Volunteers Needed for Cosmic Mission

With everything we've said about persons + cosmos over the past couple of weeks, where does it leave us? It leaves us with -- or in -- 

a great double "movement" in the universe of actual being from the Source outward toward creation and from creation back towards its Source (Clarke).

So, a circle or spiral, and not just a moving line or static point? Precisely:

St. Thomas calls this the great circle of being, the exodus of the Many to the One. Being is always intrinsically "on the move," it seems, both within and without God.  

Sounds about right to me: movin' on up to Celestial Central. Or not, for we are always free, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it: O or Ø. 

To turn from the latter to the former is metanoia, our ontological reset, or reOrientation: 

Once our turning toward the Source, the Great Center, has become fully conscious and freely chosen, so that we take it explicitly now as the Center of our own lives in vertical self-transcendence..., then at this point the natural process of self-development of the person undergoes a kind of reversal.

If you're looking for the reset button, it's between and slightly above your eyes; or possibly to the right of the heart in older models. Either way,

as we move more and more into the phase of vertical self-transcendence, putting off our self-centered consciousness to open up to the Great Center and its transforming power, then a profound reversal in the movement of self-development takes place.

Any evolution requires an open system and a form of exchange, whether of matter, energy, or information. This one conveniently involves all three, in the form of various graces, charisms, and sacraments. This power, in whatever form, "now flows primarily from above downwards, transforming us from above."

Nor are we alone in our weirdness, for something similar is "taught in all the great spiritual traditions," boy and how. In the Book of the Same Name I just called it (↑) and (↓), but these are abstractions that require concrete practice in order to "activate," so to speak -- otherwise they're like math with no matter, or essence with no form. God does 90% of the work if we only meet him halfway.

I guess what I'm saying is that this is always happening anyway, so we might as well be aware of, and participate in, it. Grace falls like rain, and we are free to ignore or be conscious of it:

many [people] slip quietly into it, I suspect, than are self-consciously aware of it. It is a phase in the journey toward full self-development as a person that usually emerges somewhere toward mid-life...

Although sometimes before mid-life if you happen to be extra-weird. It takes all kinds to make a world, and there are apparently "born pneumatics" who, in the words of Schuon, are "born with a state of knowledge which, for other people, would actually be the goal, and not the point of departure." 

This is no different from the person who comes into the world with a gift for sports or music or language or math. Everybody's good at something, although it is important to place it in a trinitarian context, otherwise we may easily become the dupes of our own gift. That way lies cosmic narcissism instead of vertical openness to the grace, i.e., the source of the gift.

Apparently, we have to give it away like a hot potato, or so my sources are telling me: once our 

sense of self and what we can do is securely established, somewhere around the mid-point of our life's journey, sometimes earlier, sometimes later, a kind of call comes to us from our depths -- or beyond -- sometimes clear, more often obscure.

Supposing we take the call,

We come to realize that our self-development cannot go on to full term if we continue living the same way. To move on further some radical shift of focus must take place.

This is none other than

the call to radical self-transcendence, to let go of our own selves as center of interest and take on the Great Center as our own new center of consciousness and open ourselves to let its life flow through us and express itself more fully in our lives.

In so doing, the vertical becomes horizontal, or incarnates in our lives, so to speak:

And now our self-communication to others becomes, mysteriously, more and more of a God-communication through us. 

Look, someone's gotta do it. Why not you?