The Cosmic Cost of Arising

Key topics and themes included in this session:

1. Introduction to the Session

• Mention of Holy Week and the flexibility of the early days for broader contemplation
• Intention to address a central question of Holy Week within the Christian tradition
• Acknowledgment of the inner conflict many have with their religious upbringing

2. The Core Question of Holy Week

• Teilhard de Chardin’s assertion about the cosmic nature of Christianity
• The challenge of validating Christianity’s claims in a 14 billion-year-old universe
• The speaker’s desire to explore Christianity as a realistic and cosmic faith

3. The Cosmic Claim of Christianity

• Early Christian belief in the cosmic power of Jesus’s death and resurrection
• The spread of Christianity due to this belief
• The difficulty of accepting this claim in modern times
• The tendency of liberal Christians to dismiss or downsize the significance of Jesus’s death

4. The Unraveling of Traditional Christian Narrative

• The impact of scientific discoveries on the story of Adam and Eve
• Teilhard de Chardin’s silencing for challenging literal biblical interpretations
• The church’s intuition about the cosmic cost of existence

5. The Cost of Arising and Shared Responsibility

• The shared cosmic cost across all orders of creation
• Gurdjieff’s perspective on the cost to be paid and voluntary self-offering
• The importance of stepping up to the plate and contributing to the cosmic order

6. Gurdjieff’s Ray of Creation and the Chiasm of Consciousness

• The speaker’s interpretation of Gurdjieff’s ray of creation as a chiasm
• The positioning of World 24 as the epicenter of the chiasm
• The association of the Kingdom of Heaven with the Kesdjan body and the realm of the personal

7. The Significance of Jesus’s Sacrifice

• Jesus’s actions as a potential opening for new possibilities for humanity
• The speaker’s belief in the cosmogonic power of Jesus’s sacrifice within the realm of the personal

8. Teilhard de Chardin’s Perspective on the Realm of the Persona

• A passage from “The Human Phenomenon” discussing the transformation of the world’s indifference into solicitude in the sphere of the personal

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