An Evolutionary Spiritual Path

    "Evolutionary spirituality" seems - for me & many others - to be the most advanced way of experiencing & promoting a meaningful, peaceful, joyous life.
    Steve McIntosh “The Presence of the Infinite – The Spiritual Experience of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness.” Theosophical Publishing House, 2015. https://www.stevemcintosh.com/

     There's an obvious difference between feeling ENERGIZED by bright, warm, loving zest to explore, connect with & serve life versus feeling TRAPPED, STIFF, RATTLED by dark, cold, anxiety / anger driven to resist / fight / grab.
    Moment-by-moment we DO CHOOSE between Heaven and Hell to live in. But amazingly, some of us take a lifetime to finally start consciously choosing Heaven, and thus start voting decent evolved human beings into leadership positions. http://www.johnlovas.com/2024/01/seriously.html

    "Spiritual experience … can be understood as an encounter with the presence of the infinite within our finite universe of time & space. 

    … spirit is the ‘presence of the infinite’.

    Everyone who has felt the power of truth, the kindness of goodness, or the loveliness of beauty has had an experience of spirit. The only reason such common yet profound experiences are not universally identified as spiritual is that our collective understanding of spiritual experience remains underdeveloped.
    (The recent democratic election of several dysfunctional primitives around the world, imho, is evidence of the spiritual immaturity of a majority of the voting population.)

    … deepening our understanding of what spiritual experience is and how it can be fostered in ourselves & others is one of the most direct ways we can make the world a better place.

    … the experience & creation of that which is spiritually real – that which is beautiful, true, and good – is ultimately how we make things genuinely better. In other words, we become direct participants in evolution’s unfolding – the process by which something more keeps coming from something less – as we work to increasingly perfect ourselves & our world. Thus those who are on an evolutionary spiritual path recognize that their purpose in life is to participate in the gradual perfection of the evolving universe of nature, culture & self."
    Steve McIntosh “The Presence of the Infinite – The Spiritual Experience of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness.” Theosophical Publishing House, 2015. https://www.stevemcintosh.com/

    "The seeker is one who devotes her/himself, ultimately through love, to the labors of discovery." Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 

     “The true function of religion is to sustain & spur on the progress of life – to nurture the ‘human zest for life.’" Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
    (NOTE Pierre Teilhard de Chardin used the word 'religion' in much the same way we now use the word 'spirituality.')

     "Religion is part of the energy of cosmic personalization & unification.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

     “Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete & fulfill them, for it alone takes them & joins them by what is deepest in themselves.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
            Above quotes from: Ilia Delio “Does Evolution Have Direction?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koYGt9BWe1Y

    “The Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin claimed that love exists on the fundamental levels of life. Some might think this idea absurd and ask, do quarks fall in love? Teilhard was pointing to the fact that the characteristics of human love such as attraction, irresistibility and union, can be found on the most fundamental levels of physical life.
    Love is a passionate force at the heart of the universe, according to Teilhard, a core energy of cosmic life, a unitive principle and a cosmological force. He wrote, ‘love is the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mysterious of the cosmic forces.’ By declaring love a cosmological force, Teilhard indicated that love is an energy ‘present from the Big Bang onwards, though indistinguishable from molecular forces.’ In his poem ‘The Eternal Feminine,’ he speaks of cosmic love in the voice of wisdom:
    'I am embedded in the force field that is driving the cosmos towards greater novelty, towards greater integrity, and eventually towards greater consciousness. From within the fragments of matter, I encourage all possible combinations since I know that not every combination will be productive. I am the principle of union, the soul of the world. I am the magnetic and unitive force that brings the disparate matter together and urges each newly created form to multiply, to beautify, and to bear fruit. I nurture & release spirit from among the crude & complex elements. Each step towards union moves my creation towards greater spontaneity & freedom.’
    This irresistible energy of love, present in the universe, led Teilhard to claim that ‘the physical structure of the universe is love.’ The universe is created not only by the interaction of space-time-matter; it is created from the ubiquitous energy of love embedded in the fabric of the universe. All levels of life are governed by principles of attraction and union. Love is a cosmic force before it is a human one.”
    Ilia Delio. “The Primacy of Love.” Fortress Press, 2022.

