an interview with Barbara Marx Hubbard
Helen: What do you mean by "emergence"? Barbara: Emergence is placing the personal growth that so many of us are going through now within the context of an evolutionary quantum jump. It is the next step in our evolutionary perspective. Our generation is the one that happens to be born with the power to destroy civilization, as we know it, or move forward to a truly unknown and unlimited future if we use our new capacities harmoniously and wisely. We can transform this Earth. Emergence takes place in the generation of the gap from here — which is a high-tech, overpopulated, polluted society — to a vision of a universal co-creative, co-evolving species. It’s a spiritual path designed for exactly this moment of evolution when the human species is making a jump from one phase to the next. And, the essence of the quality required of us is to emerge as co-creators of our world. It’s a shift inside ourselves from our egoistic, separated, self-conscious personality to that aspect of ourselves we are calling the essential self, one that is aligned with and expressive of the deeper patterns of creation, spirit — God. Really, it’s like a next step, or the personal aspect of conscious evolution. An interesting and natural thing is happening. In the past, when we became spiritually awakened, so often we wanted to go vertical to find God. We went to ashrams, monasteries, deep spiritual practice of all kinds. What is happening now, to millions of us, is an awakening spiritually. We're not just entering into a known path of some religion; we're being activated internally to express our unique creativity for the sake of our own evolution and the world. So, the path of the co-creator is to be awakened spiritually within, which then turns into your own deeper life purpose, which then makes you want to reach out and touch others in a way that expresses self and really evolves our communities and our world. Certainly, we can't do that unless we activate ourselves first. That's why, for me, emergence is the shift from ego to essence. That is so important. Helen: What do we know about the developmental path of a universal human? Barbara: First of all, let's say (and I am making an evolutionary hypothesis) that what's coming out of all of this is a new species of humanity, not just a slightly better Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens’ "sapiens," which means self-reflective, has come to an end of how it can manage as a separated, self-conscious entity with all this power! I think that started in 1945 when we dropped the bomb. So, here's my thesis. This new type of human called Homo universalis or Homo noetica — a lot of different names — has been prefigured in the great saints and seers and great mystics of humanity. Every culture was founded by such a person, whether it be Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, whatever. However, due to the planetary condition of complexity and crisis and possibly self-destruction, we’re all facing this type of awakening everywhere in response to this crisis. It is being awakened in all different religions and in all people who have no religion at all. It is this awakening to an internal, personal expression of the divine and the desire to participate in creation. The type of human I'm writing Emergence for is the type who is popping up out of traditional paths and separated self-consciousness, who is spiritually awakening, who feels connected to the heart, to the whole of life, who is aroused vocationally, who is multidimensional in the sense that we don't only count on the five senses. This type is an emerging humanity now. They hold the seeds of the true salvation of our culture, the building of the new culture. Paul Ray calls them the cultural creatives. He says there are fifty million in the United States alone whose values are shifting now. The type I'm writing for is the type who is awakening and emerging. I'm giving a model here like a biological model, and I'm saying, "This is the first stage of the universal human." It could be called embryonic: still in the womb of self-consciousness, we are spiritually awakened. We recognize that we have a higher destiny. We start to hear voices, get guidance, go to workshops, read books, and, at some point, we get to a stage where we say, "I can't go on if I'm just going to be in a separating ego seeking the divine." In my case, I was driven. I had a driven "local self," although I had received higher guidance. For 35 years, I had been motivated, but I realized that I was separated from the source of my motivation. My personality was trying to carry out what I was inspired to do by this higher being. Helen: What period are we talking about? Barbara: Believe it or not, I'm 71 years old, and this happened two years ago. Helen: You had not found your answers and something was missing? Barbara: I had a whole life as wife and mother. For 35 years, I had a very deep vocation in the field of expressing evolutionary potential. What I realized only recently, two or three years ago, was that I was an inspired person, but that which was inspiring me was so separate from my sense of identity. At times, I would call this inspiration God or Christ or something beyond. What happened to me is that I decided to stop, and that’s where Emergence came from. I would only pursue an activity, a book, a thought, or anything that my personality could do if it touched me inside. It had to take me to that deep place of peace and connectedness to the one reality. I call this moment the birth of the universal human. I decided that I would not put up with this quality of myself — this drive and separation — any longer. I started to place my attention on the source of my own guidance, that higher self, that deeper inner voice. In meditation, I started contemplating the essential self. First of all, I started to remember the flashes of guidance I've had for all these years. I had written them down in my journal, and they guided me my whole life, from being a wife and mother of five children to being a cosmic futurist. As I remembered the guidance, I got this feeling of warmth and love from the source of the guidance. You know that in metaphysics, whatever you put your attention on grows. I put my attention on the source of the guidance and remembered the feeling of it. How wonderful I felt when I received guidance, how relaxed, how joyful, how grateful. This presence began to incarnate and began to fill my heart with tremendous warmth into my solar plexus. I began to contemplate the glory of this beloved presence. My local self began to feel drawn upward into this essence. Gradually I saw that, "It's me. That's who I am. I’m not some extraterrestrial or Jesus Christ of Nazareth. That is my essential self." Helen: Is that what some people call your higher self? Barbara: Yes, the God self, the Christ self. That's the self that is one with the Whole, the Divine. In this particular path of the co-creator, that self is a belief expression of the great creative process in self, in every one of us. Instead of being just God in us, it's God incarnating exactly as this person. Helen: God in God's image? Barbara: God in God's image, but as Helen, as Barbara. As Helen and Barbara, when we place that attention on it, it grows. In my process, I call that early stage the infancy of myself as a universal human. I began to feel like a baby when it's just born: it forgets it's born and cries and screams, then suddenly falls asleep and gets blissful. I began to get blissful. I had that look of a newborn baby, and my bliss was that the driven, local self was being drawn up into the presence of the Divine. So, this compulsive, seeking, local quality of the self was released. Helen: Were you having your epiphany? Barbara: I was having my epiphany, and it was unique: I am that being I'm hearing. I discovered the Source. I am whole. I am love. I am autonomous. I realized that this creative being has been guiding me all the time, all along my path, all the time. The beauty of the emerging process as you focus on it, if you're a co-creative person, is that you're going to go out into the world and do something. You’re going to go out and co-create a conscious evolution. Barbara Marx Hubbard will speak at the Prophets Conference being held in Victoria, B.C. August 17-19, where the vision is about the creation of a genuinely workable and bright future based upon depths of authenticity, clarity, spirituality, inquiry, and evolved being. For more details on the Conference, which is cosponsored by The New Times, see display ad in this issue. |
It’s what happens at Prophets Conferences: deep conversations and change. After Barbara Marx Hubbard’s daughter attended one of the conferences, she and Barbara talked. Their conversation evolved into an in-depth self-analysis that got Hubbard out of denial and into a oneness with spirit. She changed, and, from the depths of her heart, she wrote a book called Emergence: The Shift from Ego to Essence, Ten Steps to the Universal Human, published by Hampton Roads and due to be released this spring.