{"id":2243,"date":"2026-08-27T16:43:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T16:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lloydmattlandry.com\/?p=2243"},"modified":"2026-08-27T16:43:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T16:43:24","slug":"august-27-2026-how-evolution-becomes-conscious-of-itself-through-love-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lloydmattlandry.com\/?p=2243","title":{"rendered":"August 27, 2026\u00a0 –\u00a0 How Evolution Becomes Conscious of Itself Through Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong>How does Teilhard\u2019s \u2018lens of evolution\u2019 show love as the the flow of evolution through us?<\/em><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s Post<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last week we saw how, in Teilhard\u2019s insights into evolution as a truly universal process, he understood each step of evolution as resulting from a union which produced something new.\u00a0 He refers to this critical step (without which the universe would be static, unchanging, and effectively \u2018still born\u2019) as \u2018complexification\u2019.\u00a0 From such an interpolation of the past, he extrapolates to the future of human love as \u2018nothing more\u2019 (and he would add, \u2018nothing less\u2019) than the continuation of such a universal dynamic in each human life.<\/p>\n

This week we will continue our exploration of this dynamic, seeing how, while such a process indeed continues in our lives, it nonetheless becomes more complex in itself.<\/p>\n

Excentration and Centration As The Continuation of Evolution in the Human Person<\/strong><\/p>\n

Teilhard\u2019s insight into love\u2019s excentration-centration recursive activity is drawn from two of his other insights.<\/p>\n

First, in many of his works he identifies ‘centration’ as a key aspect of ‘complexification’.\u00a0 In other words, in evolution the more ‘centered’ an entity is, the higher it can be seen in the order of complexity and the later it appears in the history of evolution.\u00a0 He offers examples such as nuclei in atoms, atoms in molecules, molecules in cells, central nervous systems in animals, and brains in higher animals.<\/p>\n

Second, he notes that<\/p>\n

“. .in a converging Universe each element achieves completeness ..\u00a0 by a sort of inward turn towards the Other (as) its growth culminates in an act of giving and in excentration”.<\/p>\n

Effectively, increase in centration is the essential characteristic of evolved products, but this changes in the human when entities not only unite to produce<\/em> more complex products, but to increase<\/em> their own complexity as well. In the human person, morphological evolution is no longer necessary to produce increased complexity: it now emerges within<\/em> the entity in addition to among<\/em> entities.\u00a0\u00a0 Paraphrasing Confucius, Teilhard and Karen Armstrong, with love we are now brought into a more complete possession of ourselves when we engage into deeper relations with each other.<\/p>\n

Teilhard wasn\u2019t the first thinker to understand such reciprocal forces at work in human relationships, but he seems to be the first to understand our uniue human activity of \u2018relationship\u2019 in the context of the upsweep of evolution in the universe.<\/p>\n

For this spiral to take place, in which human growth results from relationships which enrich growth, we must become conscious of it.\u00a0 This requires us to be able to see the energy of evolution as it rises within us to be able to fully cooperate with it.<\/p>\n

But, It Ain\u2019t Easy<\/strong><\/p>\n

That said, if the current state of the world offers any clue, this is not a trivial undertaking.\u00a0 As many of our popular love songs suggest, \u2018if it were easy they\u2019d be more of it; if there ain\u2019t more of it, it must not be easy\u2019.<\/p>\n

Love as understood by Teilhard does not come without work: it requires a conscious decision to rise above the comforting scaffolding of ego, as nearly all religious beliefs express.\u00a0 As the Marriage Encounter movement stresses, \u201cLove is a decision\u201d, and such decision requires trust that the energy of love will carry us forward to more completeness.\u00a0 As we have suggested previously, one of the principle mechanisms of our personal \u2018complexification\u2019 is development of the skill of using our neocortex brains to moderate the instinctual stimuli of our reptilian and limbic brains, Such skill in \u2018decision making\u2019 is a critical facet of this evolutionary skill.<\/p>\n

As we only need to look into our own lives to verify, these dynamics of excentration and centration are not without cost.\u00a0 The process of excentration, traditionally of \u201closs of one\u2019s self\u201d, \u201ctranscendence of egoism\u201d, or even more descriptive of the difficulty, \u201cdying to self\u201d, does not come easy.\u00a0 As Khalil Gibran says, \u201cThe pain you feel is the breaking of the shell which encloses your understanding\u201d.\u00a0 One aspect of a secular approach to sin<\/em> can be seen in the resistance, even the avoidance that we offer to such a painful undertaking.<\/p>\n

