Manifesting A Generative Network of Global Salvation
The Loving Evolution of Christianity and the World – Part One
How will the world change?
We all know that it needs to. Many of our ways of living and being are not only unsustainable, but actively harm and do damage to the broader ecosystem. This is true certainly for the biosphere, but also for other fields of shared values, ideas, energy, and actions. Spirituality too. Our earth is begging for change, and so is God.
Before we get any further, I’ll be upfront with you—I don’t know how to save the world. Like so many of us, I’m regularly frustrated and appalled at the state of countless adversities and tragedies. With governments, corporations, the church, and individuals. The waves seem to come more and more often these days. Under their weight the pervading sense I am left with is one of despondent impotence. What difference can I really make?
In my better states, I am less overborn by this story of isolated individualism. If I’m brave, I can receive the gift that this despair brings: I can’t do it alone.
So then our only option is to try to do something together.
A Transformation of Consciousness
The situation we’re facing is sometimes referred to as the “Metacrisis.” Major problems stacking on top of other problems and overlapping with others still. Many of these are also called “wicked” problems, because of incomplete or contradictory information, large economic and human impact, and their interconnectedness with other problems.
How do you untangle a massive ball of knotted yarn? Well, first you have to find one of the ends from which to begin. Forgiving the oversimplified metaphor here, we believe that one of those ends is consciousness itself.
A widely-used quote often attributed to Einstein speaks to this (probably popularized because of its resonance): “No problem can be solved at the same level of consciousness that created it.”
For us at ICN, this is referring to the now deficient mental structure of consciousness. Much of the work we do is helping us learn and practice the reawakening to and cultivation of our embodied, latent structures of consciousness into an integrated whole that can foster the unfolding of the next “level” or structure of Integral Consciousness. My recent 10-part series explored this in-depth.
But in some ways, that’s only one end of the thread. Or in Integral parlance, only the interiors of things. We also need to work from the other end in the yarn ball—the exterior. Or more precisely, the collective systems of which we are a part, and often enclosed by.
Generative Systems vs. Perpetuating Systems
Just as we have recently become more aware and sensitive to the collective realities of our interior spaces—the dynamics of shared values, intermingling energetics, collective consciousness, etc.—so too have we begun to recognize the major impact of our shared systems and exterior structures of living: political systems, massive corporate structures, religious denominations, the internet, food production and distribution, economic systems, and more.
We all live and work within these systems all the time. We may only be aware of them to varying degrees at times. When they become oppressive or ineffectual, we notice them much more. When things are running smoothly (for us, at least), they often fade into the background. But they are still there, affecting our lives in countless seen and unseen ways.
Many spiritual folks, especially mystics, tend to think of our “spiritual lives” as operating more in our interior spaces, which then we “bring into our lives” through processes of integration. This is a true way of growth and movement, and one that we think has the most transformative power (coming from a new consciousness). The danger is getting stuck in our interior worlds and neglecting what is also our spiritual work—generating transformation, love, and service in the world. This is not just an individual process, but always happens in and through our overarching systems.
Our “exterior” spiritual work can operate within the current and existing systems for sure. On the level of very real human needs and issues, most of our loving service will. On another level, we might also work to try to improve or even transform some of these systems. While others try to escape or even dismantle the worst of them.
Any and all of these movements might be appropriate at certain times in regards to particular systems.
It’s important and helpful to be aware of these larger dynamics operating over and around us, to feel into what they are serving or how they are diminishing or stifling. In other words, whether they are systems of perpetuation, oppression, or generation.
Most existing systems seek to perpetuate themselves, to keep going. Indeed, that is what they were built for. To make processes continue more smoothly and easily. Healthy systems support the flow of energy and life to get where it needs to go. Like an efficient postal service with various systems of collection, service, and delivery.
But when the energy of perpetuation overtakes the functional service that a system performs, it begins to become more oppressive (some systems are also built to be oppressive too). It stops serving the flow of life for which it was intended and sacrifices from this service in order to self-serve. The system becomes institutionalized and more cut-off from what it is supposed to be serving.
As we’re primarily concerned with spirituality here, let’s focus in a little more now on the religious system of Christianity.
Constantine, the only Roman Emperor who chose the title “the Great”
Empire and Evolution
Throughout much of its history, a part of Christianity has served as an alternative system to the predominant empires of the ages. This was certainly the case for early Christianity and its subversion of Rome and Caesar—the “Lord” of the time.
It seems Christianity most loses its way when it gets coopted into the empire itself, or seeks to set up its own competitive power structure over and against the “empires of men.” This is never how Jesus spoke of the “kingdom of God,” but that didn’t stop those seeking power to wield religion in this way time and time again.
