What We Are About to Know

Stepping into Emergence
The Loving Evolution of Christianity and the World – Part Two

What is Emergence? 

We hear the stories of those “eureka” moments of discovery and breakthrough. Stuck in the complexity of something that seems beyond reach or even unsolvable, suddenly the apple falls and jolts us on the head. A way opens. The pieces fall into place and something clicks. Voilà.

Our imagination might take us to the more extreme examples of inventions and scientific breakthroughs, but to a lesser degree these moments happen more than we might think. It’s just that they are not usually the product of the solitary genius stewing in borderline madness until the one change in the formula pops into their head.

Far more often, novel discovery and the process of evolutionary unfolding is collective. Even when one is “alone,” they are operating in the noosphere, the collective field of knowledge and wisdom—both through acquired learning and the more mystical presence of others in often unseen guidance and energy.

Rather than survival of the fittest, we are learning more and more how evolution happens through emergence. In scientific use, emergence refers to the process of how something new arises from the interaction between elements. Or in other words: life evolves together.

In her splendid essay “Can Emergence Be Our Saving Grace?” Anna Katharina Schaffner describes emergence this way:

The concept of emergence is as evocative as it is open, simultaneously poetic and scientific, inspirational and aspirational. Emergence occurs when a higher-level entity displays properties its parts do not have on their own. A process of attractive forces, it gives rise to a new whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts – a clustering and merging into new formations with unpredictable qualities.

When we are drawn together with others into spaces of emergence with creativity, we can discover something unexpected. Even more, we actually can cocreate together to become part of something surprisingly generative and transformative—perhaps even taking part in the upspringing of evolution, the emergent unfolding of new ways of being and becoming. That is emergence.

Not What We Already Know

“Emergence is the result of synergy, synergy is the result of relationship… relationship is the result of attractive forces.”
– Daniel Schmachtenberger

In our WeSpace groups, we come together with others who feel drawn, consciously or unconsciously at times, to something more. It may be a more genuine expression of community, the attraction to others on a similar deepening journey, further mystical awareness and expression, or even something that can’t always be articulated.

Underneath any and all of these motivations is on some level a dissatisfaction with the way things are currently. That more of the same will not work, and something different, something new is required—something new is calling to be born. We are responding to the attractive force, calling us into new possibilities of synergy.

In our Integral Prayer practice, we move into a collective time of sharing for one another, where I always say we open “not to what we already know, but what we are about to know.”

This is an invocation to emergence.

There is value to sharing what we already know. The things we have learned from experience or study can and do help us along the way. And sometimes we are even able to share those lessons with graceful support for others. This is a beneficial way of being in community with others.

But we have access to much more. We can practice a way of being together that resources the generative possibility that comes from tapping into the flow of creative arising and intuitive wisdom. This comes in the moment from deep within—not just our own individual depths, our spiritual womb, but also from the unified field of our divine womb. When we do this together, we are, in a sense, dilating the collective birth canal for new life to emerge.

To call it “new” is something of a misnomer. It may be new to us, but it comes from the eternal. In a way it always already is, was, and will be. And yet, it is not predetermined. Its arrival requires participation and evocation. The ever-present being flowing into becoming. Here and now. In this moment. In this time. In this space. The coming of Christ. That’s what we are seeking to tap into.

We do this for one another in WeSpace both as a way to strengthen, comfort, and encourage one another, and as a way to practice learning and growing in our sensitivity to the awareness of emergence coming forth in and through us all. This way of perceiving and knowing can be profoundly creative and generative in all areas and aspects of our lives, as we bring it into different settings and circumstances as part of our process of life integration.

It is how we might begin to answer some of the questions from last week—how we discover the flow of life and what is ours to help bring forth. We might even bring this to our WeSpace group if we’re in one, or to another collective we are a part of, even just with one other person. In this way we tap into emergence and become makers of a new world.

Becoming Makers

“I was and remain attracted to emergence precisely because it is so radically other – what calls me is its unknowable, dormant, and unrealised charge, its capacity to alter what cannot be changed by will and reason.”
– Anna Katharina Schaffner

This practice of emergence we seek to learn in WeSpace groups is in the realm of the mystical. By mystical, we mean unmediated access and contact with the divine. God unremoved from our present reality. This is not just bringing the personal God closer—though it includes that as well—but bringing to bear the inner divine reality within and among us.

This is a crucial spiritual evolution, no longer solely externalizing God or the divine role of being God’s presence in the world to “religious professionals.” We can no longer be passive consumers of religious services, goods, and wares.

