The Process Perspective

The Process Perspective The fourth tenet of Evolutionary Enlightenment is called the Process Perspective. It points us directly to the liberating viewpoint that emerges when we see every aspect of our human experience as part and parcel of the vast impersonal cosmic process. The fourth tenet compels us to embrace nothing less than a cosmocentric orientation to life. And most importantly, engaging with this tenet enables us to break through the habit of compulsive personalization that so many of us are painfully trapped in. Looking through the lens of the fourth tenet, you recognize all events and experiences—both internal and external—to be products of an evolutionary process, and you see all those events and experiences from the perspective of that process rather than from the vantage point of the personal ego. When you fully embrace this perspective, it's as if you become the whole process looking at a very small part of itself, rather than that small part beholding the entire process from afar. It's like seeing everything that occurs from the outside in, as opposed to from the inside out. And this outside-in perspective changes how you see what you see in a dramatic and liberating way. Now you see what once appeared to be discrete events as being interconnected—all the way from a shooting star in the night sky to a devastating flood to the global economic recession to the sound of a dog barking in the yard to the thrill of meeting a lover after a prolonged separation. All you see is one vast unbroken continuum. That continuum is the infinitely dense cosmic process that began with the big bang, when everything dramatically burst forth from nothingness. As we have explored in these pages, that process has both an interior dimension and an exterior dimension. The exterior is matter—the Milky Way, Mount St. Helens, Manhattan, your physical body, a fur coat. The interior is your experience of subjectivity, consciousness, self-reflective awareness. It is also emotions like love and fear, the experience of higher cognition, and the mystical feeling of Being. Through practicing the fourth tenet, we discover the liberating truth that life is not a personal drama but is in fact an impersonal process. This shift of perspective enables us to powerfully penetrate the walls of our separate, personal existence. Ultimately, it reveals that the self is not a unique entity but a process that is a very small part of a larger process, which is part of yet another larger process, and so on. This Process Perspective or "impersonal view," as I used to call it, opens up a portal to enlightened awareness, because it renders transparent that which once appeared solid. It also illuminates the reality that truly nothing is static, that everything is moving, and most importantly, that we're all going somewhere. We're on a moving train. That train is the evolutionary impulse and the tracks are the process it is giving rise to in every moment. When you contemplate the truth of process and impersonality, you awaken to the transparency of the material world and experience direct access to what is at the heart of evolution and is driving it forward in every moment. In this way, the fourth tenet brings to light the nondual or singular nature of the entire process that is producing the experience you are having in this very moment. It directly reveals the perennial mystical revelation that there is only One—one process, one singular unfolding. Like all the tenets, this fourth one is both the path and the goal. * * * Many people are attracted to the notion of cosmic evolution but balk at the word "impersonal." We tend to interpret that term to mean "cold" or "inhuman," but in a cosmocentric context it's actually quite the opposite. I'm not referring to an impersonal process in a mechanical, materialistic sense. This process is alive. And it's you. The process is you. What is so important about this shift of perspective is that you see your own sense of self as not separate, at any level, from this vast unfolding stream of development. Contrary to what you might think when you hear the word "impersonal" or "process," the fourth tenet actually reveals a deeper potential for your own humanity. In fact, because it points you beyond the confines of the separate self and its endless self-concern, the freedom you find there enhances and enlarges to almost infinite proportions your sense of the significance of being human. Once again, awakening to the Process Perspective has nothing to do with being removed or cold or unfeeling or uncaring. It means transcending the personal world of the separate self to such a degree that you find you care about others, about the world, about the life process itself, in a much deeper and more profound way than you ever imagined possible. * * * There is nothing more powerful than this Process Perspective to help us see through the seductive veil of narcissism that has become our personal and cultural predicament. If you have the courage to see beyond the illusion of solidity and separation, the experience is literally enlightening because you directly glimpse your own self beyond ego. When you apply this perspective to the way you normally relate to yourself and your own experience, it can turn your whole world upside down. Most of us have been brought up to believe that we are unique individuals, that we are special, that there is nobody quite like us. But when you begin to look at your own experience through the lens of the fourth tenet, this conviction gets harder and harder to sustain. When you recognize yourself to be a very small part of a complex, ever-expanding, multidimensional process, and see how almost every aspect of that experience has been produced by what has come before, it becomes increasingly difficult to see yourself as a completely unique individuated entity. This perspective ultimately reveals that the separate self-sense is nothing more than an illusion of uniqueness, created moment by moment through our compulsive habit of personalizing almost every thought, feeling, and sensation we have. If you think about it, much of the experience that we all have