Our Unfinished Evolution

 Has the driving force of evolution on Earth gone crazy?  Could it have meant to produce a species, in which the members are constantly killing each other, and in all sorts of ways, some spontaneous, and some more ferociously organized? According to one present count, there are fifty-six killing conflicts between humans raging on the planet today.  Moreover, this same killer species has exploited, polluted, and destroyed countless other living species and their habitats, such that the man-driven over-heating of the planet is causing a global climate catastrophe that threatens to bring down world-civilization.

 

In my view, we can at best speak of the unfinished evolution of the human species. Phrasing it that way, we can entertain the possibility of completing, or at least dramatically advancing toward our full evolutionary potential. Okay, but how in heaven’s name will that be possible?  I can imagine you saying, “The idea is preposterous!  You’re asking for a miracle!” 

 

I would say that it is possible to wake up to a new way of being, of living, of seeing and feeling each other and the world around us. Surely, we can learn how to relate to the natural world in a life-enhancing way instead of exploiting and wrecking it, as is normal for most of people in advanced economic cultures.  We can learn from indigenous peoples important things our materialist philosophers automatically negate.  We can get serious about reducing our carbon encroachment on the planet.  With luck we might at least move, however haltingly, toward signs of minimizing the damage.  A miracle we absolutely require: the species has to wise up about the waste and futility of war as a solution to anything.  

 

War everywhere is the bloody proof of the unfinished evolution of our species.  

 

I believe we need strong medicine to save us from our current half-evolved selves. The human situation, as it appears to be unfolding, does seem to need a miracle.

What do we mean when we use the word miracle?  One hears of the miracles of science and of religion. I like to think of the miracle of peace. The core sense of the word miracle suggests being astonished, amazed by something extraordinary, unexpected. Also, something that established science cannot explain. If you’re curious and don’t mind doing a little homework, there are records of all sorts of miracles available, puzzling wonders that make us smile and force us to expand our creative imagination.    (You can check out my book, Smile of the Universe: Miracles in an Age of Disbelief.

 

I have an affinity for miracles. A miraculous healing is bound to make folks smile. Besides flashes of metaphysical mirth, miracles intrigue us because they enlarge our idea of the possible.  In particular, a large portion of miracle lore transcends physical explanation. So, miracles apparently point to a hidden dimension of creative force, a place where the impossible becomes actual.

 

Miracles are also stories of struggle, danger, aspiration, breakthrough; stories of adventure and transformation.  But where do these events we call miracles come from?  We may have beliefs about the origin of miracles, but nobody knows for sure.  After all, nobody knows why there is a universe, how life originated, or why we’re conscious beings. 

 

There is one thing we know about miracles; they seem to revolve around certain people, contexts, existential scenes.  So, consider the miraculous effects produced by the Brazilian healer, Arigo, the famous “surgeon with a rusty knife.” Whatever enabled him to perform these impossible feats of surgery, it was through him that the miracles were daily performed and manifested.  Stories vary but the extraordinary event always occurs around a human being or group of humans. 

 

Now the leap of my active imagination, leading to the next suggestion.  I believe as human beings we are all in possession of extraordinary potentials. Jesus himself made a famous point about what his disciples could do.  He said, you guys can surpass me in the miracle-making department. Nobody knows where or how the next astonishing breakthrough will take place. We do know something about how people in different cultures have learned to access the latent higher powers of our species.

 

There is an ancient Greek adage, gnothi seauton, know yourself, inscribed on the temple of Apollo at Delphi.  Nowadays many people are concerned with their identity, and much of the problem lies in widespread feelings of rejection, humiliation, and social stigma. The aberrations of human conduct arise from focusing on differences between groups of people: economic, religious, political, linguistic, racial, and gender related.  

 

What we in fact need is to be educated concerning the true depth and scope of our identity, which is wider and deeper than we normally suppose.   Apart from cultural differences, it seems right to say—and more crucially to feel—that we are grounded in a common spiritual identity. Here is where we step in and devise ways of activating our imagination and creative energies.  The challenge: how to facilitate creative eruptions from our subliminal self—the self below our everyday surface awareness.

 

We are rooted, grounded in a deeper dimension of ourselves. So how, we’d like to know, do we interact, connect with, contact in some meaningful way this deeper self we have reason to believe exists?  There are many ways, to be sure.   One way is to personify the force within us.  Call out the name, if need be, create a name for the force. Great Spirit! Lord! Guardian Angel! Grandma in Heaven!  Draw on tradition or be a poet and invent.  Whatever way you can, provide a focus for your creative imagination.  Invent whatever it takes to induce an opening to your creative subconscious.  Persist in trying, aiming, until you get results. In other words, we have to learn how to converse with the deeper side of ourselves.