That spiritual arrangement is one many of us have already stepped through, and yet it can still be difficult to come into more ownership of our power and generativity. How do we do it? What should we do? What does it look like? How do I find my calling? 

We need to discern these questions with our minds, but we won’t find the answers from the mental structure of consciousness alone. The life and energy of these questions must come from the depths of ourselves, arising from our divine identity at the core of our being—our spiritual womb, the vital center which is our place of the magic structure of consciousness. This structure, according to Jean Gebser, is where we “become makers” of reality. 

In mystical participation with the divine within, we become cocreators with God. To be participants in the divine nature is to create, to bring forth life, to make new. To tap into the depths of our creative nature. To flow from our vital source out into the world with transformation not only of self, but of the world as well.

What arises, the rivers of living water, may be personal expressions of our deeper unique selves—indeed, they must be—but they will not be limited to only self-expression. We will be carried into the creativity in service to a better world. Divine expression of self and spirit.

We might ask together: What are we creating?

This is a different question and a different orientation to an often unspoken and predominant question in our lives: What are we learning?

It’s not an either/or, and of course we should always strive to continue learning, especially generative learning that brings us into more wholeness and isn’t just consuming more content. Learning that isn’t just giving us more information, but is leading and empowering us into generative creation.

Shifting from the age of information to the age of collaboration.

“Emergence evokes the question of what kinds of ‘We’ we can become. Into what could we evolve if we open ourselves up to new ways of working, living and acting together? What shape could this new ‘We’ take? Which emergent capacities could we develop that make us bigger than the sum of our parts? – Anna Katharina Schaffner

Becoming Co-Generators of Emergence

“The concept of emergence, more than any other concept we have encountered, puts Humpty-Dumpty back together again in ways that are wonderfully resonant with our existential and religious yearnings.”
– Ursuala Goodenough and Terrence W. Deacon

We are all creators, cocreators with God. And we are being called to partner in the ongoing work of continual creation, of bringing forth. Creation was not a one-time event, but an ever-present unfolding of origin into this now, at this time.

When we let go of the grip of what we already know and step into the possibility of what we are about to know together, we intentionally open and invite the co-generative possibility of becoming active participants in the divine work of evolution.

This is the body of Christ becoming, the divine body alive and active in the world. Healing, creating, calling, inspiring.

This is a body more than the sum of its parts, who comes together when we open to the divine lifeblood flowing among and between us, bringing the essential energy from the heart of God.

So how do we do it?

On the cellular level, emergence comes about through the interaction of atoms in accordance with two general features: their energy and their form.

Similarly, our co-generative possibility will be determined by the energy and the form into which we bring ourselves together.

Teilhard de Chardin spoke of a distinction in energy, recognizing both a tangential and radial energy among parts coming together. Tangential energy is that which operates at the already comfortable and familiar level of interaction. It is sustaining and steady, but not creative. Radial energy is that which draws us forward into greater complexity and possibility. It is the energy of emergence.

As for form, our emergent possibilities will come through the uniqueness of our personal makeup—our embodied qualities of being that come forth from the essence of who we are. And in the form of our collective interaction—not passively just in the presence of one another, but actively and intentionally engaging with one another in “intimate” and generative ways that call forth the emergence.

This is one of ways we can seek to become together in our WeSpace groups.

“The greater the participation of embodied dimensions … the more creative one’s spiritual life may become and a larger number of creative spiritual developments may emerge.” – Jorge Ferrer

What We Are About to Become

“We are doing much more than accessing information about what the future might be and are instead becoming living emergent expressions of this future, portals for evolutionary unfoldment. We are not ‘getting visions of the future’ but are becoming agents of it, now.”
– Stephen Busby

The crucial step of evolutionary emergence is to move from the beginnings of what we are about to know and into what we are about to become.

We are not separate agents standing before a drawing board, just as God is not a distant figure tinkering from far above. God is and always has been in the very midst of that which she is still creating. And so are we.

We become makers and cocreators of evolution not onto a separate canvas and an object-distant world, but in and through the symphony that is already playing around and in the heart of us.

This is to be in the enchanted world, felt in the richness of its latent possibility. It may be unseen, but it can be felt. It can be heard. And it can be played with. We can be play-ers in the delightful dance of creation becoming created anew and again.

I don’t mean to paint it all so rosy. Sometimes it feels like destruction. Sometimes it feels like all will be lost.

The story of individual form might, in the end, be entropy. But the story of us, the communal movement and energy of life is emergence.

Which story will we choose to live in?

What might dare to emerge from our midst?

Next week, in part three, we will seek to hold the emergent possibility for the mystical regeneration of our divine earth.

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