Loving Evolution Together
Spiritual Energy Part 4
“Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other, so that the world may come to being. This is no metaphor; and it is much more than poetry.”
–Teilhard de Chardin
As we awaken to the spiritual energy within us, we find ourselves drawn more and more to the radial energetic dynamic, the drawing forward and further. This is no solo affair or hero’s journey. This radial energy “bundles.” It draws us together. It is the antithesis to the fragmentation, separation, and loneliness so pervasive today.
This attraction is not only for companionship but for the discovery and mutual expression of the evolving realities that are emerging in our midst. They more easily arise and can be discovered in a collective context. Even more, the community itself, the combining of energies, is instrumental to this movement forward.
This coming together is a convergence. A con-centration. Our “within” with one another. This is a movement not only acknowledging but actively participating in the reality of our ever-present underlying connection. We are being drawn beyond ourselves, to the deeper reality of our interconnection, our interbeing on a mystical level that we can participate in. It is this “joining together” that will cultivate the next major step in evolution.
It is what Teilhard described as moving “toward a concentration of the energies of consciousness.” Evolution happens together, and the pathways forward will emerge in collectives. This is how the world will come into being at long last.
Con-centrating Energy in Collectives
“No element could move and grow except with and by all the others with itself.”
–Teilhard de Chardin
What will bring us to the end of our individualism? Further education and insights are helping us realize how our illusion of separateness pervades so many areas of our lives. So too spirituality. But ideas are not enough. We need to experience it in a personal way to truly begin to live into this reality.
This cannot come through passive receptivity, through consumer spirituality spoon-fed from experts. The myth of the hero-pastor-guru is insufficient. Our teachers are important, but the one-way flow diffused by dispersion will no longer suffice. We all need to actively engage in participation with one other collectively. When we do this tapped into our spiritual energy, coming together first serves to support one another’s unfolding, our awakening. Teilhard describes how a neighboring particle is able to “augment” itself by radial energy present. At the beginning, we need to receive it. Later, we learn more how to give.
When we enter into a shared space with attunement to the collective energy, we can very much feel our interconnection. We can experience the giving and receiving through the flow of energy. Even more, we can find that the combined energies of all those present transports us into an experience outside the confines of our regular, individual boundaries. Rather than feeling disoriented or drained, we leave these experiences charged with vitality. It increases each person’s capacity and consciousness, while also drawing us forward, further beyond ourselves.
“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 ‘radial energies’ in ‘bundles’… this psychic interpenetrability grows and becomes directly perceptible.”
This may be hard to understand without having experienced it. But it is a regular occurrence in our WeSpace groups. It can happen online as much as in person. It is not bound by physical space. The experience comes for those who are ready for it, who feel drawn to participate together with others in mystical practice. The energy calls out and draws us forward, toward one another, toward the future.
It is not always an easy movement. It takes trust and love to let down the barriers that we’ve often set up around ourselves. To come together in this way, we need to be drawn together by spiritual energy, by the deep surge of love, by the presence of Christ (divine + material) among us. This is why “love” is so important when we move into this shared space.
Love as the Energy of Evolution
“Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves.”
–Teilhard de Chardin
We move beyond ourselves with others when we are compelled by “an internal propensity to unite,” as Teilhard calls it. We often call it love, but not just the sentimental or romantic expressions. This is the energy of love, of eros for the world—a universal embrace that can be expressed to and with a few others. For Teilhard, this universal joining is the “evolutionary significance” of love.
As he says in perhaps his most famous quote, “The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire.”
We are beginning the early manifestations of this profound intuition, that within the energies of love is the most crucial discovery possible for the future of humankind. As elemental to our survival as we can yet imagine. Again, this is not poetry or a metaphor. This is mystical science.
Which is why we so desperately need mystical experiments, not by solitary “scientists” observing with detached objectivity. Love is not a private affair. Rather we need energetic communities of exploration dancing with sparks in the midst of the long, cold night. Seeking to discover the flame of radiant love to light the way ahead.
The Evolving Edge: WeSpace
There is room for all kinds of experiments and expressions in this direction. What might yours look like?
To endeavor in this way may mean moving beyond many of the old forms of spiritual practice and gathering, of tangential ways. We can include the best of what still serves us, but the need for evolution is too great to settle for dusty forms. We will no longer be satisfied with just discussing ideas. We will seek to include within our scope much more than just the mental and cognitive forms of knowing. We will crave more holistic and loving ways of being, learning, and discovering together.
Integral Christian Network seeks to do this in our WeSpace groups. Through the Whole-Body Mystical Awakening practice, we seek integrate our entire being in tune with the loving, spiritual energy engaged in the shared, collective space. Moving into this awakened state of consciousness together serves to cultivate the arising of wisdom, care, and greater being. We are learning to be, receive, and offer from this place of being connected to the spiritual energy of divine love within and among us.
“Evolution = rise of consciousness
Rise of consciousness = Union effected.”
This is the evolution of 1st person, individual and collective. The I and the We. We also integrate the 2nd person You presence of God in this space through spiritual guides such as Jesus, Mary, God’s motherly/fatherly presence, and one another in order to receive from them much more than we can discover simply on our own. We need each of the Three Faces of God in our quest for the manifestation of loving evolution.
The future is collective. The way forward is together. We have so much further to go. But we must begin with the step in front of us. What might that be for you?
Can we learn to tap into the flow of spiritual energy within and share that among us? Can we learn to offer ourselves in love to one another, enacting the underlying reality of interbeing that we all know deep inside? Can we learn to discover the pathways of connecting to the deep surge of love in its radial energies, bringing us all to come into the new ways of being for the loving evolution of the world?
If these questions resonate with you, if this way of being together inspires or intrigues you, we invite you to participate in one of our WeSpace groups. Summer groups start this week, and enrollment will be closing soon. There is no cost to register or participate in a WeSpace group. We gather together in service to God, which is to say the hope of tomorrow in the divine unfolding within, among, and around us.