Evolutionary Spirituality

As I sit this morning, in prayer, meditation, and reflection, you are with me. I Am grateful for this day and all that it will offer…I Am grateful for the support of Community…and I Am blessed to have this time to share with you. May you be Guided by Wisdom and Grace as you move through your day.

Some of you may know that I enjoy using the Insight Timer App to time my morning meditation. It offers a selection of bells to mark the beginning and ending of my quiet time so that I can put the idea of time completely aside. You may also know that I allow myself five minutes to reach out with ‘Friend Requests’ to others who are meditating with me, creating a Global Web of Consciousness with people all over the world. I share this with you because this morning, one of my friends had been to the Mystic Heart website and had a question for me: What is Evolutionary Spirituality? I was delighted when my reply came easily, so I thought I would share.

Evolutionary Spirituality is not new, although the term has recently become more popular, primarily because it provides an option for people who call themselves ‘spiritual, but not religious’. I think you’ll see why Mystic Heart adds Evolutionary Spirituality to its list of prominent teachings. Here are the basics.

Evolutionary Spirituality…

• embraces evolutionary science and the newest cosmological discoveries.
• embraces and integrates all life-affirming Wisdom Teachings from the world’s religions and philosophies.
• enhances and embraces the eco-spirituality movement, which recognizes and supports the creation, sustenance, and thriving of Nature as Spirit in action.
• acknowledges the evolutionary nature of spirituality itself.
• is a trans-denominational meta-spirituality and meta-religion. It uses Universal Principles to improve conditions, both individually and collectively.

And its core mission is forwarding the progressive evolution of humanity and life in the universe.

Can we please simplify this a bit? Yes…Evolutionary Spirituality says  that the process we call evolution is really the Infinite Intelligence (what some call God or Spirit) in the form of Its Creation (matter or form),  changing, choosing, adapting, moving, in an interactive dance with Its Creation. It is governed by Universal Principles, and is forever moving toward greater complexity and Unity. In other words, what we would call the material realm is simply God expressing and experiencing Itself by means of Its Creation. Sound familiar?

What does this mean to me? As self-reflective beings, humans have a unique (but not special in the hierarchical sense) role to play…our every thought, word, and action makes a lasting impact, leaves a permanent imprint, in the evolution of human nature, Nature, and the entire physical realm moving forward. Everything we do matters more than we know. Our particular role is to consciously choose growth, love, compassion, generosity, cooperation, respect, freedom…life-affirming ways of being, rather than letting the subconscious or race mind run the show. By doing so, we help direct Life in ways that are constructive rather than destructive.

My spiritual and religious training is in The Science of Mind and Spirit, the philosophy/religion developed and taught by Dr. Ernest Holmes. Dr. Holmes was a spiritual evolutionary. He was forever telling his students to stay open at the top, as he wove studies of Ancient Wisdom traditions with the most current developments in science, philosophy, psychology, and religion. In the last two years of his life, he studied the Evolutionary work of Sri Aurobindo, and brought the Indian Teacher’s view of spirituality and meditative practices into his own teaching (much to the chagrin of the Founders Church Board of Trustees!) “‘Ernest,’ one board member said, ‘this class undermines the church!’ He went on to give several reasons why teaching Aurobindo’s work in a Religious Science Church was not appropriate. Holmes stopped him with one sentence: ‘I am the church!’”(taken from HarvBishop.com, Religious Science’s Biggest (R)evolutionary)

In his early years, Holmes was grounded in the teachings of another Evolutionary, Rabbi Jesus. Considering the time and culture in which he lived, Jesus was a (R)evolutionary in his own right. In the book Teilhard de Chardin on the Gospels: The Message of Jesus for an Evolutionary World, author Louis M. Savary offers an Evolutionary Litmus Test. He invites us to consider whether the teachings of Jesus were “new and genuinely different from what went before”; whether they maintained “essential elements of functions of what went before”; if they were “more complex than anything within their class”; if they were” irreversible, such that, once presented and grasped, they cannot be denied”. Were they “transformative, but not destructive of what went before?” And did they manifest “new emergent properties?” Savary contended that the teachings of Jesus were, in fact, evolutionary, because when followed, they helped to bring about a level of love and union never before experienced by humans; they held the potential to further the evolution of the species by bringing about a higher way of thinking and being.

I close by offering the simplest illustration of Evolutionary Spirituality I can think of – the upward spiral. Each of us makes a spiritual journey in this life, either consciously or unconsciously. We are actively and consciously engaging in the Evolutionary Process if we are transcending or outgrowing old ways of thinking, speaking, and acting AND including all that we have learned in the past as fuel and guidance for our next steps forward.

If you are interested in learning more about Evolutionary Spirituality, modern teacher Craig Hamilton has many free videos online. Check him out…you’ll likely hear more about him if you hang out at Mystic Heart!

Have a blessed day, and remember…today and always, I am here to support you…today and always, you are stronger and wiser than you know. May we all look to the Light…be well…stay in touch…know our unity…and thrive! And may we know the Absolute Beauty and Wonder of this Grace-filled, once-in-a lifetime day, as Infinite Intelligence continues to pour Its blessings upon our world.