Читать книгу Beyond Soul Growth - Lynn Sparrow Christy - Страница 6

No work such as this can take wing in a vacuum. While the core concepts of what has come to be known as evolutionary spirituality arose for me through a process of inner inquiry and from my interpretation of the Edgar Cayce readings, they found a wider context in which to flourish when I was exposed to the work of many others who have plowed this ground before me. Most notably, I am indebted to Ken Wilber for his sweeping integral vision. Undoubtedly, his writings have been my greatest source of spiritual sustenance since I first discovered Edgar Cayce at the age of sixteen. And while the integral-evolutionary community has spawned what I consider to be some of the most thought-provoking and inspiring thinkers of the modern age (many of whom are quoted in this book), I wish to give special thanks to Craig Hamilton, Michael Dowd, and Terry Patten, whose work has inspired me and whose respective Internet interview series with the spiritual giants of our time have enriched my own experience of evolutionary spirituality beyond measure.

In acknowledging those who have been most helpful to me in expanding my understanding of the profound connection between biological and spiritual evolution, I would be remiss not to mention Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I first heard his work mentioned by a friend back in my college days. It is my loss that it took more than three decades for me to get around to reading him—and that was only after encountering a fictionalized account of his life and work in Morris West's novel The Shoes of the Fisherman. I would urge anyone with a serious interest in the subject matter of this book not to wait as long as I did to read Father Teilhard de Chardin's landmark book The Phenomenon of Man.

I would also like to thank Kevin Todeschi, Cassie McQuagge, and the publishing committee at A.R.E. Press for the blessing of knowing that I had a publisher even as I was writing this book. The motivational value of that cannot be underestimated when taking on a project like this! Similarly, it is largely because Rachel Alvidrez of Edgar Cayce eGroups commissioned me to develop an Internet-based seminar on this topic that I first put on paper some of the material that forms the foundation of this book.

The contribution of my longtime friend, Elaine Lukasik—to whom this book is dedicated—is difficult to adequately describe. It has been my good fortune to have a friend with the clarity of intuition that Elaine has demonstrated over the years. As a writer with a gap of more than twenty years between books, many were the times I despaired of ever completing another one. It was Elaine's unwavering insistence that all was well and that I was only gathering more experience and knowledge over those years of writing drought as well as her assurance that I would write “the book” that often kept me from abandoning the idea altogether.

In that regard, I thank my husband Larry Christy for his continual support in all of the endeavors of my life. Easygoing and ready to flow with things as they unfold, Larry always knows how to encourage without nagging. He put application to his belief that it was important for me to write by cheerfully accepting disruptions to our routine, our meals, and our time together. In addition, Larry's reading of early chapter drafts served more than once to keep me going when I felt bogged down or discouraged.

Few people besides Larry saw any portion of this book before publication, but to those few who did, I am grateful for feedback. I received some particularly helpful advice early on from my dear friend Mary Holden. I am also thankful for encouragement from my “Facebook friends” Anthony Brancale and John Greenhalgh, whose reading of some chapters constituted a small trial balloon concerning potential reader response from both inside and outside the Edgar Cayce community.

Finally, I want especially to thank my editor Stephanie Pope. Her editing was not only skillful and meticulous, but was also done with a level of sensitivity to my original text that every writer hopes for, but few are fortunate enough to get. Thanks to Stephanie's professionalism, the last stages of birthing this work were almost painless.