By Berenice Andrews
On this Earth plane, there are virtually unlimited ways of getting knocked about by life. When (not if) this happens, we find ourselves walking a path that we neither expected nor desired.
And why is that?
The answer, from the perspective of a shamanic teacher/healer, is obvious. This is the path we chose, perhaps many millennia ago, when we were pure and unevolved “little souls.” After embarking on our evolutionary journey, we have chosen, repeatedly, to return to this Earth plane, to undergo yet another “shaping.” And there was nothing wasted. Not even the worst lifetime was unnecessary.
Always there was the growth and development of a consciousness energy being—soul—that continued to evolve as the millennia unfolded. And how was that possible?
Because our humanity and spirituality are one and the same consciousness energies, we can be certain that in the development that took us from pre-Neanderthal to homo sapiens, Spirit was in-forming us. Since the very beginning, we have been immersed in and guided by the Consciousness/Energy that is Life, Light, Love, and Law. In other words, we souls have always been part of “a single evolutionary current […] Spirit-in-Action” (Ken Wilber). And now, while we are attending to our 21st century physical bodies, in addition to exploring and healing our emotional, mental, and transcendent bodies, (see my June, July and August articles) we are getting ready to move into our real “home.”
It’s our heart center of consciousness, that multidimensional inner mansion where the “I-AM” and the “i-am” and the “you-are” can, finally, coexist.
It’s our heart center…the real place of evolution that mankind has unknowingly “known” about for thousands of years. It’s our heart center, wherein we have made our heart connections.
A Single Evolutionary Current
About 12,000 years ago, on the wall of a cave in Spain, an artist drew the picture of a woolly mammoth (now extinct) and there, in the exact anatomical location, painted a red, heart-shaped spot. Perhaps this was the first depiction of a heart connection between living beings. Yet, clearly, an evolutionary current had already been making the connection possible—Spirit-in-Action.
Heart connection has often been revealed in ancient graves, especially those of children. There, the articles and their placement have indicated deep feelings of loving tenderness for those little ones; more evidence of Spirit-in-Action.
And the heart connection between people also has been revealed in the “love stories” that have been told for many centuries. For example…
About 3,800 years ago, the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh told how the goddess of creation had made a companion, lover, and equal for Gilgamesh, the “restless-hearted” king of Uruk, how their heart connection had grown into a passionate attachment, and how Gilgamesh lost it, through his own carelessness. But the story continued to present the heart change Gilgamesh underwent and how at the end of his life he had become a great heart symbol, i.e., a more evolved man, for his people—Spirit-in-Action.
In the meantime, the ancient Egyptians believed that the heart was the seat of the spirit and the center of the will. They also believed that, after death, every person’s heart would be weighed by the god against the feather of truth, with everlasting life or death meted out accordingly—a precursor of some modern beliefs.
It was out of Egypt that the great Moses led the ancient Israelites, and thereby started a chain of events that are still impacting on us. It was on their journey to the promised land that the Israelites received a set of commandments, a covenant. Here was Spirit-in-Action providing a means of moving these tribal people (and those who later inherited that covenant) along their evolutionary path.
Meanwhile, in all parts of the world, the single evolutionary current was flowing. At the same time that the Israelites were experiencing their long sojourn in the wilderness, there were people in ancient South and Central America who were establishing their own amazing civilizations. While these social groups waged vicious and prolonged warfare on each other and while they worshipped deities who were predominantly savage, there was the evolutionary energy moving them forward. Great cities were slowly arising. People, who had sought out each other only for survival, began to work and play together. There arose families, not only for serving the needs and appetites of root chakra consciousness, but also for expressing the energies of relationship (the heart chakra consciousness) that were slowly emerging—Spirit-in-Action.
Meanwhile, in the same evolutionary energy, people in North America were coming together, establishing their communities and starting to fashion the household items that families require. To be sure, violence and bloodshed were predominant. With tribal warfare occupying a lot of time and effort, many cruelties marked most relationships. But slowly, ever so slowly, there was coming about the growth of families with heart attachments of affection—Spirit-in-Action.
