Awakening to Evolution by Andrew Cohen

[Guest guest]

Awakening to Evolution

by Andrew Cohen

 

For those of us looking toward the future who are spiritually

inclined, it is often difficult to find a path or practice that makes

deep sense. What I mean is, it's difficult to find a spiritual path

that has a truly contemporary orientation—one that doesn't compel us

to embrace ancient belief structures that may no longer be relevant

to our time. That is why I believe we need to create a new context

for our individual and collective spiritual development, one that is

appropriate for our twenty-first-century circumstances. The new

seeker, the postmodern seeker, is in a unique predicament. But it's a

predicament that couldn't be more thrilling, because it is so

pregnant with creative potential. By " seeker " I mean the spiritually

inspired individual who is awake to what I call the " evolutionary

impulse " but who has abandoned traditional approaches because they

just don't seem able to meet our contemporary psychological,

philosophical, and spiritual needs. I'm speaking about those

individuals at the edge who want to catalyze a revolution in

consciousness and culture, a revolution that will be able to create

dynamic new structures that enable a new future to emerge. I believe

such a revolution would have to be based upon the most important

scientific, historical, cultural, and spiritual discovery of the last

three hundred years: evolution.

 

Why is that? Because when considering what it would mean to create

new structures for individual and collective spiritual development,

it's necessary to keep an important fact in mind: Up until very

recently in human history, we didn't know that we are all part of a

developmental process that had a beginning in time and that is going

somewhere. Many of us tend to forget that it was only in the

twentieth century that we came upon what's called deep time—the

incomprehensible span of fourteen billion years since the universe

burst into being.

 

I have no doubt that the evolutionary process—from the big bang to

the present moment—is not merely a random, meaningless event. If one

stands back and takes a good, hard look at the entire sweep of the

process, all the way from its earliest beginnings, one can see

undeniable direction and even, I dare say, purpose in its majestic

unfolding. But who or what initiated that process? What energy or

intelligence made the choice to take that first miraculous leap from

formlessness to form, from nothing whatsoever to energy and light to

matter to life to consciousness to self-reflective awareness? Such an

audacious move, that instantaneous leap from nothing to the beginning

of everything, could only have been made by a force that was nothing

less than Godlike. That impulse, that evolutionary impulse, is what I

call God. That same impulse is not separate from the most important

part of each and every one of us, from our uniquely human drive to

create and innovate and, most significantly, from our will to

consciously evolve.

 

As that impulse we have all been here, in some shape or form,

throughout the mind-opening, awe-inspiring journey of Becoming that

has been unfolding since the time process began. We've been together

since infinite density emerged from absolute nothingness when the

universe was created. We've been together since atoms, which make up

the very foundation of all matter, were formed three hundred thousand

years later. We were there when those atoms formed gas clouds, which

turned into stars, which grouped together as galaxies, each of which

eventually produced billions of solar systems filled with small rocky

planets, such as our beautiful Earth, which was forged from the

remains of generations of dead stars.

 

We have been here since the first single-celled microorganisms

emerged from the primordial soup and throughout the slow flowering of

life in all its diversity. We were here when the great dinosaurs

ruled the food chain unchallenged, and through their demise. When the

first hominids walked on the African savannah, this impulse, which is

who we all are, guided each evolutionary step. And since our

ancestors appeared on the stage of life just two hundred thousand

years ago, that impulse has guided the vast unfolding tapestry of

cultural development that brings us to this present moment.

 

Throughout this whole process, from the beginning of time to the very

edge of the future, as the energy and intelligence that has been

driving cosmic, planetary, biospheric, animal, human, and cultural

evolution, we have been here at every step. What do I mean by that? I

mean that as the evolutionary impulse, as the initiatory force that

is driving the entire creative process, from the innermost dimensions

of our human interiors all the way to the farthest reaches of our

cosmos, we have always been here.

 

It was my own gradual discovery of and awakening to this picture of

the developmental process as a whole that eventually compelled me to

reinterpret and redefine the meaning and significance of spiritual

awakening, of enlightenment, for our own time. And this awakening is

not merely an ever-growing cognitive appreciation for the miraculous

unfolding of the entire evolving cosmos that we are all part and

parcel of. I'm speaking about an actual experience at the level of

consciousness itself of the presence of that same telos or felt pull

toward the future. I'm convinced that the momentous enlightening leap

that needs to be taken by those of us at the leading edge is the

delicate and all-important transition from the mere intellectual and

philosophical recognition that our cosmos and culture are evolving to

the direct, felt, living experience of the energy and intelligence

that is driving the entire process, vibrating in one's very own heart

and mind. It just makes sense that a spiritual path that would enable

us to create the future in our own time would have to be based upon

such a revelation.

 

It is indeed a perpetually enthralling insight that we are, at all

levels of our being, products of time and the creative process. But

it is literally enlightening when we begin to directly experience

that we are truly one with the mind of God—one with the original

evolutionary impulse that chose to take that eternal leap from Being

to Becoming fourteen billion years ago.

 

http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j42/awakening-to-evolution.asp

 

 

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Quotes about evolution

http://www.adishakti.org

February 15, 2009

 

" All have independently corroborated and identified Shri Mataji

Nirmala Devi to be the incarnation of the Divine Feminine sent to

deliver and explain in detail the Primordial Being's Divine Message

of the promised General Resurrection and evolution into the eternal

spirit. "

 

" It is an eschatological message of divine intervention, renewal of

faith and the promised and long-awaited Age of the Resurrection to

evolve from the temporary physical body to the eternal, everlasting

spirit. "

 

" This unprecedented knowledge and remembrance of Jesus' mystical

teachings, to be delivered by the Comforter, is the final

breakthrough in human evolution. "

 

" Muslims, Hindus, Christians and all have to evolve to a higher state "

 

" Today, Sahaja Yoga has reached the state of Mahayoga, which is en-

masse evolution manifested through it. "

 

" She organises everything, it is She who gets divided into three

powers, it is She who creates the whole universe, it is She who gives

us this evolution, it is She who makes us human beings and it is She

who has to make us the higher human being. "

 

" Cool Breeze (Ruach) is evidence of 'being born again', the promised

evolution of humans into the eternal spirit "

 

" If it is an evolutionary process, if it is a living process it must

have its background, its history, and it must culminate into something

fruitful. "

 

“The religions, if they were practiced from the understanding how

important it was to make one wise, balanced and compassionate for the

last breakthrough of our evolution by following spirit-oriented

religions, even the wrong doers would have become good normal people

and deep seekers of Absolute Truth. "

 

" There is no hidden agenda and this site contains all the knowledge

and evidence required to re-establish the faith, belief and

conviction in the Divine and the promised Resurrection to evolve into

the eternal spirit - 3000 pages and counting. "

 

" Spiritual evolution promised and backed by the Holy Scriptures "

 

" We are evolving and the daily experience of Cool Breeze (Ruach,

Prana, Ruach, Nafas al Rachman, Spiritus, Chi) is evidence of the

spiritual evolution i.e., the Resurrection promised and backed by the

Holy Scriptures! "

 

Quotes about evolution

http://www.adishakti.org

February 15, 2009