Spiritual Evolution

I do not like being an apologist for the country I am living in because I recognize that America has produced many exceptionally talented artists, inventors, innovators, athletes and scientists -- but it has also produced way more than its fair share of Dumb Fucks (DFs).

DFs distinguish themselves from regular stupid people in that they are not dumb at all, but take great cynical (and nihilistic) pride in appearing that way. Case in point: Not even the most DFing Yah-Hoo Marlboro smoking cowboy, whose cattle grazing lands have been blistered by droughts, and livestock funneled up into the air by tornadoes during the last few years, can possibly think that the weather and climate around them is not changing dramatically. But rather than admit that, they will proudly & stubbornly deny it.

(Cows DO NOT graze in trees, Billy-Bob – something is WRONG!)

Okay, part of that denial is general human nature.  None of us wants to hear bad news, and our first reaction is often to avoid it. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m referring to arrogant stupidity, because it will even deny good news. (When it’s not delivered from a familiar ‘trusted’ source: white, Christian, non-intellectual and male).

Next case in point:  In July of last year, Rebelle Society posted an article by me called Darwinism Debunked – by Charles Darwin. In it, I simply point out that Charles Darwin was wrongly credited with ‘survival of the fittest’ and all the bad behavior that it ‘justifies’.  What he actually wrote was:  ‘Humankind arose through the higher agencies of love and altruism. Selectivity and survival, being foundational, are retained, but in service of this higher and more complex life-form.” (The Descent of Man, 1871.)

Rebelle readers responded positively to this information. But when I posted an excerpt from the article on a site where people were having a heated debate about whether Life originated through random molecular and chemical reactions, or if it was created by a Divine Intelligence, my article was attacked from both sides.

Creationists cannot accept that humans organically evolved emotions like altruism, compassion and self-less love; they can only conceive of those attributes being given to humans intact as a gift from God in order to make humans singular reflections of their Creator. (Try running that past dolphins, orangutans, gorillas, elephants, or for that matter, the insect crawling across your floor.) And the fundamentalist scientists will say that giving biological reactions and adaptations that improve survivability abstract names like altruism and love is wishful or ‘magical’ thinking (as opposed to being brutishly reductionist).

(Magical thinking allowed me to produce a quartet of kick-ass novels – thank you very much.) 

Why can’t Life be seen as both an evolutionary process and divinely manifest? Because there are DFs on both sides of the issue who will not accept the other side’s viewpoint of the issue for reasons that have nothing to do with the issue. Instead, they resort to pride, arrogance, belligerence, snobbery – DFing nonsense.

But let’s not let that claptrap stop us – non DFers – from examining the issue intelligently & creatively.

In another article I wrote for Rebelle in June of 2013, called If You Have to Struggle, Then–for Heaven’s Sake Prevail, I described an encounter I had with a rare Kundalini Yoga Master while I was in India researching my book on Kripalu Yoga:
 

I would dare say, because I believe it to be so, that if you were to plop a Kundalini Yoga Master down in the general population (this is hypothetical, because no true Kundalini Yoga Master would ever let this happen), you’d have a sharp increase in your rates of murder, rape and suicide.
Why? Because Kundalini is pure, unadulterated life-force energy. And what do humans in general, at this stage in our evolution, most commonly use the life force for? Dominating others (even if it means killing them), sexual reproduction (even if it is by force), and all sorts of self-destructive behavior (including suicide).

I then went on to opine that: A person … in the process of mastering Kundalini Yoga sadhana, is literally someone pushing the envelope of human intelligence, liberation and enlightenment — he or she is experiencing in this lifetime what I believe evolution has in store for the rest of us in the future, assuming we do not self-destruct en masse before then: an intimate, personal and dynamic union with the Creator.

The visionary author and Tantrist, Stuart Sovatsky, elaborated on this in his book, Advanced Spiritual Intimacy: The Yoga of Deep Tantric Sensuality, and in his forthcoming book that I had the privilege of reading a draft of recently. 

In Stuart’s cosmological perspective on spiritual evolution, it comes down to you, and me, and how we relate to the most important aspects of our lives: our parents, our siblings, our lovers, our children and our extended families. When we have a fully-developed mature relationship with those aspects of our lives, we are moving the evolutionary ball forward. When we are not, we don’t.

It’s simple, and profound.

I don’t think that even Billy-Bob and his cow, lodged so comfortably in their Tree of Ignorance, could argue with that. Or maybe they could; but then again, who will give a FF (Flying Fuck)!