At this critical time, in response to the dire need to bridge the divides between us and reclaim a hidden wholeness in our midst, members of the Evolutionary Leaders SDG Thought Leaders Circle have therefore drafted a unitive narrative to provide a cosmological foundation for a holistic worldview that will serve and support humanity’s evolution of consciousness.
A unitive narrative is founded on the convergence of the latest scientific breakthroughs and the earliest universal spiritual wisdom. Narratives have always been fundamental to our identity; we are the storytelling species.
Humanity’s Storytelling Roots
From humanity’s beginning, Indigenous peoples sought wisdom to live by. They observed a pattern in which all things in the universe flow together in harmony. As a result, they incorporated this pattern of wholeness into the heart of the stories they told.
Within their ancient stories, now known as myths, great truths were established. These stories held communities together. In addition, stories provided a unifying framework for living within the flow of the natural world around them. These were unitive narratives, essential to their individual and collective well-being.
Across many millennia, communities expanded, spread out, became more diverse, and experienced conflict and disorder. As a result, divisive stories emerged that maintained separation and challenged the trajectory of the evolutionary impulse. Most of humanity’s history has been characterized by competing narratives that fought for the minds and hearts of people everywhere.
A Necessary Narrative
As we approach a consciousness of global integration, a new story of our wholeness is needed to frame this emerging interconnectedness. To this end, it is necessary – for our own survival – to come together again through unitive narratives. As leading mythologist Joseph Campbell noted, the only narrative worth thinking about now is one that is about the entire planet and all beings on it. Such a narrative would be unitive in representing the unified nature of reality.
This view is built upon current evidence that evolution is not driven by randomness and chance. It instead exists to evolve from simplicity to complexity toward ever greater levels of interdependence. It can be characterized by unity in diversity at each expanding level. Evolution’s path is never a straight line. Its movement is spiral, like the cycles of nature, always in the direction of the good of the whole.
Acknowledgment of the whole enables us to look deeper and probe fundamental truths of essential relationships throughout the universe. Consciousness is not something we have but rather what we and the universe are. Thus we see that the physical realm we exist in cannot have created itself.
The Universe, at all levels of existence, arose from deeper non-physical causes. This understanding gives us a felt sense of unity with all life, and unity with the ineffable source of all being. It unites us with the evolutionary flow of all things. A unitive narrative invites us to embrace the wisdom of the complementarity and wholeness of seemingly opposing forces, such as feminine and masculine attributes. Thus we are enabled to recognize, honor, and achieve unity in the diversity of expressions on our way to a consciousness of wholeness through which we carry out our actions in the world.
One Story With a Bright Future
A unitive narrative recognizes our fundamental interbeing, interconnectedness, and interdependence with the whole community of our planetary home, Gaia, and with the entire Universe. In addition, this empowers us to envision and co-create a love-based rather than separation-based future in which regenerative and sustainable development, unitive justice, and peace are natural outcomes of a world that works for all beings and our planetary home.
Unitive narratives are needed now more than ever to lead us through a process of shifting the focus from individual well-being to collective well-being. In our time, the part no longer takes precedence over the whole. As a result, both are completely interdependent. Exclusive emphasis on any one part endangers the whole.
Built upon a unitive consciousness, a unitive narrative gives us a deeper commitment to ensuring Earth’s well-being, as a living organism, as we understand more clearly that this depends upon collaborative relationships and dynamic coevolutionary partnerships on a planetary scale. Furthermore, our planet’s own evolutionary progress and purpose can only be realized through humanity’s evolving consciousness.
Support for a unitive narrative is growing among EL Synergy Circles, UN NGOs, and beyond. We invite the IONS community to follow the link below to the full unitive narrative text and become active allies in disseminating the unitive narrative globally.
You can learn more about this topic by visiting the Evolutionary Leaders SDG Thought Leaders Circle website.
