 years has tried to run from Her into some Nirvana or ecstatic madness, or has merely worshipped Her. Look where that has got India. Unless the rest of the world is willing to learn from India’s mistakes, well……
John, re: ” Unless the rest of the world is willing to learn from India’s mistakes, well……”
Is it that India hasn’t learned from mistakes or that there’s been a falling away from lessons learned. Oh, that’s a mistake,isn’t it?
India has developed some of the most spiritual teaching and teachers but like wisdom, “getting it” depends on a long-term reinforcement, like with any learning to remind people of the lessons being put forth and how those lessons play out in everyday life.
What’s happened in India is that there are so many faiths competing to be accepted as Truth, and they obviously throw aside the main message of religions of peace and harmony with others. It’s not what you think you believe but how you behave. Killing others in the name of religion is an oxynmoron, key word: moron.
Hi John,
What you say in your comments is right on, that there is the personal spiritual work on your Self but the other part of spiritual work includes extroverted work to put your spiritual consciousness to work in attempting to better the world to create a future you would unegoisticly want to inhabit.
Best regards, aloha, namaste!
It seems so graphically clear if we compare “sitting in a cave meditating on personal Enlightenment” with a vision of the Web of Life and the interconnectivity of the whole of humanity on the path toward Enlightenment through developing a heightened spiritual consciousness together.
In view of creating a peaceable world vs. the alternative of continuing to wage wars with the possibility of the use of WMDs, the choice is clear. We humans collectively must learn this or suffer the consequences, plain and simple.
Is not one of the fruits of sustained spiritual practice, such as meditation, a more open and pliable worldview and mind, that inevitably becomes more receptive to “progressive” ideas and thinking?
Absolutely fantastic Andrew! What you’re describing sounds practically… “Spirit Sentient” I love it!
I believe that the evolution of the culture in a global sense is something new to everyone and that is why I´d be very careful to judge Mother Theresa´s and others´ work for the poor as something very little to move the world beyond where it is. For every little work made out of love is a practical contribution of the individual spirit.
Judging others might be good for feeding my ego to be someone better or special than the other is. Ideally my meditation leads me to understanding that I am a part of the whole, an active part for the good of that whole with a deep respect to the other. In my opinion not everyone can take on progressive shoes and still her/his little work is equally important if done genuinely.
I understand Andrew´s quote in a way that I am privileged to contribute humbly to transformative powers of our time in my small central European country. I am not able to know for sure that my work will succeed but I cannot then to do it. I may hope to co-create a critical mass with you to bring forth fresh actions from a spirit revived from egotism of our culture. And still, there are other important parts of the global picture unknown to me and so by my deeds coming out of my (and yours) progressive worldview I hope to add to the basic goodness, the common good and enable the shift to happen.