Everything That Rises Must Converge
Why We Need the “We” – Part Three
We are experiencing a great convergence in humanity today. As the world evolves further and further technologically and scientifically, the space is shrinking. Globalization is bringing people together in new ways both profound and troubling. This external convergence is absolutely heightening the need for greater evolution and convergence in our interior spaces: our morality, our values, our education, our empathy, and certainly our spirituality.
When there is a strong convergence, two ranges of outcome are possible: A horrible crash or a beautiful communion.
Crashing into Regression
As more people are being brought together in this world—often by varying degrees of choice—there is created a direct challenge to the ways that people have long perceived their identities. As the external barriers break down because of this convergence, the tribal markers lose their power and people often feel threatened. They feel like their identity is being taken away.
In response to this, many people entrench themselves against this changing tide. They seek to maintain or hold on to a previous existence. Often they seek to “go back” to a time that was “more simple” or when things were better—either remembered or actually better for them. They build up further antagonistic tribal markers to double down on keeping their identities. Many people respond to fear and trauma with a form of regression in their personal lives, and we are seeing it collectively in a lot of society now.
The disdainful and dismissive attitude of many toward this response is also regressive, because it very often condemns that identity—which only further entrenches it in defensiveness, rather than seeking to provide pathways for people to grow and develop further. It too is a rejection of convergence. It is an outlook that conflates people with ideologies, further reinforcing tribalism and stoking conflict—as if we are at war against one another.
Convergence into Communion
“Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge.”
—Teilhard de Chardin
If our spiritual traditions, very much including Christianity, are to offer any sort of healing to this situation, it will come through a transcendence of such tribal identification that only creates more separation. Rather than seeing the conflict as a war to be won, we must truly learn to love our enemies. We love them by converging into greater degrees of identification with them, beyond the lesser identities and tribal barriers.
This does not preclude the need for justice, but is truly a restorative justice for all rooted in the deeper reality of communion. We don’t reach this union through bypassing the struggle, but through seeing deeper, loving more inclusively, and identifying more broadly. We go beyond “rubbing shoulders” and enter into heart confluence and attunement.
“By their very nature, and at every level of complexity, the elements of the world are able to influence and mutually to penetrate each other by their within, so as to combine their ‘radical energies’ in bundles…this psychic interpenetrability grows and becomes directly perceptible…it is written all over the social phenomenon and is, of course, felt by us directly.”
Teilhard called this coalescence. He recognized that what we think of as borders and boundaries are much more fluid than we realize. Not the borders of countries, but the borders of what we think of as our individual selves. He saw that humanity is not made up of isolated selves and that consciousness is not a castle of the mind. Quantum mechanics has shown us non-locality, but we still so often fail to see how we are so much more than what we think we are.
Yes, remain true to yourself. You have to follow your path to convergence. This movement is not just for the other, and cannot be done if it is seen as solely an altruistic action. For that is still coming from an identification of other-ness. Remaining true to yourself is going deep enough within that you first discover and then experience that you are not separate. But we must all enter through our own hearts and inner being.
Consciousness for Collective Transformation
Integral perspective sees this convergence tension as a crisis of consciousness. When people are in a space of awareness and identification from a certain stage of consciousness, then they literally cannot see what is “above their head.” It’s why there is often so much cross-talk with very little engagement and understanding.
For people to respond to convergence with hope for communion rather than fear of “the other,” they have to have access to a consciousness and identity that can hold such a possibility. Raising consciousness is a complex and often complicated endeavor, but one of the most profound and immediate ways this can happen is through a “peek” experience. A glimpse into a broader, more inclusive reality than previously thought possible. While this can happen in many different ways, an expansive spiritual experience can often be one of the most powerful.
The Institute for Noetic Sciences (they define “noetic” as inner wisdom, direct knowing, intuition, or implicit understanding) has a model seen here diagraming how such a spiritual experience can be the beginning of a process of consciousness development that leads to the transformation of society. There are diversions that can keep that from happening, but this pathway exists.
The gap that seems to me to be somewhat common in our spiritual communities is the movement from “I to we.” Whether or not the “practice becomes an end in itself,” or it becomes “all about me” in a system of spiritual capitalism, the jump to living deeply and bringing transformation to society often lacks the collective, it lacks the “WE” in meaningful expression of shared consciousness.
We desperately need to access and activate this collective consciousness and practice if we hope to see any kind of significant social transformation to a society being torn apart in the violent crash of convergence. We need the vision and the means to call forth a greater communion. An “I to We” shift that can carry and expand consciousness to deep and compelling expressions with the power to transform on a collective scale.
That is why we need more spaces directly devoted to practicing and engaging with the WE. Our consciousness development throughout our life has almost certainly come from a starting assumption of individuality. So much so that perhaps even the idea of experiencing collective consciousness sounds basically impossible to you. I assure you it is quite possible and genuinely expanding. What’s more, it’s being further recognized as the pathway ahead for humanity.
Convergence is already happening. We see the crashes all around us. It’s up to us to be people of communion.
Our WeSpace groups are invitations to come inside such energy and reality. It’s a new experience for many, and it takes learning and practice. That’s why we need such groups. Come enter in and discover the WE within yourself, for the good of the world.