By Robert Atkinson, PhD
Perhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens
for one who desires to see it,
and having seen it, to find one in himself.
– Plato
Imagine all things in the entire Creation making up an interconnected whole. Imagine a world in which the explicit purpose of life is to realize the wholeness of the entire creation, to serve the good of the whole, and to live out our lives in wonderment of and in harmony with that whole.
In this wholeness, apparent opposites – like yin and yang, feminine and masculine – would be complementary, interrelated halves of the same whole, balancing, integrating, uniting, and transcending their assumed duality.
That this wholeness contains a pattern connecting us with the heavens is evident in the holistic worldview expressed in the Hermetic principle of “As above, so below, all things accomplishing the miracles of the One Thing.”
This principle integrates all levels of reality from the macrocosm (the universe as a whole) to the microcosm (i.e., the human being, a miniature universe) and is upheld by the latest science and the earliest spiritual wisdom. It bridges the divide between duality and nonduality, confirms that the individual and the collective mirror one another in their essential nature and processes, and explains how all things are interconnected.
Plato’s vision of a pattern connecting all levels of existence would take in a pattern of transformation that exists to ensure cycles of renewal and progress on all levels. This universal pattern assists our evolution of consciousness, confirms our wholeness on all levels, and helps carry out a process of transformation that is central to mythology, mysticism, rites of passage, and psychology.
This universal pattern central to multiple ways of knowing and practices defining transformation confirms that individual and collective transformation are so interdependent upon each other that they cannot be separated.
As we approach a consciousness of global integration, a new story of wholeness is needed to frame this emerging interconnectedness. Within the core pattern of transformation, we can conceptualize our own journey from separation to union, from the many to the One, toward a recognition of our inherent wholeness.
In A New Story of Wholeness is a blueprint for living into wholeness that serves as a roadmap of our entire journey to wholeness. This blueprint of the story of our evolving consciousness helps us recognize how our life is part of something much larger.
Living and telling about our own story of living into wholeness is the important work of conscious storytelling. As the storytelling species, let us reclaim our identity as whole beings living in harmony with all things around us and share widely our deeply lived stories of wholeness to bring us back together as a human family, one story at a time.
Adapted from A New Story of Wholeness: An Experiential Guide for Connecting the Human Family
Robert Atkinson, PhD, award-winning author, educator, and developmental psychologist, is a 2020 Gold Nautilus Book Award winner as co-editor of Our Moment of Choice: Evolutionary Visions and Hope for the Future, and a 2017 Silver Nautilus Book Award winner for The Story of Our Time: From Duality to Interconnectedness to Oneness. He is also the author or co-editor of nine other books including A New Story of Wholeness: An Experiential Guide for Connecting the Human Family (2022), Year of Living Deeply: A Memoir of 1969 (2019), Mystic Journey: Getting to the Heart of Your Soul’s Story (2012), and The Gift of Stories (1995). With a PhD in cross-cultural human development from the University of Pennsylvania and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago, he is professor emeritus at the University of Southern Maine, an internationally recognized authority on life story interviewing, a pioneer in the techniques of personal myth-making and soul-making, director of StoryCommons, founder of One Planet Peace Forum, and a member of the Evolutionary Leaders. www.robertatkinson.net
