Chapter 10

Pursuing Evolutionary

Love

Envision a World of Engaged Evolutionary Relationships

—A Dialogue between Andrew Harvey and Chris Saade

Andrew Harvey: We’re nearing the end of our epic conversation together. Now I would love you to take a deep breath and describe your vision of what realized evolutionary love could make available to the world. What would a world of increasingly divinized, embodied couples actually look like? What would they enshrine and achieve?

Chris Saade: We know that the transformation of the world toward love’s vision, the expansion of democratic freedoms, peace, and justice is going to come from the minority, not the majority. It’s going to come from a very dedicated soulful minority—like Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Florence Nightingale, Martin Luther King Jr. and the people who were with him—who have known the authenticity of the unique self that they were, mined its unique power, and felt rivers of love flowing within themselves. Not that it was done perfectly—of course their passion was manifested with mistakes and with brokenness—but they have known the power of the freedom of authenticity and the great generosity of love. More people are arising with the confidence of epic lovers who are speaking vigorously, though imperfectly, both the freedom of individual authenticity as well as a vision of love and solidarity for the world and the Earth.

Now what we are seeing, are people who are doing this evolutionary dance as a couple and within relationships. Uniting the creative forces emerging from the heart within a couple does not just double the power, it exponentially multiplies that power. A quantum leap of heart and mind erupts. A healthy relationship that harbors the freedom of authenticity and the passion of love, when it is dedicated to a common vision of social transformation and liberation, unleashes energies bigger than anything we have seen so far. As you have said, Andrew, most people working for peace and justice in the world might feel isolated. Couples doing this work co-creatively, and then hopefully in community, are moving away from the paradigm of the lone creator. The partnership of a couple enamored by a larger vision of authenticity, democratic freedoms, peace, and justice unleashes possibilities of strength and compassion beyond our imagination.

What we would see are couples that are able to go beyond criticizing and psychoanalyzing each other’s behavior. They would recognize the beauty and the strength of each other’s authenticity: authenticity of personality, mind, psyche, heart, and aspirations. What would become central is not the endless arguments about who is correct and who is not, who is more functional, who has the best analysis and perception, but rather the profound respect of the freedom to be who one is, and to affirm one’s given nature. What we would see are individuals committed to honoring each other’s personality (with its particularities, lacks, and gifts) and a deep appreciation of unique and authentic idiosyncrasies. We would see individuals who desire to intentionally create, through their freedom of authenticity, a space where the energies of love can abound, and where freedom and love are deepened and enhanced by partners serving together humanity and the Earth. Criticizing each other’s behavior and psychoanalyzing the roots of desires and aspirations, divides the couple even further. It weakens, if not deadens their love. The affirmation of the freedom of each other’s inalienable authenticity of self, as well as the affirmation of the passion to serve love’s vision in the world, strengthens the bond of a couple and regenerates its intensity. Authenticity, love, and social solidarity become an ever-progressing and mutually deepening spiral. Authenticity is crucial for a thriving love in a relationship, as is social solidarity.

Andrew Harvey: I would like to add, before we end, that this vision of evolutionary love could potentially heal the tragic split between men and women that we’re witnessing at this moment. Men have never felt more disempowered, more bewildered. They don’t know what sacred masculinity is because all the old paradigms of it are being rubbled and there is so much relentless focus on how the masculine has oppressed the feminine. Many women are now quite rightly very angry at what has happened. Women are also going through a crisis of identity because they’re finding it hard to integrate the different sides of the feminine, especially the grand ferocity of the dark feminine, so demonized by patriarchy, let alone their own inherent masculine. There is tremendous disarray, mutual suspicion, and suffering going on today in heterosexual relationships.

In evolutionary love, we’re trying to bring a new vision for heterosexual couples to aspire to in which the man will feel worshipped as the Shiva he is and the woman will feel worshipped as the Goddess she is. The psychological wrangling will have a chance of easing and ceasing and the baptism and initiation into divine archetypal life can become the source of immense healing.

I’d also like to say something about homosexual relationships. In my experience, the homosexual world is still a ravaged by internalized homophobia, and rejection of the body, even as it is falsely promoting and celebrating it in strange and self-destructive ways. I invite all my gay brothers and sisters to realize that through the celebration of their divine sexuality and the dedication of the joy and energy they uncover through it to sacred action, they too can play their sacred and unique part in the creation of a new world.

Chris Saade: That is so beautiful, Andrew. May we continue to affirm the beauty of love in its different forms of manifestation: romantic, friendship, social, heterosexual, gay...I now want to ask you something as we close. You speak about the ways in which people who have a passion for the world and a passion for peace and justice many times find themselves alone because others might be afraid or overwhelmed by their passion. What do you tell people about this issue? Can we be passionate about transformation in the world and be fully invested in building a relationship?

Andrew Harvey: Yes! Absolutely! If you ground both in a total adoration and surrender to the Divine. The Divine is the only force strong enough to fuel both the kind of rigor and power and efficiency and truth and passion and energy that you need for your work in the world, and the energy and passion and peace and rigor and power that you’re going to need for your relationship. Only the Divine can do it.