Audio 15: Unique Self Jazz Symphony

The Greatest Story Ever Told: Audio series with Barbara Marx Hubbard & Marc Gafni

Barbara Marx Hubbard:

Welcome, everyone, to podcast 15 of the Great Universal Story of Creation, and recognize that the origin of this story is a mystery. It’s consciousness. It exploded in this Big Bang of creativity, out of which came energy, matter, life, human life, and now, our human life, just coming together at a point of transformation on planet Earth. It is obvious, when you look at the past turns in the spiral of evolution, you see crisis, after crisis, after crisis, where the end almost seemed to becoming and something new emerged. That is the nature of evolution. Here we are now, at another crisis, and the only real difference is that the humans alive know it. We know that we’re helping to create it.

We can see that we might lose our life support system on planet Earth. It’s also true that, in the great story of evolution, we see that something new is emerging, something creative, something good, something positive, made up out of all the existing innovations that are accumulating. What we’re saying here, as we’re facing this existential risk and crisis, and we recognize we’re like cells, imaginal cells in the body of a caterpillar about to become a butterfly, we’d like to begin to explore the social butterfly. What is coming out of this crisis that is possibly good?

Just take a moment now to think of this moment inside yourselves, where you can see all the crises around you, you can see the dangers that we’re facing, but at the same time, there’s something internal, inside you, inside me, inside every one of us, that we might call the impulse of evolution, the impulse of creativity, the heart’s desire to be more, love more, do more, and create more. That impulse is in every one of us. We are at the exact point where we could say that our crisis on this planet right now is the birth of a co-evolving, co-creative, emerging species.

This would be a species that can restore the Earth, that can free humans from disease, poverty and war. This would be humans that could begin to explore the deepest reaches of inner space, of spiritual evolution, that would be able to awaken our unique creativity and our vocational evolution, that would be able to take the vast powers of high technology, like nanotech, and biotechnology, and quantum technology, and would be able to use those new powers, which are powers we used to attribute to our old gods, that this species could use those powers for a planetary awakening of the next stage of human evolution that has perhaps only been envisioned by the great mystics, and sages, and seers of our species.

I would like to say that we are at the exact moment of a planetary crisis of birth in the story of evolution, and that we are going to be telling the story as best we can, Marc and I, as to how, when we see the individual greatness of each one of us, our hearts desire, our yearning, combined with all the innovations in health, education, science and technology, media, all of that coming together to be a vision of what we might call a universal humanity, able to survive on this Earth, to clean up our environment, to explore the vast regions of inner space and outer space. Our crisis is a birth of a co-evolving, co-creative humanity.

We’re just at the point, personally, if you remember the story of the imaginal cells in the body of the caterpillar, we have been those disks. We have been growing our capacities. We have been awakening to our yearning to do more and to be more creative. Well, let’s assume that the nature of evolution itself, the great creating process of evolution, is about to coordinate us into what we’ve been calling a Unique Self Symphony, where every note is part of a process of creation. Every person who has more to give, more to love, more to express is part of a planetary awakening, is part of this crisis of birth, and that we are at the stage of evolution right now, collectively, as we’re telling this story, of being about to open our collective eyes, that’s about to feel that that inner impulse in you and me to be more, love more, is exactly what that impulse of evolution is pressing us toward.

I’d like us all to just imagine for a moment that we are being called as the peoples of Earth, at the moment of the crisis of birth, to give that unique expression of who we are, that unique desire to create, unlike anybody else on Earth, that we are at the threshold of being called to do that together. Just think what … Just tune in for a moment, and see if you were called to give that unique expression into a larger internet, into a larger nervous system of humanity, into a social system that is longing to hear from you, what would that feel like? What would that awakening be like in you? Can you imagine if everyone on Earth who wants to give a greater gift is able to do it together, recalling that a planetary awakening in love, through a Unique Self Symphony of each of us turning on to what our capacities are?

When you say, “Who would organize it? Who is the conductor of the symphony?” well, who conducted the symphony from the Big Bang? Who got the quarks together, the electrons, the protons, the neutrons, the single cells, the multicells, the animals, the humans? Who did the 13.7 billion years, the great creating process of evolution? The spiritual expression of the divine, God, creativity on such enormous scale that we fall down in wonder before it. We know that that creativity is inside of us, and that you and I, at this very moment in history, happen to be learning our evolutionary story so that each of us is going to take part in a planetary awakening that has never existed before on Earth. It’s new.

I’ll just conclude this section and turn it over to Marc, is that it’s that newness inside you that hasn’t been fully expressed. No matter whether you’re a wonderful mother, a gardener, a fisher, an innovator, a creator, a teacher, whatever it is that we’ve done so far, there’s more. It’s that impulse that we’re cultivating in this Great Series of the Universe Story. By the time we’ve gone through these podcasts, we expect a chorus of uprising that would give the world a boost in the right direction. With that, I turn my words to you, Marc, to take it further. What is the Unique Self Symphony that might be arising from millions of us?

