On the Individual level, human evolution looks like this:

Overview

Before we enter any given life, the growth objectives for the upcoming life are set. What is to be learned? What is left over from a previous life that needs to be completed? Where did we get stuck before (remember the labyrinth example) and how can we continue to grow?

Stage 1: Definition

Then we forget all that (at least consciously) and we incarnate on Earth. We start Stage 1 by being born into the circumstances and conditions that will force the issues already determined. The inevitability that we will confront the intended issues is pre-destined. The outcome is not. How we respond to our challenges is up to us.

As we grow in infancy and childhood, we take on the world view of our caregivers. The conditioning of our family and surrounding society casts everything we know about our world and how it functions. What’s right, wrong, good, bad, loving, mean, appropriate, inappropriate, conducive to success, or punishable. Notice, then, how influential the people around us are. Everything we learn regarding what is “real” and “true” is actually based on what we’ve been taught from birth forward.

In this way at birth we enter into what I call “GroupMind.” As a child, our capacities to trust, hope, strive, believe, accomplish, choose, and love (or not) are molded by the laws, rules and expectations of surrounding family, community and environment. Our “false self,” the personality, is formed.

It’s as if a paper bag gets placed over our heads. On the inside of that paper bag is drawn an intricate design – our learned world view – dictating every expectation and assumption about us, our world and how to interact with it.

No surprise that people with similarly drawn paper bags will tend to stick together; their world views conform to each other. Run across someone whose world view is a little different from ours and it’s exciting, cute, intriguing. Find someone whose world view is really different from ours and suddenly it’s not so cute. We avoid them. They’re weird, even scary and dangerous.

This is how our worlds stay safe, comfortable and productive. People know the rules and expectations and abide by them. GroupMind works to keep life stable.

Stage 2: Stirrings

But that paper bag over our heads is not the true Us. It molds our perceptions. Everyone else walks around with their own unique paper bag over their heads, too, molded by everything they were taught in childhood. No wonder people on earth seem to have so many different and conflicting realities. They literally do!

As we mature, however, the impulses of our authentic, inner self (which is becoming more and more conscious as we approach adulthood) start to rise up from within. These impulses are felt first as a vague discomfort, a sense of wanting to distance ourselves from the group. Suddenly the group feels too small, confining or wrongly directed in some way. As these stirrings become more conscious, and as we are influenced by people outside our group, we start getting clearer about what’s true for us – as opposed to what we know we’re supposed to be, think and do. This is individuation. We are becoming more authentic.

Enormous inner tension can exist within as we become increasingly aware of our “still, small voice” inside, while recognizing the profound implications of what it would mean to follow that voice in our world, often disturbing the status quo of the surrounding group. Authenticity wrestles hard against the “shoulds” and “ought to’s” of GroupMind. There can real consequences to breaking away into authenticity, and these can be daunting.

Lifetime after lifetime, as the essential spark of the individual grows stronger, the capacity to commit to authenticity also becomes stronger. But it is not at all guaranteed in any given life that the individual will rise to authenticity. The risks of doing so can seem too great. Young souls, in fact, are often not at all motivated to leave the group, finding as they do a great sense of belonging, satisfaction and purpose in it.

Stage 3: Declaration

A key milestone in spiritual evolution occurs when we have developed the internal, spiritual strength to take an authentic stand in the face of the resistant group and are ready to accept the consequences for doing so. You stand up and say “I Am.” That core, self-authenticating statement can take many forms:

• “I am going to become a lawyer” (even though Mom & Dad want me to take over the family business)
• “I am a poet” (and will choose an artistic career even though it may be very financially challenging)
• “I am a homosexual” (even though people in my community don’t understand it and scorn it)
• “I don’t want children” (I know you do, but I guess we really shouldn’t get married, then, even though I love you)
• “I want a divorce” (because when I met you, I really didn’t know who I was, yet)
• “I can’t live in the city any more” (even though I know you like it here)
• “I can’t continue to let (fill in the blank) happen”
• “I am going to start a new company” (and venture out on my own instead of being employed by someone else)

The statement “I Am” can be expressed in infinite ways. The point is that you come to a clear, inwardly propelled understanding of Self that must, despite external obstacles, be declared in form in the world.

