Co-Creating Reality
Episode 8
So, by weaving together various mystical traditions, the ideas of Alfred North Whitehead and Teilhard de Chardin, two thinkers I first encountered while diving into Integral theory, have come to the forefront in the past few years.
Whitehead's Process philosophy really speaks to me these days. Its emphasis on God as an active participant in our lives and that we are co-creators in this wild, beautiful dance of existence makes sense of my experience. It’s the most effective metaphysics to deal with theodicy that I’ve encountered.
This perspective shifts my thinking in ways that just make sense. God is not dictating our lives or setting up some predetermined path. Instead, it is experiencing life alongside us, moment by moment.
This is an empowering way of approaching experiences. When I'm fully present and tuned into my creative impulse, I'm not just going through the motions—I'm helping to bring new possibilities into being. Each choice becomes an opportunity to participate across the web of existence we're all part of.
As I adopt this way of experiencing, I feel a shift—like the universe itself is breathing with me. Not directing me toward a specific choice, but rather creating a space where I can sense the possibilities more clearly. Reality isn't just static objects but events and experiences—moments of becoming. Each moment is influenced by what came before but not completely determined by it. There's room for novelty, for creation, for something to emerge.
Teilhard de Chardin adds another layer to this. He saw consciousness as the universe's deepening awareness of itself, a movement toward what he called the Omega Point, a kind of ultimate complexity and unity.
I find this idea incredibly hopeful. It suggests that my own journey toward greater awareness isn't separate from the universe's journey. When I practice presence and compassion, when I create from that deep well of intuition—I'm participating in this process.
This approach affects how I move through my day. When I am mindful I ask better questions: "What wants to emerge in this situation?" “How can I create a space for insight?” “Are there synchronicities with potential glimpses of that co-creative process at work?”
Even challenging interactions can shift. I try to remember that the divine is present in the difficult moments too—not solving the problem for us, but experiencing it with us, offering possibilities for healing and growth if I can stay present enough to perceive them.
It’s not all happy times of course. If we're co-creating reality, that means we are responsible for our contributions. When I'm reactive, fearful, or closed off, I'm still participating in creation—just not in a way that may increase flourishing.
I have to face some uncomfortable truths about the realities I've helped create in my relationships. When my lack of presence leads to missed opportunities or unnecessary suffering. The good news is that each moment offers a fresh start.
The invitation is simple but transformative: Be present. Pay attention. Recognize the sacred creative force that moves within and around all of us.
Another take on theodicy, from Sri Aurobindo's "Essays on the Gita," Chapter 11: The Cosmic Vision (Sri Aurobindo's work has often been compared to both Whitehead and de Chardin)
Indian spirituality knows that God is Love and Peace and calm Eternity, — the Gita which presents us with these terrible images, speaks of the Godhead who embodies himself in them as the lover and friend of all creatures.
But there is too the sterner aspect of his divine government of the world which meets us from the beginning, the aspect of destruction, and to ignore it is to miss the full reality of the divine Love and Peace and Calm and Eternity and even to throw on it an aspect of partiality and illusion, because the comforting exclusive form in which it is put is not borne out by the nature of the world in which we live.
This world of our battle and labour is a fierce dangerous destructive devouring world in which life exists precariously and the soul and body of man move among enormous perils, a world in which by every step forward, whether we will it or no, something is crushed and broken, in which every breath of life is a breath too of death.
To put away the responsibility for all that seems to us evil or terrible on the shoulders of a semi-omnipotent Devil, or to put it aside as part of Nature, making an unbridgeable opposition between world-nature and God-Nature, as if Nature were independent of God, or to throw the responsibility on man and his sins, as if he had a preponderant voice in the making of this world or could create anything against the will of God, are clumsily comfortable devices in which the religious thought of India has never taken refuge.
We have to look courageously in the face of the reality and see that it is God and none else who has made this world in his being and that so he has made it. We have to see that Nature devouring her children, Time eating up the lives of creatures, Death universal and ineluctable and the violence of the Rudra forces in man and Nature are also the supreme Godhead in one of his cosmic figures.
We have to see that God the bountiful and prodigal creator, God the helpful, strong and benignant preserver is also God the devourer and destroyer. The torment of the couch of pain and evil on which we are racked is his touch as much as happiness and sweetness and pleasure.
It is only when we see with the eye of the complete union and feel this truth in the depths of our being that we can entirely discover behind that mask too the calm and beautiful face of the all-blissful Godhead and in this touch that tests our imperfection the touch of the friend and builder of the spirit in man.
The discords of the worlds are God's discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony, the summits and thrilled vastnesses of his transcendent and his cosmic Ananda.