Evolutionary Unique Self – A Puzzle Piece that Evolves the Whole Puzzle

The Fourth Experience of Self: Evolutionary Unique Self

by Marc Gafni

A puzzle piece, which fits into and evolves the whole puzzle.

The experience of Evolutionary Unique Self locates the verb of your Unique Self within a larger narrative. The experience of Unique Self is that of a puzzle piece connected to the two, three, or four pieces that surround it. The interior experience of Evolutionary Unique Self is that it is connected to and evolves the entire expanse of the puzzle.

As you become ever more conscious of your unique qualities, you become ever more sensitized to the unique qualities of others. This is the beginning of radical intimacy. You are connected to every unique feature of the entire puzzle. As Evolutionary Unique Self, your own evolution nourishes and evolves all the other pieces of the puzzle. The part evolves the whole. The whole, in turn, nourishes and evolves your Unique Self. Evolutionary Unique Self is the ultimate expression of intimacy. Evolutionary Unique Self naturally forms Evolutionary We Space. While separateness creates alienation, uniqueness creates intimacy. When you awaken to the realization that your outrageous love is utterly irreplaceable, everything changes. You begin to know the UnLove in the world can only be liberated from its contraction by your unique expression of outrageous love. You awaken to the core delight and purpose of your existence. You are called to directly participate in a way no other human being can—in the evolution of love. You are deeply aware of your puzzle piece nature and you naturally seek connection with other puzzle pieces. You realize you are not separate from them. You also realize you are different from them. In this differentiation you have an unmediated experience of your own uniqueness, your own specialization. You are special. You have a unique perspective, a unique gift to give, and a unique intimacy to manifest. It’s your and yours alone. Jealousy disappears you are able to connect in love with other Evolutionary Unique Selves. Together you form an Evolutionary We Space of Unique Selves. Each of you is an irreducibly unique expression of the love intelligence and love beauty of all that is. Uniqueness is the exchange bonding you into a larger symphonic whole, with each instrument playing its own particular melody. Each melody is music. The music is outrageous love.

Hence, Evolutionary We Space is formed by individuals who have resolved the paradox of autonomy and communion by living in the consciousness of Evolutionary Unique Self. At earlier levels of self-evolution there is a natural historical tension between autonomy and communion. You are either independent or dependent. You are either separate from or a part of the larger community. Autonomy was thought to be self-referencing for its integrity and wholeness, while communion was seen to be other-referencing for its integrity and wholeness. The distinction between the two is core to the way we live our lives and make our decisions in all areas from personal relationship to governance. Communion is thought to come at the expense of autonomy, and autonomy at the expense of communion.

At the higher and more awakened levels of consciousness this distinction breaks down. Autonomy is expressed by radical uniqueness and uniqueness is the distinct, self, puzzle piece that yearns to connect to and complete the puzzle. Uniqueness is an expression of the integrity of autonomy. Unique means independent and unlike any other. Uniqueness is also necessary for communion. A unique puzzle piece, cell or any unique part is completed by its fitting into a larger whole. In Evolutionary We Space each individual expresses the full power of their uniqueness and at the same time all of the Unique Selves are in service of the larger We Space communion. What emerges is a collective wisdom synergized by all of the masterminds forming a larger metamind without losing their individual integrity. Outrageous love allows for the collapse of the opposition between autonomy and communion. It is outrageous love that allows unique individuals to come together in a larger whole, not only without losing their individual integrity, but with an actual deepening of that very individuality. Evolutionary We Space is the most powerful expression of outrageous love.

When you enter Evolutionary We Space you are fully awake and alive giving your unique gift. Your Unique Gift is your superpower. You access the God that lives as you. You are literally a superhero. It is only through this progression that you actually become the hero of your own life. To awaken as evolutionary unique self is to feel evolution awakening in you and as you. You have a lived experience that the world needs something essential that can only be provided by you. This emerges not from your ego, but from your essence. In the old world, success meant you were the only superhero in your neighborhood. In creating a future of Evolutionary We Spaces, we identify that we are actually a legion of super heroes acting together, playing together and creating together. We write each other outrageous love letters. We arouse, in a sustained and unabashed manner, our genuine love for each other. We create a larger domain of wisdom in the space “in between” us.

Remember Phil Jackson, the great basketball coach who brought the LA Lakers and the Chicago Bulls to a series of championships? He talked about this phenomenon of Evolutionary We Space when he said, “The subtle interweaving of the players at full speed to the point where they’re thinking and moving as one.” This image is important because in it each player is excelling. Each player is a star. Each player is a unique expression of human grace and gift, and yet when they come together into this Evolutionary We Space they begin to operate in a larger organismic mode. The individual in no way disappears, and yet a deeper and wider intelligence emerges.

One participant in an exercise designed to evoke Evolutionary We Space gave this description. She wrote, “When someone else spoke, it felt as if I were speaking. When I did speak, it was virtually egoless, like it wasn’t really me in the small sense. It’s as if something larger was speaking through me. And in that space we started to create. We started to say things we’ve never thought of before.”

The core of this technology was already known in the inner circle of esoteric wisdom throughout the ages. In the Hebrew mysticism of Kabbalah, it is said the voice of the Shekinah, the goddess speaks from within the community that comes together to enact a shared vision. Hebrew mystics in the third century wrote, “Whenever ten people gather with clear and holy intention, the Shekinah, She, the goddess, speaks from their mouth.” Or Matthew, in the New Testament: “Whenever two or three gather in my name, I am in the midst of them.” Aurobindo, the modern Hindu mystic, talks about the evolution of truth consciousness in which they–the We Space–feel themselves to be “the embodiment of a single self”. Rudolf Steiner, the great theosophist wrote, “People awake through each other, and then real communal spirituality descends on our workplace.”

If you’re living in True Self, you’re absorbed in the one, and your unique voice merges into silence. If you are living as separate self, the different voices all try and shout the loudest in order to be heard. But Evolutionary We Space creates a larger collective intelligence and is a direct function of shared Unique Self experience. The technology that creates an Evolutionary We Space is Unique Self. Through the unique contours of your puzzle piece, each member of the group merges with and completes both themselves and the larger whole. The Unique Self experience is both the heart of the phenomenon of collective intelligence and the key to its emergence in any given situation. Said simply, Evolutionary We Space is only a genuine possibility if we deploy the awakened technology of Unique Self-realization. Very few pleasures in life compare to the awakened We Space of Unique Selves living together. It was toward this pleasure that Teilhard de Chardin pointed when he said, “The immense fulfillment of the friendship between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality impossible to describe.”

[1] The only exception was Bill Clinton’s bombing of Kosovo. In Powers well-documented analysis, however, Clinton on issued the bombing because his presidential rival, Bob Dole, had made Clinton’s inaction in Kosovo a campaign issue.