A New Spiritual Orientation (Quote of the Week)
by Andrew Cohen
Evolution is a new spiritual orientation. Most of us with a Western education are familiar with the idea of cosmic evolution—we’re aware that the cosmos is in a process of ever-greater complexification and that we are part of that evolving process. We’re aware of the Darwinian notion of biological evolution and accept the scientific evidence about how life has evolved. And some of us are even aware of the notion of cultural evolution, the recognition that culture has been developing over time through a series of stages. But very few of us are really awake to the notion of spiritual evolution. Seeing evolution as a spiritual unfolding that has an exterior and an interior, and understanding that our own experience of subjectivity is the leading edge of the interior of that creative process, is a very recently emerging idea. Traditionally, spiritual teachings pointed to a static attainment. The aspiration for enlightenment was the aspiration to come to rest in a steady state—in nirvana, in heaven. But when spirituality is reinterpreted from an evolutionary perspective, it is the aspiration for infinite becoming. The evolutionary impulse is an infinite reaching towards the future that affects the way we think about everything. Now we are no longer looking for spiritual liberation and release beyond the world, or after we die. We realize that the spiritual release is found in unconditionally, radically, and totally embracing the creative process of infinite becoming, as ourselves. It’s a very different orientation to spiritual liberation.
The foundation of spiritual life is clarity of intention. Do I want to become a liberated vessel for the evolutionary impulse in this world? We each have to decide: what is most important to me? Once the intention is clear, the mind becomes focused. When the mind is focused there is one-pointedness. When there is one-pointedness, the evolutionary impulse will guide us. Through remaining true to our own highest intention, again and again and again, we will discover soul strength, spiritual strength—the inspired courage to take responsibility for ourselves, for our culture, and, ultimately, for the destiny of the evolutionary process itself.
There is more to enlightenment than the liberating discovery of the inherent perfection of the absolute, or nondual, nature of all things. And that more is the emergence of a powerful imperative to evolve. When something came from nothing, and the explosion in motion that is all of life came into being, a perpetual state of becoming was born. In the spiritual revelation, that movement is experienced as an impersonal command from the Self to transcend, to evolve, to utterly transform this world so that it can become a dynamic, living expression of the perfection that it already is. This spiritually inspired passion, which arises from the Self, unleashes the fire of absolute love and ego-defying compassion into this world. 
When two or more individuals who have awakened to what I call the Evolutionary Impulse, or Authentic Self, come together in deep dialogue and focused conversation, the experience is something akin to thinking aloud with yourself. Why? Because there is only one Authentic Self. The ego can only have a relationship with other separate individuals, but the Authentic Self can only have a relationship with itself. If you awaken to the Authentic Self and another also becomes illuminated by that same Self, you will find that you both experience a strong pull to be together, but what you are drawn to is not the other individual’s unique personality. The Authentic Self isn’t interested in other individuals. 
When we awaken to the evolutionary impulse, we realize a completely new relationship to what it means to be alive and what it means to be ourselves here and now. Not only do we discover a freedom to be ourselves that we’ve never known before, but even more importantly, we find a reason for living with intense commitment and liberated passion that gives us an incomparable sense of personal, philosophical, and spiritual self-confidence. We suddenly begin to understand, in ways that both include and transcend our intellect, that the reason we are here on Earth (once all of our basic survival needs have been met) is not merely to experience security, comfort, pleasure, or even peace of mind but to develop. We realize that we are here to consciously evolve, to intentionally do anything and everything we can to unleash all of the extraordinary creative potential within, so that the human race’s next step can, in some small but not insignificant way, emerge through us.
