Throughout the great mystical traditions of all time, we see references to "the evolutionary impulse." Patriarchy and its drive for power has sought to repress our capacity for wholeness.
From Betty Kovacs:
"The great challenge of this evolutionary journey in Western culture - and now in most of the world - is two-fold:
"1) the lingering power of the old scientific paradigm in so many people who still insist that neither the human being nor nature is divine, that all life is a fluke, that we are an accident of nature without meaning or purpose; and,
"2) the lingering power of the Church's inverted version of our evolutionary myth, which tells us to follow, to believe, rather than become the Christ.
Both the [current] scientific and religious paradigms devalue the human and negate direct inner experience or gnosis."
She continues: "Since we as a culture have allowed the connection to our deepest selves to decay, it is more often than not a crisis that opens us to [the] living language of the soul."
Kovacs is referring to the language of a new story of life on Earth.
Likewise, Joanna Macy has written:
 · "Just as grief work is a process by which bereaved persons unblock their numbed energies by acknowledging and grieving the loss of a loved one, so do we need to unblock our feelings of despair about our threatened planet and the possible demise of our species. Until we do, our power of creative response will be crippled."
Awakened teachers such as Rumi, Kabir, Teresa of Avila, and Hildegard of Bingen experienced the kind of transfiguration alluded to above. They all experienced deep suffering, which they allowed to shatter their egos, open their intuitive hearts, and reorganize the fundamentals of their identity and presence.
Humanism resists the realities of mystical traditions and can only conceive of human development in terms of intelligence, fairness and kindness. The challenge that mystical systems pose for both humanists and conventional believers is the actual experience of a larger-than-human force of infinite power, existence and bliss.
In the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, Jesus directs people to light hidden within. He tells his disciples, "If they say to you, where did you come from?"...say to them, "We come from the light, the place where the light came into being by itself."
The persistent repression of the shaman-mystic-scientist traditions has left Western culture addicted to a tragically limited and negative worldview that now threatens to destroy the world. Our survival now depends on a return to these spiritual secrets and these themes:
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