When We Evolve It Will Be Together
The Story of Communal Emergence
Practicing Community – Part Fourteen
One of the tragedies in our time of hyper-individualism is the loss of our larger stories of meaning, purpose, and transformation.
Religious narratives of eternal judgment to heaven or hell have largely lost their fearful grip. Commercial narratives of economic triumph are insatiable and ultimately unfulfilling.
National narratives of political salvation coming from the State not only continue to fail, but generally aren’t encompassing enough to bring about holistic transformation.
What is your larger collective story?
Is it big enough for the immensity of your longings? For the immeasurable value of your soul? For the highest purpose and deepest meaning of your ultimate being?
What are the larger stories that are worthy of our lives? That are worth not only telling but traversing?
At ICN, we are participating in the cosmic story of divine evolution. This is the larger Christian story of the Universal Christ, of the Omega of God unfolding into becoming through us, through the Body of Christ resurrecting and manifesting in our time in deeper and more holistic ways.
The story of loving evolution is that of divine spirit consciousness coming forth more fully through our participation, cultivation, and co-creation as children of God growing up into the new heaven and new earth that is becoming today, that we are building together. That is our divine vocation.
Whose Journey?
One of the great myths of personal meaning is the Hero’s Journey. The to-be hero receives a call to adventure, is victorious over a decisive crisis, and then returns transformed. This story is so common, you’ve seen it hundreds of times in stories, movies, books, and more.
In counter-balance, there is also the Heroine’s Journey, which instead of going out turns inward, going deep into the soul to heal the wound and reclaim the divine feminine.
These are both useful and beneficial personal stories of transformation, but they are also highly individualistic (especially the Hero’s Journey). We also have other stories of personal meaning that don’t focus so much on the heroic, but this is the monomyth we continue to see presented over and over in this day and age especially.
The myth of the singular, heroic savior is very deep in our psyche. We want to see the hero emerge and elevate them to the place of the benevolent King, who will solve all the problems and rule the land with wisdom and grace—so we all can live happily ever after. We see this not only in politics and business, but in religion and spirituality as well.
However, it is my belief that the days of the King have passed. Not simply so that we can shift to the rule of the Queen, however better that may be.
We need the story of the Communal Journey. The age of communities transforming the world, going on collective journeys that integrate staying home and venturing out, the masculine and the feminine (and beyond), physical and the immaterial, spiritual and political (in new ways). For the transformations necessary today will take more than one, or even a few great heroes. It will take all of us.
Yes, we will still take our personal journeys—but they will not hold the power to transform on a collective level until they can be integrated with a larger story and movement. Until there is a bigger story that we can be individually initiated into that will hold the value of our own personal transformations and call them forth to greater social spiritual contribution.
This is where evolution will happen—not from a singular figure, one hero saving us all—but from collectives enacting possibility-space and co-discovering how spirit is arising in this time. How God is enacting the loving evolution of the world—and this is crucial—through us. Through all of us.
When we evolve it will be together.
The Story of Collective Emergence
I believe this is the direction our spiritual communities need to go. To embracing this larger story and calling forth the collective power to enact it.
In the Christian tradition, the older stories have passed away. We are no longer trying to save souls from a hell that never was. We are not waging a war against the forces of evil. We are not trying to build a great city on a hill that is a shining light set apart from the rest of the world. We even are not just trying to be a space of loving support and care for people in a hurting world.
Yes, we are still trying to do that—of course. But it is not the full story. Jesus calls us to both healing and transformation. And the movement of spirit is to evolve our consciousness and our planet into greater love and liberation.
How do we participate in this story as communities?
There are many ways it can come forth, but nearly all of them require an orientation toward emergence—for this is how evolution happens. That something new arises through the interaction between elements. It is a collective process.
In our spiritual context, we see this as the movement of spirit enacting through communities who open and cultivate this arising in various ways. In other words, emergence is the movement of spirit today, which can really only come forth through community.
Last week, we saw that healthy community structures often pass through phases in their initial stages. If they make it through the invitation, they open to a deeper possibility of participation in this larger story.
