[I think it's time for a new 'series' of sorts, for the upcoming autumn-writing-season.]
Companions on the path come at the least expected moments. Perhaps that’s what makes them stick out as significant—the startlement or surprise. Or perhaps it’s simply the felt-sense of resonance and recognition that we are not alone in something we hold dear, have to offer the world. Meeting Barbara Marx Hubbard recently in one of her essays felt like such an unexpected moment. Like meeting an old friend I’d never known before.
She thinks and writes large, for one, which is a breath of fresh air for me as an academic. Her bi-line names her a “futurist, author, speaker, and social architect.” What in the world is a social architect? She observes we are at a crucial time for our planet, a “crisis of birth” toward the next stage of human evolution. “The entire story of creation has led to the birth of a species which must learn to cooperate and co-create on a planetary scale.”[1] Like I said, large. And, admittedly, potentially dangerous. No individual ought to be a “social architect” without careful consideration of past (and horrifying) mistakes. But…her emphases upon co-creation and “spirit-awakening for life,” for all, soften my concerns.
She observes something radically new is happening with women. “We feel it within ourselves as an upwelling of creativity, of frustration,” she writes, “of the desire to be more, to find life purpose, to express and evolve ourselves and our world. This sense of increased power and purpose is, I believe, a phenomenon of an evolutionary order (meaning it will lead to transformation rather than reformation or incremental improvement), not merely an historical order.”[2] Wow! is she talkin’ my language. I don’t know about the bold prose and whole evolutionary-transformation bit, but I recognize this overwhelming upwelling, frustration, and more.
Where the tears came, where I felt like she was writing specifically to me, came after a narrative of vocational arousal and an interpretation of the evolutionary suprasexual drive toward co-creation and a fusion of genius. Aren’t those great phrases? They are for a theological educator, an intentionally childless writer, and one whose path seems to be spiritual friendship across traditions with unexpected ‘others.’
To set the stage, Hubbard tells of her life as a mother of five in the fifties—a suburban housewife in Connecticut. This life then unfolded within her as a new, second chosen one: a storyteller of evolutionary re-birth. She names her vocation and newfound path “to understand, communicate, and help realize humanity’s evolutionary potential to transcend current limitations and to co-create a magnificent future. … In my case, [a] peak experience, combined with reading and deep dialogues with my artist husband and others, set me on my new path…I became a storyteller and a futurist. … This growth within myself made me a far better mother.”[3] The force for this new path is her coined phrase, vocational arousal. “It can strike at any age, from eighteen to eighty. It’s usually felt at first as frustration, as the desire to do more, to be more. … It’s the awakening of our passion to create, to discover what more we are born to do, to give. It’s the third great human drive: from self-preservation to self-reproduction to self-evolution.”[4] As a theological educator, my whole line of work is about this kind of vocational arousal. How do we set about the holy work of awakening? How do we live our lives such that others awaken to their own potential? How do we recover from mis-steps on such a path…or are there such things as mis-steps on a path to awakening?
I’d never considered my own experience of devotion in Hubbard’s terms either. She argues alongside Ghandi’s maxim—we must be the change we wish to see in the world—a planetary version of it. The drive for co-creation “grows out of the desire, intelligence, and power to co-create a new and better world.” Not just self-improvement but planetary improvement. Not just psychological health but ecological health. A planet and species who thrive together. She argues that “evolutionary forces are helping in this transformation. My understanding,” she writes, “is that the sexual drive to procreate is expanding into the suprasexual drive to co-create. The life pulse of sexuality is animating our creativity, and awakening our genius to evolve ourselves and our world. … In sexuality, we are attracted to join our genes to have a child. In suprasexuality, we are attracted to join our genius to give birth to our full potential selves, and to produce the work needed for the world.”[5]
Following this path of increasing (global) childlessness and vocational arousal, Hubbard argues for a fusion of genius, joining our genius with that of others. “It happens when we get excited over a project and begin to resonate with others. It’s explosive! We are thrilled, totally alive. We want to do more of it because by doing more of it we become more ourselves. Thus the acorn within us is given sunlight and water and feels itself unfolding, become the giant oak!”[6] One cannot help but smile here, amidst a blog-venue called “Seeds Catalogue” with the tagline in this very image of acorn-to-oak.
Now, I know not many of my colleagues would follow me down this rabbit-hole. It’s “too much,” by which I mean too grandiose, too easily critiqued as unfounded, uncritical, imprecise and more. And I haven’t even given voice to the later essay sections with words like ‘noosphere’ and ‘Goddesses’ in them! Those would cinch collegial avoidance. This rift between my job and my vocation is what can make finding or staying on the path difficult, lonely, isolated. On both professional and personal levels, for surrendering to the unruly path, untended, can be costly.
As Hubbard describes it: “When a woman becomes vocationally aroused and surrenders to a vocation, her beloved may feel displaced, no longer central in her life. Many women find their mates depressed, feeling diminished by their creativity. … a spiritually motivated, transformationally activated woman is a powerful force. She usually wants a partner, she does not want to be alone, but it takes a very strong and sensitive man to be able to live with such an awakened feminine co-creator.”[7] As such, she urges us to imagine together what a “co-creative couple” looks like, feels like. “The ideal,” she suggests, “would be when the woman’s creativity is aroused, she is received in love by the man [sic] she loves, and is accepted, indeed loved, for her creative initiative and power. In turn, she draws forth from him his unexpressed creativity and he too becomes more fully himself through the union.”[8]
Perhaps in the end, Hubbard’s words are specifically for those who need them, who yearn deeply for what she describes. Perhaps the point here is to have met an old friend I’d never known, and to realize feminine co-creators are not alone, whether they are biologically male or female. Co-creators are finding each other on unexpected moments along the path, and the path is extraordinary. There is nothing quite like being “activated by spirit, awakened in the heart to express a unique creativity in loving action which evolves both self and the world.” If this morning’s musing makes such words available to others, then blessed be.
[1] Barbara Marx Hubbard, “Awakening to Our Genius: The Heroine’s Journey,” in The Fabric of the Future: Women Visionaries Illuminate the Path to Tomorrow. Ed. M.J. Ryan (Berkeley CA: Conari Press, 1998), 8.
[2] Hubbard, 7.
[3] Hubbard, 14.
[4] Hubbard, 15-16.
[5] Hubbard, 15.
[6] Hubbard, 15.
[7] Hubbard, 17.
[8] Hubbard, 18.
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