Beyond Soul Growth: Exploring the paradox of Selfhood and Oneness with Lynn Sparrow Christy

We continue our discussion with Lynn Sparrow Christy regarding the concept of knowing oneself while maintaining oneness with God.  We highlight the importance of balancing individual development with collective cooperation for both personal and societal evolution.  

The conversation also touches on unity consciousness, the pitfalls of elitist thinking, and the role of compassion, empathy and meditation in advancing human consciousness.  

Transcript

1:42

Well, I'm very excited to be back and continuing our discussion with Lynn Sparrow Christy. We are Getting into some really fascinating areas of discussion. And I want to ask Lynn to go back to a little bit earlier at the end of the last episode, and we were talking about the paradox at the center of the, evolution and growth and could you talk a little bit about that again to bring us all up to speed in case someone didn't hear that other episode. Thank you. I was, I was referring to a concept in the Edgar Cayce material that says the destiny for every one of us Is to know ourselves to be ourselves and yet one with God. And by that my understanding is that we are all growing, evolving if you will, toward being more fully ourselves than we can even imagine. And rather than that making us separate from other people and God, that selfhood is realized in full oneness with God, with the universe, with all other people. It's a paradox. No question about it. And we talked a little bit about how. Perhaps one of those aspects might take dominance for a period of time. Yes. And then followed by the other aspect of it. One was agency, and the other one was Communion. Communion. And I borrowed those terms from Ken Wilber, who is a great evolutionary thinker and philosopher. And he talks about those drives being inherent in a human being. The drive toward agency is the drive toward individuation, having efficacy in the world, action, selfhood, where the drive toward communion is to join cooperatively together with others. In oneness and so both drives are there and often in terms of our, evolution as individuals, even in cultures, there is an alternating between one or the other of those themes being dominant. So we can go through a time where our development as self directed, Self sustaining individual might be a very important growth thing, but unless that individual learns to cooperate with others in a communion, or you might say a chosen collective, which by the way Thierry de Chardin, who was a great evolutionary thinker, he was a French Jesuit archaeologist priest. He talked about It is the collective that is not the collective of the hive mentality necessarily, where everybody loses their individual, agency, but one where the individual is absolutely the thing that makes the collective work. Okay. And so we have to develop from this point of view, both. here's a good analogy, Jim, only a healthy cell can participate and do its part in a healthy liver. And so my liver is only as healthy. Every cell that makes it up is healthy, right? and that would be true I just picked liver because it came to mind first the whole idea that only healthy individuals Make up healthy Collectives we can not to and I don't want to go political but it also has to do with globalism and nationalism and Only a healthy nation can participate healthily in a global society. And if the nation is not healthy unto itself, it will not be a healthy participant in a global society. And the global cannot overcome the national. The national cannot ignore the global. Any more than one cell in my liver can ignore the other cells., Are we talking at all about unity consciousness? Yes, I think we are. We're talking about unity consciousness with the piece of understanding that says unity consciousness is made up of self aware individual consciousnesses. And for the evolution of, that consciousness to move forward there are Individuals the group that need to continue to move forward. Yes. In the book, you discuss that this it's beyond soul growth is the title of the book, but it's as a person is growing and getting closer to God as a spirit and to being more in touch with that part of themselves that is their basic connection with God, as they're doing that, they need to try to do that to help overall society. I'm not sure I said that very clearly. No, no, I think you did say it well, and, and it's a very important point, because essentially Any religion, whether it is the most fundamentalist where it says, I and my family members are all safe, so it's okay if the rest of you burn in hell, or whether it is new agey religion that says, I am working out my own return to God, and that's my whole focus, that the idea that you can get there by yourself is a fallacy in the evolutionary framework. That there was a, something Edgar Cayce often, said, and I don't know if he borrowed it from folk wisdom of his day, but he said, we get to heaven leaning on the arm of someone we have helped. And isn't that nice, isn't it? And so the idea that there comes a point where we recognize that everything we do is on behalf of the whole, that doesn't mean it isn't also on our own behalf. There is too much about soul growth, in my opinion. That doesn't take the bigger picture into play. And that's why I called the book beyond soul growth. It's not that your own soul growth doesn't matter, but it's in service to something greater. So that, for example, when. let's say a bunch of people are just together and they are really trashing the person who's absent with a lot of gossip and negative talk. Okay, we've all been there. And if one person, not in a holier than thou way, manages to lift that conversation, by mentioning something nice about the person being trashed or whatever. it lifts ever so slightly, maybe the consciousness of the group. Now that here