Those same centuries also saw the rise of great civilizations in Asia. The people of China, Japan, and other areas of the Far East had been banding together in their emerging cities. With the focus on a sustaining agriculture, trade, and commerce, there came about cohesive social groups. And within these were the family units, increasingly moved, by the evolutionary current, into the heart energies of loyalty and devotion—Spirit-in-Action.
Meanwhile, in the middle East (and contemporaneous with the ancient Israelites), there had arisen the tremendous city-states of Sumer, Assyria, and Babylon. And while their gods and goddesses were mostly involved in bloodthirsty relationships with people and they, in turn, with each other, those men and women also increasingly played and worked together in families. And these emerging heart connections, within an evolutionary process, are revealed not only in their history but also in their stories—Spirit-in-Action.
While that current flowed in the ancient world, there were other great cities that arose but failed to survive in northern and central Africa, while smaller civilizations came and sometimes went in the lands of the Pacific. This world has seen many more civilizations than have been recorded.
And why is that? For whatever reason, they failed to evolve.
Meanwhile, in northern Europe, the Celts had established their splendid civilization that spread south and west even into the British Isles. Although these amazing people did not survive as a separate, identifiable group, they left the modern world an amazing legacy that included the tradition of family heart connections, not only with the living but also with the dead—Spirit-in-Action.
By that time, there had appeared in all parts of the civilized world the philosophers and teachers who sought to modify the influence of the secular and religious authorities and, thereby, to in-form and raise the awareness of the “common” people. Evolution was happening. In many places, the old savagery was not as accepted as it had been. Indeed, there were those who actively spoke out against it.
Among them was Jesus, the Great Teacher, who reminded the Israelites (by then settled into their promised land) about their sacred covenant. Then, Jesus added another commandment—that they love one another (John 13: 34). Even at that point in the world’s history, this was not a new idea. But with that Teacher, it was clearly articulated and demonstrated…an evolutionary watershed within heart connections—Spirit-in-Action.
Since the time of Jesus, the single evolutionary current has brought mankind through another 2,000 years.
During that period, there have been horrible lapses into savagery…some that are still going on. And there have been periods of wonderful advances.
Since the 1400s, those breakthroughs have demonstrated and greatly expanded the inner energies growing mankind. In the arts, there have been huge developments in both composition and technique. There has also been an amazing growth of scientific and technological knowledge. For the past 200 years (and counting), vast new areas, especially in physics, have opened. Fostered right now by the technology of the Internet, a global community is emerging.
Thus, alongside these huge advances, the world’s people are entering into a major stage of inner development. It’s the result of millennia of an evolutionary current that slowly generated heart connections—Spirit-in-Action. Finally, some of us have realized that the “old ways” had to be changed, that people were more than merely animal souls.
It’s an emerging knowing that as consciousness/energy beings, people are made in the “image and likeness” of their Creator. So, instead of existing in a coerced arrangement with an anthropomorphic deity, we’re actually living in a profoundly meaningful relationship with a Cosmic Power that made us out of Itself. It did so in order to express Itself in us, as us and through us. It’s a relationship in which we can know about our own creative powers. (We’ve always been co-creators.) And if we choose to accept and use that power wisely, we can become more than the animal souls that have been creating such havoc and misery for ourselves for so long.
As human, i.e., spiritual beings, we have the power to remake this world. We can choose to acknowledge our relationship with the Spirit, while living peacefully with each other—and with ourselves—within nurturing heart connections. Thus, we can finally know, while we continue to flow in the one evolutionary current, that we are “clothed […] with glory and honor” (Psalms 8: 5)…always, Spirit-in-Action.
Berenice Andrews is a shamanic teacher/healer and a regular contributor to this magazine. To explore the ideas presented above in greater detail, please refer to her articles in back issues and to her book: Rebirthing Into Androgyny: Your Quest for Wholeness…And Afterward. For further reading, see Joseph Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces, James Fraser’s The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Gail Godwin’s Heart: Its Myths and Meaning and Ernest Holmes’s The Science of Mind. You are also invited to consult Berenice’s website: thestonecircleclassroom.com.