When we awaken to the infinite panorama of evolution, in fact, we realize ourselves to be nothing less than the very leading edge of a fourteen billion year cosmic process. A cosmic process that gave rise to the vast matter and energy that created galaxies, planets, and stars. That process created the conditions that made it possible for biological life to emerge around four billion years ago. And then, from biological life, 200,000 years ago mind burst forth as the dramatic beginning of human consciousness and culture. Now, the energy and intelligence that initiated that process and has been driving it all along is dependent upon you and me. Indeed, our responsibility for where evolution is going, at the level of our shared culture, is much bigger than most of us are aware of. We tend to not be very conscious of the enormous context in which our own choices and actions are occurring.
For the mature human being in the second decade of the twenty-first century, this is what I see as being the ultimate purpose of higher spiritual development in a nutshell: to liberate the miraculous power of human choice from being unconsciously trapped in a cultural epidemic of narcissism, materialism, and existential apathy. Our moral, spiritual, and cultural evolution—if not our very survival—really do depend on it. God has indeed fallen out of the sky. Now it’s up to each and every one of us to realize that the energy and intelligence that created the universe and is creating it right now is depending upon us to take the next step.
Malarkey Bear says: remember, only you can prevent a cultural epidemic of narcissism. To put it in Hegelian dialectic terms, the thesis of absurdity gave rise to the antithesis of parody, and now, in the Cohenic self-realization, they have achieved synthesis.