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Stages of Cosmic Consciousness

Oct20

A cosmology is not just a theoretical enterprise, but a way also to gain our bearings in the inner world.  
Mary Conrow Coelho

More and more people are deepening their awareness of Teilhard de Chardin‘s insight:lead_teilharddechardin

In Teilhard’s estimation . . . it is in us, and as far as we yet know, only in us, that the Creation has become self-aware. Our eyes are the eyes through which the Earth finally beholds her own beauty, and, just as importantly, knows that she beholds it. Human beings are not above the Creation, but are themselves the Creation, that part of the Creation that is self- conscious.  John R. Mabry

I found that a hard saying when I first heard it (from Miriam MacGillis in 1979). It took me years to identify myself that way, steeped as I was in a cultural paradigm of separate, isolated components with humans in a compartment by themselves. I still pray to deepen my awareness of being integral with the rest of creation, helped now by many authors, speakers, and the “field” of awareness in which I live — to which readers of this website undoubtedly already contribute.

JOURNEY TO WHOLENESS

timthumb.phpVarious theories of levels or stages exist. Mary Inglis, presently based at Findhorn, Scotland, wrote an article about this decades ago that I still find helpful: “Journey to Wholeness: The Message in Myths.” Originally published in OneEarth magazine, it follows the interplay between the masculine and feminine principles/energies. I find Inglis’ three basic stages of this evolution applicable for other topics as well.

See if you find these very simplified highlights (which Mary has approved) of her article applicable to the interplay between human consciousness and our relationship to the rest of creation — historically and/or personally:

1. Unconscious, undifferentiated, pre-conscious oneness; it precedes polarity in human thought; human life patterns correspond with those of the natural world

2. Awareness of separate identities; exploration and deeper understanding of different components of creation; scientific belief that everything is atomic; dualities, dominance, competition

3. Conscious return to unity and interdependence, fully honoring variety and complexity and their interconnectedness.

Inglis does not name Thomas Berry‘s three cosmic principles (communion, autopoiesis, differentiation) or quote him (e.g. Nothing is itself without everything else.), but her third stage affirms them.images

Try reading Mary Inglis‘ ending with ecospirituality in mind:

[The third step] involves a willingness for grace to be active in our lives, for there is an element in it in which we do not choose it: it chooses us, if we are ready and open. . . . It asks that our actions and autonomy may reflect and be in the service of  a larger wholeness. . . And it is not a step that is taken once and for all, but is required to be made again and again, for it arises out of the continual pull to both self-sufficiency and self-transcendence.

Ultimately the individual conscious self only has meaning as it becomes a revelation and expression of the larger whole. It is through the capacity to surrender that the connection between the two is made, allowing the life of the spirit to guide and inform our actions, and bringing us to the knowledge and experience of our essential unity and interdependence with all creation and to the expression of this in our lives. As this happens, we return to the place from where we started, and know it for the first time.

AFFIRMATION OF INGLIS’ STAGES

I think of this article when I read quotes like the following:

Evolution goes beyond what went before, but because it must embrace what went before, then its very nature is to transcend and include, and thus it has an inherent directionality, a secret impulse, toward increasing depth, intrinsic value, increasing consciousness. 

Ken Wilbur

images-1We have the capacity to make choices that will evolve us, both personally and as a species. We have the capacity to engage in the management of the whale-sized issues that confront us, most of our own making. We have the capacity to cooperate with the unfolding of the universe, a process driven by grace, which invites us to be co-creators. . . . What if we were to engage our energies as consciously as possible in order to influence and help manifest this new emerging consciousness, a consciousness rooted in the past, yet filled with promise for our species and all life on our planet?  Judy Cannato

John Seed, the rainforest activist, tells of his sudden Aha! moment when acting to preserve a rainforest in Australia: I am part of the rainforest protecting myself. I am that part of the rainforest recently emerged into thinking.

