EMERGENCE IS RELENTLESS
“Ours is an age between world views, creative yet disoriented, a transitional era when the old cultural vision no longer holds and the new has not yet constellated.”
~ Richard Tarnas
There are tectonic forces operating on human society which are speeding up in the present time. These powerful forces are called many things, but I like the idea of a universal evolutionary impulse toward greater creativity and complexity. This impulse is expressed as cultural evolution in humanity – we grow in complexity to adapt to the living conditions we are co-creating. These emerging new capacities come from within us, where all potential is accessed. This has always been true, it is simply more pronounced and accelerated now and for the foreseeable future than it has been in the past. The challenges are formidable and the capacity of New Thought teachings to empower us to thrive is more than sufficient for the tasks at hand.
"We have to be able to deal with uncertainty, change, chaos and loss of power without the depth of the fear that makes us go into massive denial and massive violence to other human beings."
~ Ram Dass
New Thought is one of the few spiritual teachings which recognizes emergence from within as the natural path of change and growth. We seek a deeper connection to the transcendent from within ourselves; we recognize the value if intuition, the inner knowing that emerges within each of us; through our spiritual practices, we seek a depth of self-knowledge to better understand the dynamics of emergence in our lives.
Just as the oak tree emerges from the acorn, which has the entire design of the great tree within it and uses resources in its environment to actualize its own potential, so we create our experience of life using resources from our environment from an inner pattern in consciousness. Emergence is a way of thinking of the process by which we access the Universal Mind, the Creative Intelligence of the Universe, then personalize and actualize it as our experience. It is always an inside-out process.
"This is exactly the position that modern philosophers take; it is called the theory of emergent evolution, which means that when nature needs something, it demands it of itself, and out of itself makes it.”
~ Ernest Holmes, excerpt from Science of Mind Magazine 2011
These are times of great human complexity. The challenges created at stages of less complexity which cannot be solved at the level at which they were created, call forth greater capacities from us via emergence. We can use our spiritual technologies, such as meditation, affirmative prayer, contemplation, etc., to allow this natural process of emergence to happen through us more easily. To actualize the new effectively, we must do our inner work to become more open to change, to paradox, to living more and more in the mystery, because the path forward is growing less and less clear.
“What is difficult is to see both truths simultaneously: to suppress nothing, to remain open to the paradox, to maintain the tension of opposites. Wisdom, like compassion, often seems to require of us that we hold multiple realities in our consciousness at once.”
~ Richard Tarnas
We pray, remember, not to change the Creative Intelligence, but to change ourselves from within. We pray to become more available to the emergence of new capacities from within ourselves. This process is natural, but we can aid it with regular spiritual practices. As complexity grows around us, the capacities called forth are greater and greater, as are the demands on spiritually-realized persons. We must pray and meditate and act.
"So many people pray and pray and pray. They don't get action. Our bodies need to be acted upon. It is not altogether praying, but it is doing. You must do something.”
~ Charles Fillmore
There are no accidents. If you are present on planet earth in a part of the world with greater complexity, then you are here on purpose. You may feel that you have little to give, but remember that the process of emergence is relentless, urging you to bring forth greater and greater versions of yourself to meet the challenges of the moment. The most powerful thing that you can do is to make yourself available to this process – to do your spiritual work daily, deeply, lovingly. We ARE the ones we have been waiting for.
What a grand time to be in New Thought!
Your comments are welcomed.
