Your Evolutionary Question

When the Celestine Prophecy, a spiritual novel by James Redfield, came out in 1993, it was widely read by spiritual types.  I however somehow did not read it till 2006.  I loved the various spiritual insights and truths he shared in the form of prophecies that the main characters were finding from thousands of year's old scrolls.  But the most fascinating part for me was his encounter with a priest, Father Sanchez who teaches him about the 6th insight, and in so doing also helps him to identify his evolutionary question.  For most people who have read this book when I mention the evolutionary question this has gone right by them and they don't remember it at all.  For me it is the most important part of the book.   Perhaps this is because I am also a therapist and I'm so impressed with how it weaves family of origin material with our being able to understand our spiritual purpose in life.

I have written elsewhere on this blog about the idea of chosing our parents.  Redfield also works with this idea and in the encounter between the main character and Father Sanchez, the priest guides him at looking at the qualities of each his parents, their sort of motto in life or stance towards it, what he learned from each, and what was the unfinished business of their lives.  From this broad over view the Priest helps him notice that he has woven these bits from his parents together into a spiritual question that he has chosen this life time to pursue and to work with.  This is called one's "evolutionary question" (because when we pursue it we grow.)  In a handbook Redfield wrote to accompany the book he has a series of questions designed to also help people identify these influences which shaped their journey.  Interestingly in Joanna Macy's Work that Reconnects there is one exercise entitled: My Choices in this Life Time which coming from a Buddhist perspective of reincarnation also posits that we have chosen the conditions of this life time and that we have chosen them to prepare us for the spiritual work that we are here to do.  I have in my practice developed a way to help people identify in two to three sessions what their evolutionary question is.

What a marvelous compass to have, to have a really big perspective on the events of our lives and the influences of our parents in shaping our spiritual purpose in life.   What an amazing thing to walk conscious knowing that you indeed have a spiritual purpose and to be able to cleave closely to it.  I have found that when one knows what it is, it is possible to ask on a daily or weekly or monthly basis where you are at with your question - to return to it a guiding force and a clarifier about the current experiences one is having and the decisions that you have before you.  What is your evolutionary question?

Looking Backwards to the Present

I have been reading James Redfield's new novel: the Twelfth Insight. Without reading any reviews, I can predict that the reviewers say the novel was too much a regurgitation of his previous three novels. Perhaps a fair complaint.  I do think that for those who have been troubled by wars fought for religious reasons and with concern for the Middle East they may find interesting his ideas about the shared roots of religions as a ground for connection.  (Although this too is not the most original idea.)

While I certainly enjoyed revisiting what Redfield has to say about synchronistic events - always significant in my own faith life - what I did find interesting was Redfeld's idea that we can use intuition predicatively.  In this novel as the main characters learn/remember to tune into syncrhonicities and the common bond between all of us, they learn when contemplating a possible step to see if they can picture the two most likely possibilities and to use the feedback loop of what they can picture and what they cannot as Light from the
Universe shed upon their path.

This has been helpful to me as I have been recently contemplating one of those places where the spiritual tradition I grew up in goes bump with the beliefs I have come to learn and trust in my adult life.  So my tradition teaches me that when we consider a possible action, to listen in the silence for The Holy Author's divine guidance as to whether this is a right course of action for us.  Certainly within the Christian tradition it frames God as having power over us, although I long ago released that belief for one that is more mutual and collaborative.  There are models out there that talk about a co-creation process with God.  That does not seem quite right either because it implies we know as much as the Creator which is far from my experience.  But in my experience there is our own will and there is the Creator's intent for all life, and yes I like to believe or experience an intention for each of us as well.  Perhaps that is simply our own soul's work and what we have come to do which can place us either in alignment with Spirit or out of alignment with Spirit.

I have written much in other entries about the delicate process of "listening" to God and how the Divine often speaks in symbolic language, metaphor, or in synchronicity.  But this sort of begs the question of how we "plan" our lives.  Christianity would suggest we should not plan our lives but listen for and be "obedient" to God's intention for our lives. (Or in some strands make our own choices while being obedient to Biblical directives). Some strands of new age thinking such as The Secret would seem to suggest that we put out our intention, vision or desire out to the Universe and just manifest that which we wish.  I have deeply appreciated Neale Donald Walsch's attempt to readdress the messages from the Secret in his book: Happier than God.   In this book Walsch clarifies that we can only align with the nature of the universe as it is which he says is all interconnected and for the Good of all.  Thus he says when we attempt to manifest with either harmful intent or selfish intent we actually step out of alignment, and the messages we receive will simply bring us back into alignment for the common good.

So Walsch would say we could plan whatever we want as long as it aligned with the Universe.  Wayne Dyer who of course writes extensively about this in his book The Power of Intention, as well as in his other books, also talks a great deal about how to be in alignment, how to avoid blocks and other pitfalls.  But Dyer, while saying we can not be poor enough or sick enough to prevent other people from being poor or sick, is silent on the question of how we plan or whether our plans can be selfish or create negative effects for others.

