Astronomy As a Spiritual Practice
by Joel PitneyWhat if we each started every day by taking a quick, internet-enhanced trip to the edges of the known universe? What would it do to our sense of self? I tried it out this morning after following a Tweet from @pranalizard to a video from the American Museum of Natural History. The video, which is based on the most up-to-date and accurate-to-scale astronomical data from NASA, leads you on a cosmic journey, starting off at the Himalayas and then expanding your perspective out beyond our solar system, beyond our galaxy, beyond the extent of humanity’s first radio signals, and eventually, beyond the edges of the known universe. I’ve seen videos like this a hundred times, but I have to say that they never cease to blow my mind and expand my attention to a cosmic scale. It’s a perfect way to start the day. Check it out: Continue reading…
When we awaken to the evolutionary impulse as our own Authentic Self we begin to know, in ways that are hard to describe, that we are no longer living the life of the ego. Now we begin to intuit that we are living for the whole cosmos and start to experience all the drama that such a big perspective inherently entails. From this lofty vantage point, our ego or personal self is seen as nothing but a small shell containing a finite self-structure. Indeed, from this expanded state of consciousness, we realize that the ego’s personal perspective and limited worldview is just not big enough to contain the enormity of what we are now seeing. When this kind of shift happens, it is dramatic and unmistakable. It is unmistakable because when we plug into this surging momentum we become animated by its power, intelligence, and upward trajectory. As a self, we are carried by what feels like a cosmic momentum, stretching way beyond ourselves towards an as-yet-unmanifest higher potential. Inexplicably, we are drawn to fulfill a glorious promise that seems to be ever calling us to itself.
When we become aware of the vastness of the entire evolutionary process–from the big bang to the present moment–that is called awakening to Deep Time. It means having the capacity to assume a perspective that is nothing less than cosmic and being able to see whatever’s happening to us personally from its lofty vantage point. It is also the profound recognition that our very own present-day highly evolved capacity for consciousness, cognition, introspection, compassion, empathy, and even spiritual insight has all been produced by this deep-time developmental process. This means so much! It means that our personal experience is not half as personal as it seems to be. It also means something that is so startling it is hard to let in. 
When you awaken to the evolutionary impulse behind the entire cosmos as your very own Authentic Self, you find yourself living in a new world. It’s not the small, personal world that your ego or separate self-sense has lived in since the day you were born. You may still exist and function in that world, but deeply, it’s no longer your home. Your home is the vast process that began the day the entire cosmos was born. When this kind of shift occurs irrevocably, the idea of living “for a higher purpose” doesn’t even make sense any more, because at an interior level, you and that purpose have merged and become one. You have become the actual manifestation of that higher purpose. It’s no longer external to who you are. To a significant degree, you and that higher purpose become indistinguishable. That’s what Evolutionary Enlightenment means. Your entire life becomes permeated by that evolutionary impulse, because that is who you have become.
Carl Gustav Jung and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. One probed the collective unconscious. The other contemplated the cosmic nature of the human mind. In the following audio clip taken from a lecture on the history of Evolutionary Spirituality, EnlightenNext executive editor Carter Phipps brings together the ideas of this unconventional psychologist and controversial priest. 