is quite similar. We all experience hope; we all experience fear. We all experience happiness and sadness, inspiration and exhaustion. From the mundane to the miraculous, from the meaningful to the absurd, the majority of our experience generally falls within a common spectrum of possibility. Of course, there are exceptions, and many factors determine which parts of that spectrum show up in the experience of any particular individual. But from the Process Perspective, none of it is personal. We awaken to the radically impersonal nature of the very event of experience itself, all the way from the subtle heights of mystical intuition to lower primal impulses like hunger and sexual desire. Why is this important? Because the ego likes to create the illusion that everything that happens to you, from the mundane to the miraculous, is a personal affair—an event that, in some gross or subtle way, means something about you In this way, the narcissistic separate self creates the appearance of a personal drama with you at center stage. But it's not actually real. In fact, if you step back, you realize that the very capacity to experience that personal drama of "me" has been produced by this vast process. So even the fact that experience appears to be personal is an impersonal evolutionary phenomenon. I'm not denying that your experience feels personal. Your experience feels personal to you. My experience feels personal to me. The whole point, though, is that even that experience of it feeling personal is completely impersonal. We are a process. You are a process. And your process is a small part of a larger process. You cannot stand outside of it. Dare to face this and you will become transparent to yourself. As you see through the illusion of the personal, you will recognize the truth that who we are as human beings is a bundle of impulses, reactions, and habits, conditioned patterns that together create the convincing appearance of unique individuality. But the truth is that there isn't anybody in there. Or, another way of looking at this same picture would be that there is only One in there. And that One, the "I" of the cosmos, is the energy and intelligence that initiated the creative process, looking out at its own creation through this particular body, with this particular set of life circumstances, which give rise to certain reactions, responses, preferences, perspectives, interpretations, and so on. It's the same consciousness at the root of all experience; it's the same singularity that's looking out at the world through the prism of the conditioned perspective of a particular body and mind. And all of the attributes of that body and mind—its biological nature, its ethnic and cultural background, its personal history, and its emotional and psychological tendencies—are like outer sheaths through which life, the human experience, the world, and the cosmos are seen and interpreted by the one "I." From the perspective of enlightened awareness, of nonduality, it's the one I that is having the whole spectrum of human experiences, through the appearance of relative difference. It's having a physical experience. It's having a male experience or a female experience. It's having a Buddhist experience, a Muslim experience, a Jewish experience, or a Christian experience. It's having an American experience, a Chinese experience, an African experience. It's having a traditional, modern, or postmodern experience. To most people, the sheer impersonality of this perspective is disconcerting, and it can feel profoundly uncomfortable to the ego, or to any part of the self that is identified with being separate, unique, or special. But if we want to evolve, it's imperative to recognize, at least momentarily, the radical arbitrariness of these differences that we consider to be so personal and so meaningful. These many sheaths of identity are usually so close to our felt sense of self that it can be enormously challenging to disembed our awareness from their familiar and habitual viewpoints. Releasing your awareness from the unconscious and automatic personalization of biological impulses, psychological tendencies, and cultural biases is spiritual heavy lifting. But if you don't make the heroic effort to do so, you are never going to discover who you are beyond the ego, beyond all relative notions of self. Because of how intimate these multiple layers of relative identity usually feel, you are likely to assume that they are as significant and as personal as they appear to be in any given moment. Take a moment to reflect on this. If you close your eyes and pay attention, you will notice that there is the feeling sense of being an individual who is having a particular experience, positive or negative. There seems to be a "you" that something is happening to. But if you shift your viewpoint away from that individuated self-sense, and step back as far as you can, you will see that from another perspective, from the outside in, there's just experience that is occurring. You can recognize that things are just happening, more than things are happening to you. Seeing in this way—from the perspective of the evolutionary process—is a radical decentralization of your sense of self. What is it like to be you then, if you are having an identical experience to the one you are having right now—the same sensations, the same thoughts, the same feelings—but none of it is being personalized? The content of your experience doesn't necessarily change, but the context of the experience and the sense of who it is happening to changes dramatically. To deeply grasp the liberating truth that you are not a personal drama but an impersonal process, you will need to practice this shift of perspective over and over again. You may glimpse it for a moment, but for the Process Perspective to have the power to liberate your awareness, you need to make the noble effort to look through this lens every day. We all already know what our experience looks like through the lens of the ego's conditioned habit of personalization, but this fourth tenet points to a very different and less familiar way to see the human experience. It takes courage and