Dr. Marc Gafni:

Beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you, B., and what a vision, how excited we are about this vision of the planetary awakening in love through the Unique Self Symphony. In the next podcast, in podcast 16, I’ll begin with a deeper dive into the kind of structure of the Unique Self Symphony, how it works, and what are the principles that underlie it? For now, I want to talk in a more general sense. Are we talking about a symphony, or are we talking about jazz? Those are two very different images.

Really, what we’re talking about is we want to introduce this here on this podcast, is what Barbara and I are calling the Unique Self Jazz Symphony. Now, Unique Self Symphony and Unique Self Jazz Symphony are not quite the same. That’s why need “jazz” in there. A symphony plays a piece that is a known piece. It follows a very, very specific form, A and B, and then B plus A. It has a very particular order. There’s a very particular structure. Everyone knows exactly what they’re supposed to do. The job of the people playing their unique instruments in the symphony is to fulfill the particular music, to call forth the particular music that is required by the script of the symphony.

On the other hand, you have jazz. Now, jazz is a little bit different. When you think about jazz, you think about the relationship among the players in a slightly different way. There’s an improvisation that results. The saxophonist will take a riff while someone else steps back to accompany. Then the bass player and the drummer do the same. I was working today, actually, with a close person in our circle on a book of theirs. One of the things that this book wants to express is this notion of how a unique self expresses itself in jazz. She was writing, it was like this: Then they all play together for a while, often improvising on a well-known theme. The pianist might solo off in another key for several minutes before returning to the theme. All this happens in barely visible communication that seamlessly threads its way around the stage and throughout the room.

You can feel the intimacy of jazz, right? It’s palpable beloved. The chord structure is intricate. It’s well-known to everyone. Change of key is understood and followed. The drummer sustains the rhythm. The players may differ before or after about the pace, but during the performance, there aren’t any different drummers. It’s kind of an improvisational fear. The performance rests in how well the players are attuned to each other. It’s on how much they are resonant with each other. It’s on how well they pick up each other’s nuances, each other’s nuances, let’s get that word straight, nuances, and how well they understand both the rules and the infinite variations, how well they play their own unique instruments, and how well they play with others.

It’s not enough to be a virtuoso, and it’s impossible to hide. The whole performance depends on each person in his or her capacity to live this combination of roles. A good jazz player is endlessly evolving, both in their irreducibly unique individual skill, and in what I might call their resonant relational awareness. There’s a trajectory, an evolutionary trajectory of growth, challenge, and emergence that’s ongoing. That’s the jazz image.

Now, what we need to do to really get the Unique Self Symphony is to put jazz together with symphony, because what’s important about symphony is that there is a tradition. You are playing on a great script, on a great, canonical script. Now, the fact that you’re playing a great, canonical script doesn’t mean that you lose uniqueness, and that’s important, because as we know, every person plays that piece in the canonical symphony differently, just like every actor plays Hamlet differently.

The fact that I’m playing a role and speaking lines doesn’t mean that my individuality is lost. I can be irreducibly unique and gorgeous, and express a unique quality of presence, in my Hamlet, or in my oboe, or in my violin in the quartet, in a way that no one else ever has. Every orchestra plays Beethoven’s 9th differently. You can actually recognize the quality of the orchestra, and the quality of the orchestra changes based on how each person is playing their instrument, and which person is playing that instrument. Actually, within the symphony image, there’s an enormous amount of individuality within this larger structure, this larger canonical vision.

Now, if you bring the jazz element to it, and you put it together as a kind of synthetic hybrid, produces a new emergent which is the Unique Self Jazz Symphony, then we have a picture of how the world might actually unfold and evolve, how we might actually create co-relation, how we might create collaboration on a worldwide, global, and ultimately intergalactic [inaudible 00:15:27] … Their unique instrument, yet in profound resonance with everyone else, and moments when each person realizes, “I’m onstage now. This is my jazz moment. It’s not just my solo, where I’m playing in my unique way my part in the symphony, but it’s actually a jazz moment, where I’m called forth to be an emergent that never was before, to play a piece that’s never been played before in response to the unique need, and my unique circle of intimacy and influence.”

That’s exciting. I want to just put that in the space, beloved B., and then next week, we’ll start at the very beginning, and really talk about what is this Unique Self Symphony? Where does it emerge from? Where is the image from? Why is it important? How does it work? We’ll talk about that really in podcast 16, 17, and 18. We’re going to go deeper and deeper into this vision of the Unique Self Symphony. For now, we’re inspired, Barbara, by your call. We’re holding the image of the Unique Self Jazz Symphony as the next great emergent in evolution itself. Thank you, everyone. Have a great week. Be back with you one week from now for podcast 16.

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