Excerpt from Amy Edelstein’s book Love, Marriage & Evolution: Chapter 4

There’s a certain type of anxiety that post-modernity breeds in our psyches. The more we become rooted in a spiritually awakened evolutionary worldview, the more that anxiety will diminish. Some of the signs of success couples have been thrilled to see emerge when they consciously embrace the context we’ve been speaking about is a sense of fearlessness, openness, and sensitivity. As the view opens up to allow the illumination from the deeper Self to flood our experience, we can handle tension without immediately becoming reactive, self-protective, shielded. We can choose when to respond and when to wait, based on respect, concern, and skillful means.

Driven by evolutionary enthusiasm and spiritual strength, we can slough off the fear of others and the fear of being seen as who we are.

As we immerse ourselves in the spiritual dimension of Self, and as we learn to understand the dynamics of the different parts of the self work—the interplay of the ego and the psyche, the dynamics of Agape and Eros (the force that holds things together and allows integration and the force that generates new emergence) our evolutionary enthusiasm grows. Familiar fears recede into the background, becoming an ever-smaller part of our experience in life.

Driven by evolutionary enthusiasm and spiritual strength, we can slough off the fear of others and the fear of being seen as who we are. We more we allow ourselves to take root in these principles, the less that type of existential fear is going to hover in the forefront of our experience. We may still experience tension and we’ll no doubt experience challenges. But something else more compelling is taking its place at the forefront of awareness. That something else is the already fullness of self and our always greater human potential.

One of the most important things we can do is to live and demonstrate an alternative possibility in which we’re all ourselves—unique expressions of the spiritual process—sharing a perspective that fosters respect, space, affection, love, support, intimacy, trust, stability, and growth. There is no one way this should look. But there is a solid foundation with respect to context. If we can be clear about that and live from that and express its fruits, then we’ll be able to offer something of incredible value to contemporary culture.

—

This is an excerpt from Amy Edelstein’s new book Love, Marriage & Evolution. If you like what you read here please download the entire book, and share this content with friends and family.