small things

A very big part of individual and collective evolution and development has to do with the way we understand our experience and the way we interpret our experience. There’s a very big difference between the experience of intensity, no matter what kind of intensity it is, and actually understanding what it is that’s happening to us. As our own interest in the human experience deepens, and we become interested in the philosophical and spiritual context of our own experience and of the human experience, that interest will have a dramatic effect on the way we interpret the experience that we’re actually having. The bigger the philosophical and spiritual context, the bigger the context we have on our experience. That means the way we interpret it is going to change. It’s going to deepen, it’s going to become more profound.

Those of us who have transcended mythical belief systems know without any doubt that there is no God up in the sky. But when we awaken to what I call the evolutionary impulse—the mysterious passion to evolve, to become, to develop on every level—we rediscover who God is. When we begin to experience the aspiration to evolve as that unique ecstatic compulsion in our own heart and mind, that’s when the God who fell out of the sky is awakening within ourselves, as the urge to take the next step.

Fourteen billion years ago, there was nothing. Then, suddenly, there was an enormous explosion—an explosion that never stopped and is still reverberating here and now. So what I’m describing is a perspective and a state of consciousness in which the very first cause is waking up to itself as we wake up to our own impulse to evolve. That’s Evolutionary Enlightenment: when the spark that initiated fourteen billion years of development becomes conscious of itself. When you realize this and recognize this at the deepest level of your being, and then choose to take responsibility for it, it is then that you know without any doubt that it’s up to you to make this world a better place. It’s up to you. In that realization, you discover a reason for living, which is spiritually empowering. It is where you will find dignity, self-respect, ultimate meaning, and purposefulness.

As the powerful energy and intelligence that initiated the creative process gradually awakens to itself in the light of humanity’s highly evolved, self-reflective awareness—especially in those who are at the most advanced stage of our own culture’s development—something very important begins to happen. As the self becomes more highly individuated, simultaneously its powers of autonomy, volition, free agency, consciousness, and cognition increase exponentially. And the growing complexity of the self-structure is the prism through which the light of that evolutionary impulse shines into this world. This prism is alive and conscious, and it possesses the powers of both self-reflectivity and choice. That is why, when the evolutionary impulse awakens and surges through a highly evolved vehicle, it is the development of that individual that enables the very essence of the evolutionary impulse itself to actually evolve and to refine itself as it moves through them. It is none other than our uniquely human capacities for autonomy, volition, free agency, consciousness, and cognition that enable this impulse—which is the manifest God—to effect change in the world and in the universe.

We human beings have regularly been faced with overwhelming crises ever since we first stood up on two legs. Survival-as an attitude, as an inner posture, as a natural reflex-is a highly developed capacity within our species. Why? Because we’ve been completely consumed by the necessity to survive for a very long time, since the first single-celled life form emerged around 3 billion years ago.

Slowly but surely, however, something new is beginning to emerge at the leading edge of the development of human consciousness-a new posture, a new attitude, a new reflex, and a new instinct. And that is the instinct to evolve, to consciously evolve. An entirely new perspective is emerging: a new orientation to life itself, based upon not merely the instinct to survive but an instinct that compels us toward higher, as yet unmanifest human potentials and possibilities. As we awaken to this evolutionary impulse, we begin to understand that Life is, in its essence, the will to exist, the urge to become, the creative spark behind the unfolding cosmos. We recognize that merely surviving is not what we are here for. Consciously and intentionally striving to evolve, individually and collectively, for the sake of the evolution of the entire creative process, is what imbues human life with a higher meaning and purpose. And what an extraordinary world we can create when we are in touch with this very best part of ourselves!

Needless to say, if we don’t find a way to overcome our collective crises and survive, then the evolution of consciousness will be a moot point. So we must survive-but not for the sake of survival alone. We must survive for the sake of our collective evolution, for the emergence of our as yet unmanifest higher potentials-those hidden treasures that we have yet to contribute to the larger life process in so many ways.

Authenticity means freedom from pretense. The ego is a veil of pretense, a mask over the self. It’s an appearance, an image that is false and inauthentic. Authenticity is the expression of an integrated self—in whom the appearance and the reality, the motive and the action have become one seamless movement. But the capacity for authenticity is something we have to cultivate and something we have to fight for. The degree to which we are identified with ego and narcissism is the degree to which we will find authenticity emotionally unbearable. Many of us are so used to being inauthentic that it doesn’t trouble us at all. We have become numb, out of touch with our own souls. It takes guts and courage to become emotionally committed to authenticity to such an extent that if we found ourselves swerving into pretense, we would experience extreme discomfort. As our own deepest intention to evolve displaces the ego as the fundamental locus of identity, we will begin to feel a natural preference for authenticity, an attraction toward transparency and integrity. When that evolutionary impulse—which I call the Authentic Self—becomes the strongest part of who we are, the unselfconscious expression of our humanity will finally be free from pretense, free from the ego’s need to protect a false image.