APPENDIX II
The Pattern of Spiritual Transformation
Even inside an incarnational worldview, we grow by passing beyond some
perfect order, through a usually painful and seemingly unnecessary disorder, to
an enlightened reorder or “resurrection.” This is the “pattern that connects” and
solidifies our relationship with everything around us.
The trajectory of transformation and growth, as I see the great religious and
philosophical traditions charting it, uses many metaphors for this pattern. We
could point to the classic “Hero’s Journey” charted by Joseph Campbell; the Four
Seasons or Four Directions of most Native religions; the epic accounts of exodus,
exile, and Promised Land of the Jewish people, followed by the cross, death, and
resurrection narrative of Christianity. Here, I offer a distillation that might help
you see all of these trajectories in a common and very simple—almost too
simple—way. Each of these “myths,” and each in its own way, is saying that
growth happens in this full sequence. To grow toward love, union, salvation, or
enlightenment (I use the words almost interchangeably), we must be moved
from Order to Disorder and then ultimately to Reorder.
ORDER: At this first stage, if we are granted it (and not all are),
we feel innocent and safe. Everything is basically good, it all means
something, and we feel a part of what looks normal and deserved.
It is our “first naïveté”; it explains everything, and thus feels like it
is straight from God, solid, and forever. Those who try to stay in
this first satisfying explanation of how things are and should be
will tend to refuse and avoid any confusion, conflict,
inconsistencies, suffering, or darkness. They do not like disorder in
any form. Even many Christians do not like anything that looks
like “carrying the cross.” (This is the huge price we have paid for