The acknowledgement of the difficulty of such an undertaking better delineates the domains of the \u2018Theological Virtues\u201d that we addressed in recent weeks.\u00a0 In order to take the risks that Love requires, we must have Faith in our power to do so and Hope in the ensuing outcome before we can take the necessary and potentially dangerous leap that Love requires.<\/p>\n

So, seen through Teilhard\u2019s \u2018lens\u2019, the mechanisms of the energy of Love by which we are both \u2018united\u2019 (become closer) and the same time \u2018differentiated\u2019 (become more complete), the energies of cosmic evolution work in the human person just as they were at work in the first \u2018atomicization\u2019 of electrons.\u00a0\u00a0 However, there are, in the human, two significant exceptions.<\/p>\n

The first<\/u> can be seen in that, while primitive particles could unify in such a way as to increase the complexity of their products<\/em>, human \u2018particles\u2019 can unify in such a way as to increase the complexity of themselves.<\/em><\/p>\n

The second<\/u>, which is much more important, is that these human entities must first understand, <\/em>then trust<\/em> and finally consciously cooperate<\/em> with<\/em> this complex energy to effect such complexity.\u00a0 The three \u2018Theological Virtues\u2019 offer \u2018signposts\u2019 for navigating these three activities.<\/p>\n

Enter the \u2018Theological Virtues\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

As we have seen, the \u2018Theological Virtues\u2019 have an importance that goes far beyond the conventional religious goal of qualification for the next life. Now seen through Teilhard\u2019s \u2018lens\u2019, they represent the stances, the attitudes that are necessary for us to take on our continued evolution both as persons and as a species.<\/p>\n

Teilhard stresses the need for Faith<\/u> in this process of understanding and cooperating in the excentration\/centration interplay: belief that the self will not be lost in this journey from past to future; it will be enhanced<\/em>.\u00a0 The true, underlying, core nature of the human person that results from the long rise of consciousness mapped by our knowledge of the past continues to follow the thread of cosmic evolution which leads to the Hope<\/u> of greater possession of ourselves, fuller being, in the future.\u00a0 This thread of complexity has manifested itself in the current which runs through life, awareness, and consciousness.\u00a0 It now continues in us as the Love<\/u> which powers the engine of our becoming.\u00a0 While the \u2018articulations of the noosphere,\u2019 as mapped by the concepts of sacraments, values and morals, can be seen as the early markers of the pathway of the axis of evolution as it rises in our lives, the \u2018Theological Virtues\u2019 offer an increased understanding of how these articulations can be \u2018lived out\u2019 in our personal \u2018complexification\u2019.<\/p>\n

The Next Post<\/strong><\/p>\n

This week we continued to follow Teilhard\u2019s expansion of love from the traditional understanding as an emotional energy which connects us for procreation, social stability and ultimately salvation to a more universal perspective in which Love can be seen as the energy by which we become \u2018fuller\u2019 and so continue the rise of complexity in human evolution.<\/p>\n

Next week we will take a fifth look at the Theological Virtues by seeing how Love can be seen as the hinge on which the belief afforded by Faith becomes an act whose outcome is anticipated by Hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 How does Teilhard\u2019s \u2018lens of evolution\u2019 show love as the the flow of evolution through us? Today\u2019s Post Last week we saw how, in Teilhard\u2019s insights into evolution as a truly universal process, he understood each step of evolution as resulting from a union which produced something new.\u00a0 He refers to this critical step […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[22,19,21,20,5,3,14],"class_list":["post-2243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-and-religion","tag-a-non-religious-approach-to-god","tag-evolution-in-human-life","tag-mans-place-in-the-cosmos","tag-reinterpretation-of-religion","tag-religion-as-compatible-with-evolution","tag-the-confluence-between-science-and-religion","tag-teilhard-de-chardin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p55Y11-Ab","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lloydmattlandry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lloydmattlandry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lloydmattlandry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lloydmattlandry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lloydmattlandry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lloydmattlandry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2244,"href":"https:\/\/www.lloydmattlandry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243\/revisions\/2244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lloydmattlandry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lloydmattlandry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lloydmattlandry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}