The most generative Christian movements have almost always been those at the margins. The alternative minorities, often operating outside or underneath the larger systems of the times. It seems it’s just too easy for religion and spirituality to be coopted and abused by these “powers of the world.”
But can Christianity, or Christians afford to “sit on the sidelines” any longer? Carving out their own little separate spaces, or even worse, ignoring the systems entirely and just focusing on our interiors. What good will it do to maintain our purity, set apart from immoral and unjust systems while they burn the world down?
We believe an Integral Christianity must seek to operate and evolve not just in our interiors, but our exteriors as well. Individually and collectively. This is how we support the loving evolution of Christianity and the world in an integrated way.
At ICN, our big vision is to be a part of creating a micro-system alternative of integrated and holistic Christianity. This includes the evolution of our consciousness in being—who we are, both individually and collectively. And it involves the evolution of our becoming—how we are transforming in ourselves and into the world.
Or to put it another way, how we might be a generative system of loving support and cocreative collaboration into new ways of being and living together in the world. Serving the flow of creative life from the divine in and through us, into the world.
“Religion”—which has now become a dirty word—at its best, would be a system of support and interconnection among a network of like-hearted, loving, and compassionate people who are seeking to save the world together. Not from eternal damnation in an imaginary hell, but from the destruction of our planet and the living hell of loneliness, injustice, fear, and despair.
That’s the kind of religion we need today. But perhaps it might serve us better to use another word. Let’s call it a network.
Cocreating a Network of Spiritual Evolution
One of the ways to avoid the pull of empire and the corrupting influence of power is to decentralize it. To make it all about the flow of life through connection, contribution, adaptability, and more. This is what happens in a healthy generative system, a creative network of emergence and evolution.
Rather than work in “institutions and systems built on an old consciousness” as Charles Eisenstein describes them, what would it look like to seek to cocreate new systems that make the old ones obsolete? Or rather, in the face of the growing obsolescence of the traditional, institutionalized church, how can we be a part of new communities of healing and generativity?
Not a new institution or denomination—not organized around mental beliefs or abstract principles, but rather a wide-array of gathering forces, bringing people together around a host of generative possibilities for dynamic, change-making systems.
In a network, there are many nodes of concentrations of life, different forms of expression and “gatherings” that come around different sources. Where life is emerging—if it is able to thrive—it will serve the whole system.
Some will stay in the existing systems and do the hospice work. Many will remain in triage and direct care. There is and will be a lot of healthy compost from the old systems that will serve the future.
Each person and community, each “I” and “We” will have its own unique and necessary part. And crucially, each must feel the freedom and power to take up their task—not as a burdening obligation, but as the work of our deepest heart and being, connected to the vital life and energy emerging from within us. Not from the force of external superego, but from the generative wellspring of divine life within, flowing up into and through us. Bringing life to the world.
This is much more than just for ourselves. It will not work as an “ego-network,” where everything is centered around our own self. It must be an “eco-network,” with the focus on the overall ecology of healthy life within the system, as a generative flow for all— “inside” and “outside” the network (boundaries are more permeable and fluid in network systems). We could also call it a “spirit network.”
Some core questions of such a network are:
What is alive in me/us that I/we have to offer?
What is mine/ours to give to the world?
Who are the connections and relationships I/we might need to foster further?
Where is life wanting to flow?
Do you hear other questions arising in you? Feel free to add them in the comments.
Saving the World?
Can we save the world? Of course not.
Can the body of Christ become the savior of the world? Isn’t that what it was always meant to be?
Given the behavior and reputation of many “Christians” these days, that may seem far-fetched. Perhaps until we remember that the Body of Christ does not mean the church, nor does it refer only to the people who follow Christ.
The body of Christ is alive and permeating all things. It is the manifesting energy of the divine interfused within all material reality and incarnated into full and further becoming.
Or, as Cynthia Bourgeault recently pondered on our podcast:
"There is no such thing as private enlightenment... personal salvation apart from the neighbor. And so, we do the work that's required to keep our own vessels clear and transparent so that we can be of service to a healing and an unveiling which is essentially global and biospheric in nature. It's not just the human race, it's... how can this planet emerge into a deeper, and even higher and more manifest level of polyphony, of systems intertwined, of consciousness within the Earth itself expressing itself in human beings?
The questions are the beginning. They are our prayers, beseeching God to answer, not with proclamations so much as comfort, encouragement, presence. And perhaps foremost, with becoming through us. Manifesting in our lives with generativity for the salvation of the world.