This is when a community is most ready for emergence. Most primed to discover something new and transformative—for one another and for the world.
“Emergence”
Moving with the Energies of Emergence
After gathering and coming together for a time, communities are eventually faced with a choice. Do we settle in and stay here in this space of safety and sustenance that we have carved out? Or do we continue the journey together, creating opportunities for others to join and pathways for us to forge ahead?
We can fall in love with our safe space, cherishing it so much that we want to protect it, which usually involves some form of closing it off from others. Somewhat paradoxically, this will eventually spell the end of the community, for as the energy turns in upon itself with nowhere to go, it sours like stagnant water. Communities need flow.
And it is a missed opportunity, for the environment of a loving, supportive community is exactly the fertile ground necessary for emergence to come forth for collective transformation.
We also have to make the choice to shift as a community more toward the collective. In our WeSpace groups, we focus on each individual in Resonating Prayer, offering love, healing, and support. This is wonderful and so necessary in our lives.
But we can also, over time, come more into moving with the collective energy field of love to enhance our capacities of emergence—not what we already know but what we are about to know—not just for one another individually, but for more as well. For our whole group, for our larger collective, for the world.
Teilhard de Chardin spoke of a distinction in collective 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.
“Energy is divided into two distinct components: a tangential energy which links the element with all others of the same order (that is to say, of the same complexity and the same centricity) as itself in the universe; and a radial energy which draws it towards ever greater complexity and centricity—in other words forwards.”
What would this look like to draw upon the creative force of radial energy in our midst? What possibilities might emerge through the movements of spirit as we tune into truly listening to how we are being invited forward as humans and as a planet?
Unlocking Possibility
To do this, we need one another. We cannot do it alone, literally. And so we need practices of community that bring us into these spaces, into these ways of being together.
All that has come before in this series is, in many ways, the earlier parts of the story. How we can gather, form, nurture, and foster healthy communities that will be able to participate in this further calling.
We gather community and engage in dedicated mystical practice because we believe it is what makes possible the loving evolution of Christianity and the world. We practice community because healthy structures with healthy interpersonal and relational dynamics will be the best not only for our own health and well-being, but also what most fosters the possibility of emergence in our midst.
When we are in a loving environment of spiritual intimacy and trust, we can then discover the ways that we help unlock one another into greater participation in the divine, in the life of spirit (awakened consciousness), and in the flow of creativity that will bring forth life anew—the emergence into our next evolution of loving transformation.
The Communal Journey
The thing about a good story is that you don’t know where it’s going. If it’s predictable or all laid out ahead of time, the compelling force is lost.
We don’t know what lies ahead in the future—and we don’t have to. We can have a vision for where we want to go and how we think we should get there. We can know what we don’t want to do any longer, having learned from the old stories with their familiar beats and predictable outcomes, because we know that they won’t work for what’s ahead (or at least, will only be a part of the larger story).
We don’t need to fear the mystery either, for we are always also engaged with the Infinite Face of God-Beyond-Us, which frees us from feeling like we need to know it all or have it all under control. It is always in bigger hands, so to speak. That doesn’t negate our own participation and engagement in it, but we are not the ultimate authors—thank goodness!
The other thing about not knowing the way, it’s a lot more fun when you’re with others. Even being lost is bearable if you’re in good company. We can bear so much more when we are together.
We are not here just to take a solo journey alone, but to walk together into a new heaven and a new earth. Not one that is already formed and fully finished, but one that is still coming forth through our co-creating with divine spirit emerging in, through, and as us.
We are arising into healing and renewal, into transformation, into loving evolution.
“Phoenix Arise”
Practicing Community
Gather together around the intention toward emergence in your community. Engage in a practice welcoming and evoking radial energy to bring forth something new in your midst.
Write or tell your story in the context of a communal story. What is your larger collective story? Where do you want it to go next?
As a community, ICN is practicing and learning more how to come into collective emergence. If you would like to be a part of future gatherings focused on welcoming and evoking collective emergence in our midst, sign up below to be invited.