humility to let in how much of what you consider to be uniquely you has actually been shaped by the evolutionary process and the world around you. Your physical form follows a pattern that has been forged by life conditions in the exterior world—by genetics, by the natural environment—over millions of years. Your inner life—the patterns of your emotional and psychological experience—has been largely shaped by the interior world, by the values of your family, the historical belief structures of your race or ethnic group, and the ideas you may have absorbed from your culture. Even the thoughts and feelings that are arising in your awareness at this very moment reflect emotional, psychological, and cultural structures or habits that have slowly developed over tens of thousands of years. This is all part of the deep-time developmental process that emerged from the big bang. When your own perspective shifts in this way, and you see through the eyes of the "I" of the cosmos, your relationship to your own experience can change dramatically. If you want to become an evolutionarily enlightened person, this is a perspective that needs to be cultivated until it becomes habitual. * * * When you authentically transcend the ego's personal drama and discover the truth of the impersonal process, the personal sphere of your life does not cease to exist. The fourth tenet is more subtle than that. As I have been saying, there are different dimensions or levels of the self, different sheaths through which the one "I" becomes manifest. Our experience of the personal sphere is the primary filter through which we see and engage with the world around us. But the whole point of the fourth tenet is the recognition that who you are and who I am is not limited to that personal sphere. When you discover this enlightening truth, it will change the way you interpret and respond to all of the many different dimensions of your humanity: the biological urges, the memories, thoughts and emotions, and the culturally conditioned tendencies that arise within you. They will not go away, or necessarily even lessen in intensity. And you may choose to respond to them or not. But if you can see the personal sphere from the perspective of an impersonal cosmic process, there will be space around the arising of those impulses—a newfound space in which you can make appropriate choices, informed by a greater context. That's what the Process Perspective is: a bigger context. From this perspective, you see your personal experience, which at times can feel overwhelming, within an infinitely larger context. The drama of your personal desires and concerns is, if not irrelevant, always secondary to the prime directive of the Authentic Self, which is the evolution of the process itself. When you are lit up by the evolutionary impulse, there are times when its creative passion completely overshadows personal concerns that, in other contexts, might appear to be profoundly significant. It can indeed be a disconcerting experience to simultaneously hold in awareness all of these dimensions or levels of your own self—to feel at one level deeply connected to the personal sphere, to your intimate and historical relationships, your culture, ethnicity, and unique personality, and yet at another level to feel no relationship to anything personal whatsoever. Both of those experiences are real, but they are different dimensions of the self. And we tend to be much more familiar with the world of the ego or personal self than we are with the cosmic context and identity of the Authentic Self. In our culture, in which the rights, needs, and significance of the individual tend to be held most sacred, the personal dimension has become imbued with exaggerated importance. We have become conditioned to seek the deepest connection to life primarily through the personal sphere, and, therefore, it is a profound step forward when we gain the ability to see this dimension of our experience in a context that infinitely transcends it. * * * As we evolve, we will find that our conditioned attachment to and personalization of relative notions of self will gradually diminish. There will be a decreasing emotional and psychic investment in lesser dimensions of who we are, and simultaneously there will be a growing emotional connection to a cosmic sense of identity. As your capacity to see through the eyes of the one "I" increases over time, you will experience a loosening of your identification with the relative sheaths. A thrilling shift of identity begins to occur. And to me, what is most significant about this shift is that as you identify more and more deeply with the Authentic Self and its cosmic aspirations, slowly but surely what feels personal to you begins to change. What becomes a personal matter is the evolution of consciousness. You feel more deeply connected to that vast impersonal process than you do to your so-called personal life. When you authentically make this leap beyond the personal, your emotional inclinations evolve. You find yourself spontaneously beginning to identify, at a feeling level, with the Authentic Self's passion for conscious evolution above all else. Does this mean you will cease to care about your personal relationships, your connection to your ethnic roots, or the culture from which you have come? No. But it does mean that something else has become more important to you, because the context for the life you are living has dramatically expanded and deepened. As we identify with that impersonal energy and intelligence that is driving the creative process, we will find that a higher, spiritually inspired passion and care does begin to inform and transform our personal life, our intimate relationships, and the culture we share and cocreate with others. We are all multidimensional beings—simultaneously expressions of the God-impulse and embodied, living, breathing humans. And as we awaken to our own higher dimensions and spiritual capacities, we begin to understand that our embodied, conscious engagement with life and with each other is the interior of that vast cosmic process evolving. Nothing is ever outside of it. That's the Process Perspective.