*EVOLVE/*EVOLUTION - also see CATALYST, CONTAGIOUS, GROWTH, PROGRESS, TRANSFORM, TRANSCENDENCE, CONSCIOUSNESS, SYNTHESIS, SALVATION, HEAVEN, PERFECT, COMPLETE, COMMUNION, POTENTIAL, FORCE
Zen Buddhists believe that an oak tree is brought into creation by 2 forces at the same time. There is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed that holds the potential which grows in to a tree. But only a few recognize that there is another force - the future tree itself which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, guiding the evolution from nothingness to maturity. It is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born. (Eat, Pray, Love, p329)
Genesis 3 of the Bible is a myth about how we human beings evolved into consciousness. (Further, p108)
Evolution in this sense is not that which occurs by natural selection over generations of human reproduction but evolution brought about by the application of spiritual knowledge to the conduct of human life. Through the application of such knowledge (traditionally the preserve of the world's great religions) to practical self-management, the awakening and development of faculties dormant in the ordinary human being is achieved. These faculties are aroused by and developed in conjunction with certain dispositions of character such as patience, kindness, truthfulness, humility and forgiveness towards one's fellow man – qualities without which, according to moral/ethical stipulations of the various traditions, higher consciousness is not possible. (Wikipedia, Higher Consciousness)
The most important thing we can do to hasten our evolution is let go of the known - in other words, to relinquish the past. The more we are ready to open ourselves to the unknown, the more likely we are to accelerate our process of evolution. And so attachment to material things is what really interferes with our on-going transformation. (http://www.metta.org.uk/wds/wds4.htm)
Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity—a total embrace of the entire Kosmos—a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. (Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, 42-3)
The soul has come to the body for the purpose of evolution. You are evolving, you are becoming. Life is not a process of discovery, life is a process of creation. The Master is one who always comes up with the highest choice, of love-sponsored action, and the highest good for you becomes the highest good for another. (Conversations, p126-)
Evolution is a process of creation because we are constantly being made new every day. God is pulling us towards him and we call it evolution, what is really love. (Chukamyjas@aol.com)
With the coming of Christ, John [in Revelation] saw the definitive establishment of the "age to come," but its full fruition would be a gradual process. (ReadingNT2, p72)
Schelling said: "Spirit is present at each and every stage of the evolutionary process, as the very process itself. Nature is not the only reality and mind is not the only reality. SPIRIT IS THE ONLY REALITY. But in order to create the manifest world, Spirit must go out of itself, empty itself, into manifestation. Spirit descends into manifestation, but this manifestation is nevertheless Spirit itself, a form or expression of Spirit itself. NATURE IS SPIRITUAL TO THE CORE, but a slumbering Spirit because it is not self-conscious (is sub-conscious). With the emergence of mind, Spirit becomes self-conscious and introduces morals into the world. Nature is objective Spirit and mind is subjective Spirit, both are necessary but partial moments on the way to a Spirit that will transcend and include them both (in a non-dual radical union), and thus awaken to its own supreme identity. A direct mystical intuition of self-knowledge, of Spirit directly knowing itself as Spirit, is not mediated through any forms, whether those forms be the feelings of objective nature or the thoughts of subjective mind. Spirit knows itself objectively as nature; knows itself subjectively as mind; and knows itself absolutely (super-conscious) as Spirit - the Source (Alpha, Father), the Summit (Omega, Son), and the Eros (Love, Holy Spirit) of the entire sequence. When you realize your supreme identity as Spirit, then you are autonomous in the fullest sense (because nothing is outside you) and therefore you are also whole or unified in the fullest sense (because nothing is outside you). Full autonomy and full wholeness are one and the same thing in the supreme identity." (Everything, p301-304)
The whole evolutionary struggle is a divine force which propells the universe from matter to spirit to personality and, finally, beyond personality to God. Christ was the "omega point" of the universe, the climax of the evolutionary process when God becomes all in all. Scripture tells us that God is love, and science shows that the natural world progresses towards ever-greater complexity and to greater unity in this variety. This unity-in-differentiation was another way of regarding the love that animates the whole of creation. (Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), Hist, p384)