Stage 4: Repercussions

Then the fruits of the conviction are sown: the law practice opens, the daily practice of writing poetry is begun, the homosexual lifestyle is expressed openly, the couple who don’t agree on whether or not to have a baby agree to split in hopes of finding more appropriate partners, etc. Big sighs of relief, even pride, come with the congruency of this new declaration. Now I’m living in integrity! I no longer feel so split!

But in every Declaration scenario, there are also costs. You are coming from a background that resisted this, remember. Perhaps the lawyer loses the trust and support of his parents. The poet realizes in fact how hard it is to get published and keep a roof over her head. The divorce leaves the kids in the lurch, and the emotional toll is greater than imagined. Surely, there were gains, but there are losses, too.

The emotions begin to be tested. Just how badly did I want this thing? Is my heart truly set upon it?

Just how evolution expresses itself from here depends on the spiritual maturity of the individual and the level of realization that is being worked (see chart: Spiritual Growth over Successive Lifetimes). Regardless… with these losses, the life perspective begins to change:

• The commitment will be tested, and the individual will have to dig deeper emotionally to bring the desired goal into full expression
• The passionately pursued goal may be thwarted despite best efforts, forcing the individual to adapt
• The losses may change the individual’s perspective on the desired goal. Once pursued to become “authentic,” in time, pursuits of the self may begin to seem, well, selfish. Continued growth may suggest that striving to fulfill the needs of the individual self (i.e., ego) may not always be the best path to peace.

The bottom line is: the older the person gets, the less “black and white” the issues appear and the less personal power can be assumed. Life starts to show its inevitable shades of gray. Life begins to soften the individual’s sense of certainty.

Stage 5: Purification

The influence of life itself continues to grow – even to oppress. The individual starts to realize his or her limitations in the face of life – and the inevitable truth that life is far bigger than the control of any individual:

• For all people, regardless of spiritual advancement, the aging process begins, bringing physical and/or mental limitations where previously none existed.
• Those more spiritually advanced will encounter true “dark nights of the soul” where the whims of the ego are rather vigorously pounded down – all with the purpose of neutralizing the hold of the individual “I” so that a willing surrender to the far greater divine power is accomplished.

When you become a mystic

When over the course of successive lifetimes you have developed sufficient strength to pass reliably into Stage 3 (Declaration), the evolutionary journey starts being overtly spiritual in scope. You start becoming consciously aware that what you are seeking is actually union with the Divine; and the “I Am” threshold (Stage 3) becomes a point of actual spiritual realization into unified, true reality. I.e., you “wake up.” You pierce your “paper bag” of the false self entirely and perceive true Spiritual Reality – your oneness with the Divine.

At this point, your evolutionary journey takes on the curve of a mystic, with the heavy challenges now coming later in the curve. Now, after awakening, the major task is to endure the “Dark Night of the Soul” during which the soul is purified on the mental, emotional and activity levels. This purification allows for eventual neutrality and non-attachment in thought, word and deed:

Stage 6: Being/Peace

In this stage, for most people on the wheel of life, there is death and a return to the Godhead, in peace. The life is reviewed and the next life cycle prepared for.

At this stage the mystic reaches the end goal and becomes an open, united conduit of the love, manifesting in thought, word and deed a Greater All. The vessel (the soul) is purified, so there are no longer any attachments mentally, emotionally or in action. Life proceeds in accordance with God’s Will. Thus there is union with the Divine in thought, word and deed.

And what could be more peaceful than that?! Of course you live in peace. All you know, and indeed are, is God’s Love.

This multi-staged path is so universal, it is at the core of one of our most beloved classics of all time.

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