I have long walked with an "evolutionary question". This is a concept from the book the Celestine Prophecy and is a spiritual question that you are working on. Mine has been: "How to bring God/spirit into shatter false dualities that keep us from serving higher purpose/creating a true justice." I moved two years ago to a Meeting already in a deeply polarized situation. I felt initially that my evolutionary question gave me some Light to work with. That by not taking a side (despite others who sought to assign me a side) that I could stay out of the polarization and operate as a bridge between the sides. Ultimately this failed miserably, and I instead simply earned the ire of both sides. Initially this was just too profoundly confusing in regards to my evolutionary question, and I simply stopped thinking about it.
However, recently I was having a spiritual conversation with a friend and the evolutionary question came up so I told her mine. In so doing my attention went back on it and I realized again that I had not reconciled my question with what had happened. As I renewed my reflections on this I remembered what another Friend had written about this: They wrote that we can be in a state of Love or a state of Fear (but not both) and that it seemed to them that the Meeting had operated in fear, and that we had not stopped to see "What can Love do?" Their words seemed very true to me.
This is when the epiphany happened. Evolutionary questions are suppose to weave together all the strands of your spiritual inquiry and growth. Yet I have had a separate very significant spiritual truth in my life which is that when I get in a state of fear then I forget God, and have to travel some period before some self reflection reveals to me that I am in a state of fear and again disconnected and then I can reconnect. Suddenly like a puzzle where you have been working separate parts and you suddenly find the piece that connects the two bits and see that it actually one bigger piece I had an epiphany - I saw how the piece about fear connect with my evolutionary question.
I realized that it is the being able to see the fear and name it , both my own and other peoples that is the thing that disempowers dualities, and allows God's healing Love to flow in. My evolutionary question is now:
How do I notice and name fear, both my own and others, in the face of false dualities, in order to turn towards and open towards God's healing love and allow more truth and more justice to manifest?
In the conflict that happened in the Meeting, the duality was named, but the fear underlying it was never named and so it had great power. One side afraid they would not feel safe (and valued) in the Meeting, the other side afraid we would not live out a value of inclusion and thus would fail our greater self. Somehow it feels like it should be easier to respond with compassion when these fears are named, and also to figure out how love could help. And yes to name that their is no action we can take that will vanquish all are fears or make everything safe for everyone. I also see it is time to take an inventory in my life, to list out the fears lurking under the surface of my own life. To notice what they are and to offer them up to God.
