The Daily Evolver

Imagine a world that is lit up with the loving intelligence of the Divine. Where spiritual practitioners realize their identity as evolving beings in an evolving kosmos, a kosmos that is teeming with life including all sorts of of celestial beings, angels, seraphim, and extraterrestrials from billions of inhabited worlds like ours. And that these beings love us, communicate with us, and guide us as we grow toward ever-greater expressions of goodness, truth and beauty.

Welcome to The Urantia Book, a spiritual revelation that came into being in the early 20th Century and has inspired generations of adherents since. Today Jeff talks with Byron Belitsos, author of the new book, Your Evolving Soul: The Cosmic Spirituality of the Urantia Revelation, about the principles of these deep and beautiful (and controversial!) teachings, and how they can illuminate our spiritual development.

In this episode we look at the continued emergence of postmodern consciousness (green altitude), using a current example from the U.S. financial sector. Last week Laurence D. Fink, founder and chief executive of BlackRock, the world’s largest investor fund, informed business leaders that if they want any of the the $6 trillion he invests they are going to have to serve a social purpose.

“To prosper over time,” he said, “every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.”

This is a sentiment that was anathema to the business community a generation ago, and actually opposed as counterproductive by respected economists such as Milton Friedman. But yesterday’s financial heresy is going mainstream today. What’s up? Emergence, the one thing we can count on…

Donald Trump has just completed the first year of the most unlikely, outrageous presidency in modern history. What do we make of it? In this episode Jeff looks at Trump’s impact on the exterior aspects of American life (actual policies and their effects on people) as well as his impact on the interior aspects (the culture and individual consciousness).

Today Jeff responds to Harry, a listener who offers a critique often heard within and about the integral world.

Harry writes:

There’s an unspoken, and unconscious, assumption that integral was just invented a few years ago by Wilber, Gebser, et al., and that anyone exhibiting similar insights and behaviors earlier, or anyone currently exploring similar turf who languages it differently, is “proto-integral.”  I believe there have been integral (and beyond) sages since time immemorial. Jesus, Gautama Buddha, Lao-Tzu, the list goes on. I think there’s a shadow of hubris that dogs the integral narrative that’s worth dragging into the light.

So is integral arrogant? Jeff explains how integral theory itself helps to answer the question.

Illustration:  After Hubris Comes Nemesis by Theodore Gericault

Today Jeff welcomes his friend Diane Musho Hamilton to discuss the latest turnings in the #MeToo movement and the cultural education we’re all receiving regarding sex and power.

Diane and Jeff look at the upside of the movement, as well as its inevitable overreach. They look at how it heals historic patterns of abuse, and what it is blind and hostile too. And they look to integral consciousness, the ability to hold multiple perspectives, as a way forward.

Diane Musho Hamilton is a teacher of Integral Spirituality and Zen, as well as a mediator, facilitator and author. Her latest book is The Zen of You and Me. See her new blog post: #MeToo: On Perspectives, Listening, and Risk Taking.