Beyond
Soul Growth
Awakening to the Call of Cosmic Evolution
Lynn Sparrow Christy
A.R.E. Press • Virginia Beach • Virginia
Copyright © 2013
by Lynn Sparrow Christy
1st Printing, December 2013
Printed in the U.S.A.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A.R.E. Press
215 67th Street
Virginia Beach, VA 23451-2061
ISBN 13: 978-0-87604-732-3
Edgar Cayce Readings © 1971, 1993-2007
by the Edgar Cayce Foundation.
All rights reserved.
THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.®
Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Cover design by Christine Fulcher
To my dear friend Elaine Lukasik.
Without her wise, intuitive counsel and steady encouragement I may never have made it through the extended birthing process that brought forth this book.
Contents
PART ONE: Embracing Evolutionary Spirituality
Chapter 1: Why Evolution Matters
Chapter 2: The Evolution of Evolutionary Awareness
Chapter 3: Evolution Awakens to Itself
Chapter 4: The Evolutionary Perspective of the Cayce Readings
Chapter 5: Responding to the Call
Chapter 6: Cultivating Evolutionary Consciousness
PART TWO: The Precious Opportunity of Incarnation
Chapter 7: Embracing the Incarnation in Reincarnation
Chapter 9: Corpuscles in the Body of God
Chapter 10: Biology, Spirituality, and Chakras
PART THREE: Bringing Order Out of Chaos
Chapter 11: Beyond Darwin: The Science of Evolution Redefines Our Models of Spirituality
Chapter 12: Our Path up the Spiral of Life
Chapter 13: Out of Chaos, Something New Arises
Chapter 14: Love—Evolution's Radiant Core and Will, Evolution's Accelerator
PART FOUR: Going Out in Service to the World
Chapter 15: Tending the Garden
Chapter 16: Keeping the “Co” in “Co-Creator”
Chapter 17: Living in Times of Uncertainty
Chapter 18: Agents of Transformation: Being the Change You Seek
Acknowledgments
No work such as this can take wing in a vacuum. While the core concepts of what has come to be known as evolutionary spirituality arose for me through a process of inner inquiry and from my interpretation of the Edgar Cayce readings, they found a wider context in which to flourish when I was exposed to the work of many others who have plowed this ground before me. Most notably, I am indebted to Ken Wilber for his sweeping integral vision. Undoubtedly, his writings have been my greatest source of spiritual sustenance since I first discovered Edgar Cayce at the age of sixteen. And while the integral-evolutionary community has spawned what I consider to be some of the most thought-provoking and inspiring thinkers of the modern age (many of whom are quoted in this book), I wish to give special thanks to Craig Hamilton, Michael Dowd, and Terry Patten, whose work has inspired me and whose respective Internet interview series with the spiritual giants of our time have enriched my own experience of evolutionary spirituality beyond measure.
In acknowledging those who have been most helpful to me in expanding my understanding of the profound connection between biological and spiritual evolution, I would be remiss not to mention Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I first heard his work mentioned by a friend back in my college days. It is my loss that it took more than three decades for me to get around to reading him—and that was only after encountering a fictionalized account of his life and work in Morris West's novel The Shoes of the Fisherman. I would urge anyone with a serious interest in the subject matter of this book not to wait as long as I did to read Father Teilhard de Chardin's landmark book The Phenomenon of Man.
I would also like to thank Kevin Todeschi, Cassie McQuagge, and the publishing committee at A.R.E. Press for the blessing of knowing that I had a publisher even as I was writing this book. The motivational