There are no independent entities. Human individuality is not to be confused with human independence. We depend on the functioning whole and derive our being from it.  Mary Conrow Coelho

CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE DIVINE

Believers might find these stages applicable also to humanity’s consciousness of the divine. Perhaps they would be helpful to people who feel they have “lost their faith” — when they’ve just moved out of Stage Two and have not yet settled into Stage Three.

During humanity’s journey, cultures and religions immersed themselves in, named, and often fought over, their god(s). Mystics in various religious groups took the lead in “leaving god to find God” as they reached Stage Three. Modern science often helps people reach it, as do theologians and mystics like Teilhard de Chardin – but it’s often hard!

2-teilhardThe journey requires careful discernment of what to bring forward, what needs reinterpreting in light of new knowledge, re-creating systems that no longer function effectively within a new wholeness. Thomas Berry warns/challenges that it requires “reinventing the human.” Teilhard de Chardin reminds us that “We are collaborators of creation” and the energies of Love make all the difference.

We are, indeed, united with the cosmos and with the divine — understanding them distinctly, yet transcending isolation as we become aware of our interconnected whole and our role in co-creating it.

Inglis’ three stages of evolution help me “transpose” all religious writing that took place in Stage Two and make sense of it in our own evolving worldview.

Even Jesus‘ prayer in John 17 — That all may be one as you Father are in me and I in you. I pray that they may be one in us. . .  — can be understood in this light. The unity already exists; our task is to live into consciousness of it.

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Exploration into God

Jun6

The last two lines of Christopher Frey’s Sleep of Prisoners is a call to the great need of our time:
Affairs are now soul-size;images
The enterprise is exploration into God.

“God” has been imaged and worshiped in many
ways by humans over our thousands of years of history and throughout the Earth. Many religious seekers have realized changes in their own sense of the Mystery we call God. (This is often referred to as “stages of faith.”) In our time, when “affairs are soul-sized” and participation in the Great Work is growing, understandings of Incarnation have deepened.

What follows are quotes from theologians and others who have written about this. Following the last quote are questions for reflection/prayer:

Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ: God is Holy Mystery and as such can never be captured in a single image or set of images.

Joseph A. Bracken: God, the world of nature, and the world of human beings are intimately interconnected and interdependent.

Margaret Galiardi, OP: Although more and more people are realizing that we cannot continue to treat the Earth as we have done in the past, the prior realization of the presence of God dwelling within the planet [and all creation], and the consequent intrinsic value of the planet, is still seriously lacking.

Mary Ann Zollmann, BVM: As incarnations of that in-spiriting Mystery at the heart of being . . . each one of us is most deeply and spiritually a unique narrative form unfolding within the common narrative of Mystery’s life and being.

Philip Clayton: Theories of the divine agent (theologies) have strongly influenced how human persons were conceived (the imago dei argument). But just as clearly, ideas about what humankind is . . . have provided models for how God is to be conceived. In an age of absolute monarchy and male dominance, God was naturally conceived as the King of Kings; in an age of deterministic physics, God was known as the divine watchmaker, the ground of order and lawfulness; and in an age of dualism, God became pure spirit, pure mind (nous noetikos), independent of all things physical. In an age of emergence, how should the divine be conceived?

images-1For reflection: 

What thoughts above resonated with you?

How did you think of God when you were a child? How do you think of God now? If your understanding and images changed, how did/does that change you?

What effect does your present relationship with the divine mystery have on your relationships with people and the entire planet?

How do you feel about “unfolding within the common narrative of Mystery’s life and being”?

Post-Easter Reflection

Apr30

As the Easter season winds down, I’ve been thinking about the plight of the disciples as they struggled to recognize the risen ChristUnknown during his several appearances to them. I see a parallel with how my concept of Incarnation has changed over the years. 

