And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. – 1 Corinthians 13:13
Each of us is on a human journey, but only a few will reach our destination. A sizable fraction will be cut short by accident, violence, malnutrition or disease – from causes the rest of us could do better at eradicating. The major percentage, however, don’t expire before their time but actually give up on themselves and settle for a life of mediocrity. Many of these, too, have suffered at the hands of others, though their injuries are not so much physical as spiritual.
How does one’s spirit suffer injury? Well, if we define spiritual intelligence as our awareness of being grounded in mystery, connected to others, and belonging to the universe, then any event which shatters this unity consciousness or undermines its development is a cause of spiritual injury.
The necessary formation of a separate center of personal identity – what we call the ego – already puts a strain on this sense of oneness, as occupying one’s own center implies a distinction between self and not-self (or other). And when you factor in the ignorance, insecurities, twisted convictions, and social irresponsibility of those in charge of supervising our ego formation, it’s no wonder that spiritual injury is so widespread.
Instead of first focusing on the problem, I prefer to piece together what an optimal outcome would look like, and then use that picture to see where things commonly fall out of alignment. What does it take to strengthen spiritual intelligence so as to develop and amplify unity consciousness, rather than merely accommodate our spiritual injuries or build pathological religions around them?
My diagram replays a familiar scheme from earlier posts: the arc of character tracks across our individual lifespan and between the two powerful force fields of nature and culture. I’ve made the point elsewhere that nature and nurture (another name for culture) are insufficient to explain our destiny as individuals. We must add to these a ‘third force’ of our personal choices, their consequences, and the habits of character that we form over time. These habits of belief, thought, preference, feeling, and behavior slowly but surely form deep ruts or automatic routines that hold us captive inside.
For each of us, character grows steadily stronger with time, and the more deep-set those ruts and routines become, the more unlikely and difficult it is to change.
When we are born (depicted in my diagram by a stroller) the force of nature is dominant in the urgencies, drives, inclinations, and reflexes which life has evolved in us. Immediately (following the rising arc) the force of culture exerts itself in the parenting, training, instruction, and role assignments that shape our animal psychology into a well-behaved member of the tribe. Eventually this force of culture loosens up somewhat (in the arc’s descent), allowing us to retire and settle into our elder years, until nature claims us again (depicted by a gravestone). The time between our birth and death, then, progresses through the tense intermediate region between nature and culture.
I’ve divided the arc of our lifespan into trimesters, and further identified each trimester with an essential theme, concern, or optimal realization we need to come to during that phase (if not before).
In the first trimester, when we are young, dependent, and especially vulnerable, we need to experience reality as provident. I don’t equate this notion of providence with a belief in god – although a deity’s capacity and virtue in providing for his or her devotees is certainly traceable as a metaphor to the early experience of being cared for by our taller powers. Here, providence refers to how the universe supports and provides for the flourishing of life, sentience, and self-consciousness.
Our reciprocal capacity for relaxing into being and surrendering our existence in trust to a provident reality is known as faith – the first of “these three” that optimally remain throughout our life. The word is commonly used these days as a synonym for belief, as in those articles of doctrine that distinguish, say, Christian faith from the Jewish or Islamic faith traditions. Whereas this uses the term to make separations among different religions, its deeper (and original) meaning has to do with the inward act of releasing oneself to the present mystery of reality – a mystery which, indeed, the religions do represent differently in their own ways.
Faith itself, however, is the property of no individual religion but rather the source experience of all healthy and relevant ones.
As development in maturity continues to lift us higher into the force field of culture, our experience becomes increasingly context-determined by the values, beliefs, traditions, and worldview of our tribe. If we carry within us a deep openness to reality as provident (i.e., faith), then this second trimester guides us to the critical opportunities that invite and realize our potential. As my diagram illustrates, the threshold between providence and opportunity is where we discover what is possible.
Not everything is possible – despite what well-meaning parents tell their starry-eyed kids – but much more is possible than our assumptions (i.e., habits of thought and belief) allow us to notice or admit.
A perspective on reality that holds open a positive expectation for the future is what we call hope. Similar to how we needed to distinguish genuine faith from religious beliefs, it’s important not to confuse genuine hope with mere wishful thinking. The latter is characterized by an inability or unwillingness to accept what is and to wish that things could be different. Hope, on the other hand, begins with acceptance and looks forward to the future already emerging in the present. Whereas wishful thinking tends to break away from reality, hope stays with it – even when it’s uncertain or painful – and seeks to join the creative transformation currently underway.
Over time, the open question of what is possible gathers focus as attention to what truly matters. It typically takes decades of trial and error, sampling reality and testing our opinions regarding its deeper value. Things matter not so much (anymore) on the scale of how they make us feel or help us get what we want, but rather (increasingly) for the connection they provide to the unbroken wholeness of all things.
Our conceptual name for this unbroken wholeness is ‘universe’, literally the turning unity of existence; experientially we name it communion, the intuitive awareness of being together as one.
What really matters, then, is what confirms, repairs, or reconciles us to the hidden wholeness of being. As we are brought back into conscious union with the present mystery of reality, we ourselves become whole and our lives become more harmonious. The delusion of separateness, which had attended and to some extent supported the formation of our personal identity, dissolves in the light of our realization that we aren’t – and never really were – separate from it all. Such a realization can be summed up in the fresh discovery that We’re all in this together.
How are we to live in view of this universal truth of communion? Not for ourselves alone, or in the interest of our tribe alone, but for the wellbeing of the whole – the whole human community, the whole web of life, for the planet and our shared future, for those yet unborn. The principle we’re talking about is, of course, love. Not mere affection or ‘just a feeling’. Not a preferential regard for insiders only, but the creative outflow of goodwill, generosity, and lovingkindness – uncalculated and unrestrained, given out of the infinite capacity of the One Life that we all together are.
In his letter to the church in Greek Corinth, the apostle Paul penned what would become arguably the greatest Ode to Love ever written. After contemplating the mystery of faith and clarifying the focus of Christian hope, he confessed that without their fulfillment in a love that is both active and boundless, nothing else ultimately matters.
Without love, we are on our own.
Tracts of Revolution 