is, here is the pitfall to be very aware of. If we're not careful, this can become a very elitist. Oh, where the enlightened ones. who are saving the world kind of thinking. So it involves more a sense of, I have problem or weakness X, Y, or Z. I desperately need to solve that, but I want to do it in a way that knows that when I become healed, stronger, better. In some way, every other person struggling with problem or weakness, X, Y, or Z has a little bit more on their side to help them. to me, it's kind of like the principle that we've seen many times in the athletic world. Where one person breaks a world record. And then we have a bunch of people breaking that same record. Right. there is something, we each contribute to the collective, whether we're contributing by building, or whether we're contributing by tearing down. And that's the other side of it. To be aware that there are no, Private sins, if I can use, and I'm using the word sins with quotation marks around it, not in the, in the old moralistic you broke some arbitrary rule version. Anything we do that is destructive to self is destructive to the whole. And anything we do that is constructive within self is constructive to the whole. And that's the consciousness of knowing that we're all in this together is really, I guess, what I'm trying to describe. Mm hmm, mm And, and for people who are feeling connected with compassion and empathy and Love they're responsible to apply that to their life if we're all going to evolve, I think. Yes, I would agree. I would agree. and many of us have the opportunity to have had a life that helps us to do that. And some people can do that despite a very difficult life. It's, you know, everyone's different. I think that one of the things that a barrier to people feeling that they are part of trying to move evolution along is the feeling of, well, who am I? Who am I to do that? I'm just Joe Blow. I make mistakes all the time. I, I don't, I don't think perfectly about everybody all the time. I'm not like Jesus Christ, I'm just a Joe Blow that happens to be nice some of the time, but. In the book, you had, you mentioned that that's pretty good. That's, that's good enough. Do that. I think in the spiritual world, as much as any other place in life, we do the old thing of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. And it doesn't matter whether Oh, I, I haven't meditated in a week. I might as well skip today. Okay. you can't figure out how to make it fit every day. The day you do do it counts. And that's, the key that as imperfect people accept their imperfection, do not turn it into breastfeeding self condemnation, but turn it into an opportunity to do a little better next time. That's how things evolve. Right. From your book, you mentioned that evolutionary advance takes us where we are, representatives of an imperfect humanity, and uses us to leverage that humanity beyond its current weaknesses. And, and I think that's so well put. It's just that, this is where we are and we're going to do the best we can and, and try to inch things along a little bit. Exactly. Yeah, it, you also mentioned that humanity as a whole is still in its infancy of learning to get along with each other in accordance with spiritual law. This, I mean, I look at, you had mentioned in the book, it was perfectly legitimate in ancient Rome to go and, and have a day where you go when you're sitting in the Colosseum and you watch people eaten by lions and kill each other. That was like, Oh, just another day was fine. Now today, of course, that nothing like that could possibly be conceived of. But at that time, that was another day. And so that progress is continuing to move forward and isn't that great. and I think that when we feel that we're not making progress, we, we fall prey to. Too short view of history in the sense that Progress is never a straight line. Of course, it is definitely A three steps forward, one step back kind of affair. And so there will be setbacks, but when we look at the cruelty going on in the world today, and we look at the terrible things, that still exist and places where maybe an execution is still a public spectacle, because there are still some places in the world where that happens. We're tempted to say we haven't made any progress. But the two factors to keep in mind is that those things have become the aberration rather than the norm. And secondly, when we look at The vast expanse of history, certainly if we go back to the speculated time of the Big Bang, everything in human civilization has happened, if we change the scale to a year. Yes. Everything that has happened in civilization is taking place a few minutes before midnight. Right. In that 24 hour period. So We tend to measure how we are compared to how things were 100, 200, 300 years ago, and that doesn't cut it. History is much longer than that, and we are like awkward toddlers in terms of our evolution. And a toddler is a pretty unwieldy human being who is pretty selfish, self willed difficult to deal with, but still is developing lifelong capacities to love, to navigate this world, to discover beauty. And so on. That's where we are. Yes, yes. And I wanted to talk a little bit about something that perhaps is going to be controversial as far as people that are Christians, quote unquote Christians, you know. I say quote unquote because not all people who claim to be Christians are very Christ like. The idea that, this is a life that we've got to try to do well enough to get into heaven. It's a one shot deal. Hope we don't mess up and I hope we get to heaven. and in your book, you talk about the fact that it's our, and I'm going to quote from it. Our role is not to graduate from earth, but rather to participate as incarnate. Awaken souls who can serve as pacers for what may be the greatest evolutionary advance the world has ever known. To be agents of transformation. And I think that is a wonderful, wonderful statement. And it goes right along with what we're just talking about. I can be an agent of transformation to the best of my ability as an imperfect human. Exactly. Exactly. And, and I think we have to be aware that. Even for those of us who can embrace that, and I am putting myself in this category. There are days when that seems like too big a burden. It's sort of like we can feel the weight of that. And it's important sometimes to lighten up a little bit, too. And to know that to be able to take in the beauty of the world, and appreciate it is part of our contribution to evolution as well. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it isn't necessarily going to be that everybody has to go around with a big mission, Oh, I am an agent of evolution. Generally you can imagine there, there could be a lot of ego. Absolutely. Because, you know, everybody wants to feel special and so on. And I would say that in the reincarnation, believing spiritual, but not religious world, the equivalent of the. I just want to go to heaven is I hope this is my last lifetime. It's the same thinking. It's the idea that somehow we're here to make it through. my sense is that's probably why there is usually at least if we can believe those who, who claim to have been shown some of this, there's an interval between lives where we do get to do some R& R and rebuild our, our strength and our gumption and our vision for jumping back into the pond. Yes. And taking up the next, lifetime. Sometimes people can be world weary and the evolutionary message just seems like one more should. Yes. And I would hope that people would be able to see that part of how you carry the evolutionary advance. Is to simply love and laugh and be able to appreciate beauty, even if you can't paint a picture, to be able to look at a beautiful picture or a scene in nature and appreciate the beauty. And again, that uplifts all of humanity as well because we're only as far along as, as our most degraded senses. And we want to be careful not to be part of the one step back in this three steps forward, one step back thing, because we all are drawn into that role at times as well. I think in Buddhism, I'm not sure about this, but I think that there's a term for a enlightened being. That comes back to help others. Yes, it's the bodhisattva. Yes. Enlightened being. Okay. He's come back. He's taken care of this person. I say he, but the soul knows no gender. This enlightened being has taken care of all of its own karma and voluntarily comes back just to be enlightened. A source of, of help to others, which is a pretty high calling. I love that and I like to think that there are those among us who. are not enlightened, but we're on the way. We're making progress towards it. And that that person can help others in this life. And like a Bodhisattva, where they, I'll give you what I've got. Of the enlightenment, you know, doesn't have to be a hundred percent or zero or whatever. I'll give you what enlightenment I have. I say enlightenment, but I'll give you what love and empathy and joy that I can give you. And what a great addition that is. and that's part of that continuous flow of progress in that if I am. If I am a gifted fourth grader, I can help the first grader very nicely while I am simultaneously being helped by the ninth grader. And I think for all of us. It's the ability to recognize that in there are ways that we are developmentally ahead of some people and simultaneously developmentally behind some people. So to turn to those. Who we see as being farther along and sit at their feet, so to speak and learn what we can from them and to be willing to do the same for those who are in a different place than we're at. We're all students and we're all teachers. Every one of us. We're all, we're all one. Yeah. And I want to talk a little bit. We've got a little more time left. I want to talk about meditation, because for me you talk about, in your book, you talk about, How to be one with consciousness, not to be conscious, but to be one with consciousness. And from what you say in the book is basically it takes a little work to do that. It really does. And, and yeah, talk about that a little bit, please. I will talk about it, but I want to make the caveat that it's something that can never be. Fully explained in words because it is the consciousness that transcends words and so all we can do the way I describe it is feel around inside for a momentary touching into it. And there are many ways to do that, but a couple of the ones that I describe and give Some pointing out instructions for in the book are to be aware that there is a self that we each know ourselves to be that is absolutely unchanged throughout the course of our life experience. There is a sense that I am myself. That was there when I, I have memory that goes back to very early childhood, and I was still the same me when I was 18 months old as I am now. Yes. And as a teen and as a young adult, that doesn't mean I'm talking about the ego self and who I think of myself as being. It's not that. It's a core something that simply knows that I exist. I am and has absolutely nothing added to it. No qualifiers, no descriptors. Simply the knowledge of I am. Let me break that out a little bit. Not, I am a man. I am an American. I am. Right. Musician, there was nothing added to the band, nothing whatsoever. It's just that I. Exist. I am and it and and it's not even a little sentence in your mind that says I am. It's a feeling into recognizing I am and what will generally happen is. We touch into it and it's almost as quickly as we touch into it. We have thoughts about it Which causes us to not be in it anymore, right? That's okay because the idea is that repeated touching into it will cultivate an easier and easier ability to be there now, mindfulness, for example, very popular now as a motive of