Their religious heritage had put a male God in a heaven above, not unlike the way I had thought of “him” in my early years. That heritage had named the Hebrews special above all others, not unlike the way I grew up thinking of Roman Catholics. Their heritage taught them that Revelation was contained in their sacred writings, not unlike the way I had thought Sacred Scripture contained all there was to know about God.

The Pyramid of Creation

The disciples never saw the pyramid I learned in childhood — God on the top (line) the angels (line) humans (line, with unwritten hierarchies within that category: males above females, whites abo ve others, friends above enemies, “us” above “them”) animals (line, with those most resembling humans superior to those less like us) inanimate beings — but their received divisions were just as real.

Jesus had challenged them to transcend dichotomies and hierarchies of Jew and Gentile, male and female, acceptable and unclean, religious authority and common person. Now, in the space of a few days, he asked them to believe that he was present in bread and wine, died, and was alive with them. They had no outside models or authorities to assist them to cope with these mysteries. They had to become authorities!

imagesHow has quantum physics changed your way of thinking?

On the first day of the first quantum physics course I took, the class received topics for our final paper. One read: “How has quantum physics changed your way of thinking?” I noted that the end of the question was missing. Changed my way of thinking about what? “The question is correct as stated,” I was told, and by the end of the course, I began to understand — and my consciousness was, indeed, changed. We might have to deal with things in categories of human making, but the new science shows that edges are “soft”: all being is in communion; everything is interconnected (both in space and time); each has its own uniqueness. (Cf. the Christian Trinity!)

Connection with the Incarnation

I’d long believed that God is everywhere. I’d sought to find God in all things. Now I was called to connect those realities with Incarnation. Within that worldview, I came to see that Creation, Incarnation, Eucharist, and Resurrection were parts of one whole. The Christian Scriptures call us to see God/Jesus in all people. But, since nothing can be isolated from the whole within which it exists, God must be present not just in humans, but also in all creation. The “us” in God-with-us must include every molecule of creation in its interconnected parts.

What does it mean to change your way of thinking?

“Changing my way of thinking” meant losing divisions embedded in my psyche. It meant stretching my conceptions of identity: mine, God’s, others, and how we all interrelate. Jesus retains his humanity/divinity with no diminishment of either. Humans retain their special gifts and responsibilities and “image of God.” But the divine presence is also within all creation’s interconnected, differentiated, precious parts. Each bears, and witnesses to, the divine.

In the beginning was the Word …

With this new consciousness, I re-interpret “In the beginning was the Word. . . and the Word became flesh. . . .” Once I thought it images-2referred to Jesus alone. Now I believe that the Word cannot be separated from the divinity that inhabits and enables creation everywhere at every moment. Nor can Jesus be separated from the forces responsible, with the Spirit, for humanity. Like all human beings, Jesus’ ancestry dates back to stardust. It evolved in ever-ascending complexity through plants, animals, and eventually to conscious beings and homo sapiens. It couldn’t have happened without the life forces (air, water, plants, etc.) that kept creation going.

Este es mi cuerpo …

With this consciousness, I re-interpret “This is my body. . . .” from applying only to Jesus and members of the Mystical Body. For the reasons given above, I believe all Creation can be viewed, mystically, as Christ’s body (panentheism, not pantheism). “By his incarnation [Christ] inserted himself not just into our humanity, but into the universe which supports humanity. The presence of the incarnate word . . . shines at the heart of all things. (Teilhard de Chardin, SJ) Surely it shines in the consecrated host where all creation has been offered and transformed. Here we find the Heart of all reality.

Alleluia to that!

The disciples learned to see Christ in the bread and in the person in the upper room, at Emmaus, and on the beach. I am still learning to see Incarnation not just in Jesus Christ, but in all creation. Theologian Elizabeth Johnson says it this way: “The Creator Spirit dwells at the heart of the natural world, graciously energizing its evolution from within, and drawing the world forward toward an unimaginable future.” Alleluia to that!

Terri MacKenzie, SHCJ