Recently, I have been trying to discern whether to commit civil disobedience on behalf of climate change.  In my old model I would listen and not act until I received a clear message to go forward.  So far I have not received such a green light...although in both previous occasions in my life I contemplated a possible action with my mind analyzing the justice and injustice of the situation, and in both occasions just days before The Just One spoke powerfully and clearly with unmistakable direction right before the action with a power I could not have ignored.

In my new model I have been trying to hold a vision of the world re-emerging out of fossil fuel dominated world into one that uses sustainable alternative fuels.  This is very challenging to hold a vision of since both the actions and mindsets that leads to carbon consumption are deeply embedded in our society.  I know a visualizing process taught by Elise Boulding, the founder of modern Peace studies, which if engaged in with great detail can reveal strategic action, but this is different than a spiritual process. The process both Dyer and Walsch talk about would seem to suggest hold the big future vision, (not the yearning or you manifest the yearning) and then let it go in the confidence that the Universe will manifest it.  Dyer does talk about working from the end which he describes as imagining a book already written and then writing  it. This however still doesn't answer for me the question: how do we make yes/no decisions about possible actions?  Oh, the moral from the immoral is fairly easy to discern, but should I take this or action or not is a different question?

This is where Redfield's concept of trying to picture a certain action and the other course (even if that is inaction) and see if we can picture it, provides, I think, an interesting intersection between these two paradigms. It suggests to me for the first time how to listen for the Divine Author's message regarding that which dwells in the future. When I tried to picture myself getting arrested I did not see it, but oddly it was because I did not really see the whole group getting arrested either!  Perhaps this means Obama will not approve the XL pipeline.  Or perhaps as happened in the past two occasions, that as events unfold a new Truth will plant itself in my heart with a correspondingly strong picture of that very arrest.  My hope is in either, both? paradigms will be to listen in faithfulness and obedience to the Greatest Truth as it reveals itself.

Choosing Our Parents

In my twenties I first read Illusions by Richard Bach.  In it he says: "Every problem has its gift" and other pieces of wisdom that suggest we are in charge of our own life experience, not passive victims to it.  I recall taking the worst event of my life and saying:  "Ok what is the gift of that?"  And strangely I could see it, and I could feel it shifting something that had lived in me as a sort of “victim oh poor me” story.  Something in this same exploration suggested to me that we in fact choose our parents.  About 7 years ago I finally read the Celestine Prophesy.   In this spiritual novel he also suggests that we choose our parents; and in fact he suggests we come to earth with a spiritual purpose and that the parents we choose provide certain lessons, for good or for bad, which help shape us for that spiritual purpose.  He calls this our “evolutionary question” and says we each have one.  He somewhat lays out a method for figuring it out (which I have further developed and have done with numerous friends.)  In the last few years in reading various books by Neale Donald Walsch and then most recently Inspiration by Wayne Dyer this idea has again been repeated that we choose our parents.  (This belief does fit best if you believe in reincarnation and karma.) 

In a previous post: God the Father/God the Mother, I talk about the idea that our concepts of God are often powerfully shaped by how we experience our "all powerful" parents during our childhoods.  These two ideas seem to go hand in glove: that we choose parents that provide a certain spiritual (or not) experience that then shapes our spirituality and the tools and concepts with which we pursue our spiritual task on earth.  This has powerful implications for both how we relate to our parents and our experiences with them, but also for those of us who are parents, how we parent.  Do you see your child as a soul that you have a sacred trust with?  Do you nurture not just their body, mind and emotions, but also their spiritual nature or their soul? 

What are the healing potentials with your parents (alive or dead) if you consider that you actually chose them?  For someone who was treated abusively or hatefully by a parent this may seem a fairly repugnant and nonsensical statement...at first glance.  But keep looking.  I think for example of a friend of mine who was beaten by his father during his childhood.   He says it taught him to question authority and to be strong and to be centered in his own internal sense of truth.  He has been an activist throughout his life and this has served him well.  I think of another person whose parents were not religious at all, but has a deep love of beauty, and how that prepared her to create art which has been a path to mysticism.

For myself, despite believing that we choose our parents, I have been mystified for decades trying to understand why I would choose a mother, a good mother, who would die during my childhood?  It has finally come to me in doing Joanna Macy's Work that Reconnects, that I have learned how to be present to grief and loss unflinchingly and unwaveringly....and that in this time of so much loss on this planet, that those of us who fight for peace and for justice must be able to be present to the pain of the world.  As Joanna says:  "Be willing to have your heart be broken open to the pain of the world; it is what your heart was created for...to connect you to life." So I commend to you the question:  Why did I choose my parents?  How have they, for better or for worse, prepared me for my spiritual purpose in life?