    “Einstein did not believe in a personal God, but he did maintain that mystery permeated the universe. Reportedly he said to one of his skeptical acquaintances, ‘Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws & connections, there remains something subtle, intangible & inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious.’ … Scientists may treat mystery is mere data, but if we believe in matter as God’s beloved dwelling place then we should trust nature completely because God is in the (gravitational) waves.”
    Ilia Delio. “The Hours of the Universe. Reflections on God, Science, and the Human Journey.” Orbis Books, 2021.

from: Ilia Delio “Does Evolution Have Direction?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koYGt9BWe1Y

 

Playing Small Doesn't Serve Anyone

Essence
Chelan Harkin
from: “Let Us Dance! The Stumble and Whirl with the Beloved” Soulfruit Publishing, 2021

There's an Essence
within you
that can neither be
enhanced
nor diminished

it spans Universes
and embraces the minuscule
the infinitesimal

it is infinite
in the way that the numbers
between 0 and 1
are infinite
which is complete
and wondrously
eternally satisfying
and yet allows for infinitely more
infinities

it is the exaltation of the hermit crab
when it ceases to need
to scurry from shell to shell
to find respite

it dips into pools
of intergalactic radiance
for play and restoration

it tickles the stars
and high fives
the suns

it has no need to bypass
the trappings
of the small mind
but nor does it take them seriously

there is nothing to prove or do or please
to earn this --
this is your birthright
that I solemnly swear
no -- joyfully exclaim!

all humanity is growing into.

 

 DO watch / listen to an excellent, inspiring, energizing interview with this wonderful young poet / mystic Chelan Harkin: https://batgap.com/chelan-harkin/

 

     “One day, when working under guard in a grey dawn landscape (Nazi concentration camp), feeling somewhat numb, (Viktor Frankl’s) mind again questioning and resisting the apparent senselessness of his existence, he suddenly, as it were, ‘heard’, a triumphant affirmative: the word ‘Yes’, filling his mind and his entire soul. At the exact moment, a light was lit in a farmhouse in the distance, as if to confirm the fact of a sacred light ‘shining in the darkness’. This is the light, St. John tells us, that cannot be overcome; a powerful message of hope.
     You do not have to be a psychologist, or even an educated person, for such an experience. The knowledge it brings is beyond thought. The whole psychological being of the person is involved – senses, thoughts and emotions – and such experiences can happen to anyone. They are not accompanied by any impulse to act, because the entire experience is one of being acted upon by some great and loving power. The feeling is of being in a state of awe and acceptance, of surrender, of grace and gratitude, of insight and understanding, of peace. In an instant, life becomes full, complete, and bursting with meaning, with the significance of knowing oneself to be part of and at one with a perfect, timeless, infinite and eternal whole, an indescribably sacred unity, an infallible source of hope. The Hamlet question becomes redundant. Life is no longer about being or non-being. The two are subsumed into one: being and non-being. This works because having once been, we cannot be obliterated. We leave an indelible imprint, an ineradicably secure trace in the realm of the human spirit.”
     Larry Culliford. “Love, Healing and Happiness: In Search of the Flipside of Suffering.”
       https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/default-source/members/sigs/spirituality-spsig/spirituality-special-interest-group-publications-larry-culliford-love-healing-and-happiness.pdf?sfvrsn=29f43365_2

 

"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding." Kahlil Gibran

 

Jackson Browne - "The Barricades of Heaven"

Timeless Openhearted Engagement with What Is

     “What is the Zen life itself? We can put it in a formula: 

Infinite gratitude towards all things past;
infinite service to all things present; 
infinite responsibility to all things future.”                  Huston Smith

http://billmoyers.com/content/a-personal-philosophy-the-wisdom-of-faith-with-huston-smith/

Steve McCurry   http://stevemccurry.com/

"Faith" as a Universal Human Capacity

     "Unless we find a way of living constructively with the infinite, living in the infinite, unless we find the courage to have faith in that which we cannot begin to understand or begin to articulate, then we're going to suffer what Kierkegard called angst, we're going to suffer that anxiety."

    "Say No To Happiness" Frank Faulk's (~54 min) documentary on CBC Radio's "Tapestry" originally aired May 27, 2012 https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2458656554

     “We human beings seem unable to survive, and certainly cannot thrive, unless we can make meaning. We need to be able to make some sort of sense out of things; we seek pattern, order, coherence, and relation in the disparate elements of our experience. If life is perceived as only fragmented and chaotic, we suffer confusion, distress, stagnation, and finally despair.

     This capacity and demand for meaning … faith … goes far beyond religious belief … the activity of seeking and discovering meaning in the most comprehensive dimensions of our experience. … a broad, generic human phenomenon … to dwell in the sense one makes out of life – what seems ultimately true and dependable about self, world, and cosmos (whether that meaning be strong or fragile, expressed in religious or secular terms). … has value for secular and religious folk alike. It addresses our culture’s current hunger for a shared language about things ‘spiritual.’”
     Parks SD. “Big Questions, Worthy Dreams. Mentoring Young Adults in their Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Faith.” John Wiley & Sons, 2000. SUPERB, VALUABLE BOOK!

Photo: boar   www.dpreview.com