meditation is a great movement toward that because with mindfulness, you're learning to step aside from the stream of your thoughts. I am not my thoughts. I am not my emotions. I'm not. And when you do that, even then. The I am is interior to the witness, you know, in, in, in mindfulness, you are learning to be the witness. But even the witness is a certain exteriorization of the, of the I am. It's like, well, it's like a, a nudge deeper than that. So that's one way. The other way that is very, very popular. And made very popular through the writings of Eckhart Tolle, the, the just keeping your awareness on now, and the awareness that is now and is steadfastly turning away from anything, whether it was a second ago or a second hence. But if you stay in now, then you are in that core consciousness. In terms of paying attention to consciousness itself. It, it's a matter of being aware that there is a function of consciousness that is enabling you. to have any fault at all. And to turn the internal searchlight back on itself, as the only way I know how to describe it, to be aware that consciousness is there in every moment. And the consciousness that is there in every moment is the thing you focus consciousness on. Consciousness focusing on consciousness. Yes, or we could say awareness focusing on awareness. To just be in a wide open state of awareness. One of the things that I've heard over the last couple of years that I think is so important whenever We talk about meditation and is the idea that one who wants to meditate should not be looking at it's an all or nothing situation that either I'm going to be totally without thought and Or I failed somehow. And that is just not the way it works. Thought is going to continue to come in. And as you had said earlier, if you get to the deepest, it's, it's not, at first, it's not going to be half an hour, half a second maybe. Right. And even that half a second is huge because as you say in the book, if you get that half a second,, it opens that door a little bit. Right. And I, and I think part of the key too, is to know it's not that you have to. Stop thoughts, turn away. All you have to do is choose that you won't pay attention to your thoughts. Let the thoughts, you know, the mind is going to do its And the same is true, by the way, with environmental distractions. One of the ways we shoot ourselves in the foot is to think that we can only meditate if we have absolute silence, actually noises going on around us. can be aids in meditation because it's an opportunity to simply notice, Oh, my ears are sending that sound to me. But I am not that sound. I am the one aware of the sound. So if we hold out for the perfect, I can't do a full lotus position, so why bother? Well, I'm going to tell you, I had to give up that aspiration years ago. I wish I could do a full lotus, but the bottom line is. It just is not anything that I was ever able to do without causing myself injury. So, you do the best you can with what you have. And that is always better than not doing it at all. I think it is human nature. We don't want to do something that we can't do really well immediately. Right. if anyone who's tried to learn the piano, for example, knows that you can become a very good pianist, but not in a day or a week. And there are a lot of times you just have to blindly kind of say, this is going to work. I'm going to make it. And if I'm not moving forward today, I'm going to tomorrow. And I think it's kind of a relentless belief. in the ability to move forward, I think to me is, is what's important. Because there are some days when I meditate and it's like, Oh man, I'm kind of locked in there pretty good. And then there are some days where it's like, Yeah, not very little piece in there. And, and that's, again, the, the temptation to evaluate the quality of the meditation to give your meditation a score. Right. It's it sometimes a meditation where there was no peace. but you consistently turn back to knowing that that it was okay that you had no peace. Right. the most helpful of all. I certainly would encourage anyone who is considering either beginning or continuing or extending their meditation practice that it is pretty darn important. And I think, although you don't really kind of say it in this section of the book, by each of us can help with the evolution of consciousness. Is that accurate? Oh, absolutely. Yes. Yes. So that's something that if anyone who wants to be part of consciousness evolution That's a pretty simple way to do it. And as imperfect as any of us are, that's always available to us. And I think at a time in our history where many people feel helpless to change external events, they seem to be a force unto themselves. One of the best antidotes to that feeling of helplessness is to know when you meditate, You are doing something and praying for the world and the nations of the world. And by that, I don't mean saying, please, God, do something about it. I mean, holding images of those trouble spots in the world, or those places of contention in our own society, holding images of those just within that Sea of consciousness that is pure love and light. And we become, part of the solution in that way. I can tell you that when you said that, it made me kind of want to cry a little bit. And because you touched a very deep spot. Because that's, a wonderful thing to do. That's, love. That's what it's all, that's what we're talking about here. It is what we're talking about. Yeah. For sure. I can't tell you how much I love our talks and Lynn, I've only read a quarter of the book and I look forward to the other three quarters and, and I'm hoping that you're still going to be willing to, to talk with me about it. And I appreciate it. Very happy to, Jim. I enjoy our conversations. I'm so glad. Thanks very much. You've been very generous and I'll talk to you soon then. Okay. Sounds good. Bye. Bye.