The Cosmic Egg: The Four Stories of Life

This article is an edited version of the reflections provided by Richard Rohr in the week of 16-22 February 2025. https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-cosmic-egg-my-story-and-our-story/

Father Richard Rohr uses the metaphor of a “cosmic egg” to explain how stories offer us meaningful connections to ourselves, one another, and the divine:  

If we are going to be the rebuilders of society, we need to be rebuilt ourselves. A healthy psyche lives within at least four containers of meaning. Imagine four nested domes. The first is called my story, the second is our story, the third is other stories, and the fourth is the story. This is what I call the cosmic egg. It’s the unique and almost unconscious gift of healthy religion. Much of the genius of the biblical revelation is that it honours and integrates all four, while much of the weakness of our deconstructed society is that it often honours only one level at best. The whole/healed/saintly person lives happily inside of all of them. 

My Story

The smallest dome of meaning is my story. The modern world is the first period of history where a large number of people have been allowed to take their private lives and identities seriously. There is a wonderful movement into individuation here, but there’s also a diminishment and fragility if that’s all we have. This first dome contains my private life. “I” and my feelings and opinions are the reference point for everything. This dome is the little stage where I do my dance and where the questions are usually, “How do I feel? What do I believe? What makes me unique?” 

My story isn’t big enough or true enough to create large or meaningful patterns by itself, but many people live their whole lives at this level of anecdote and nurtured self-image, without ever connecting with the larger domes of meaning. They are what they have done and what has been done to them—nothing more. This self becomes fragile and unprotected, and therefore constantly striving, easily offended, and fearful. 

Our Story

The second dome of meaning is our story. This is the dome of our group, our community, our country, our church—perhaps our nationality or ethnic group. We seem to need this to contain our identity and security as social beings. It’s the good and necessary training ground for belonging, attaching, trusting, and loving. If we don’t have a supportive family, group or community with which we can bond, we create people who struggle to bond. Fortunately, most of us have multiple memberships: family, neighbourhood, religious affiliation, country. These are schools for relationship, connection, and almost all virtue as we know it.  

This second dome of meaning gives us myth, cultural heroes, group symbols, flags, special foods, ethnicity, and patriotism. These tell us that we’re not alone; we’re also connected to a larger story. We might understand that it’s fanciful, but it is shared meaning and that is important. Regrettably, a lot of people stop at the level of this shared meaning because it gives more consolation and security to the small self. In fact, loyalties at this level have driven most of human history up to now.  

Other Stories

The third dome of meaning is what I call other stories. The term “other stories” illustrates the significant but sometimes painful recognition that our story is not the only frame, not likely the most important frame, and maybe even a frame with a lot of shadow and bias. This is the great advantage of studying history, literature beyond our own language, anthropology, world cultures and religions, and experiencing some world travel, whether by opportunity or necessity. This is also the invitation modelled by Jesus to move beyond my story and our story, and to stand in friendship and solidarity with other stories.  

As we encounter more and more of the world’s other stories, many people are broadening their wisdom, while others are broadening their fear. There is only one thing more dangerous than the individual ego or my story and that’s the group ego that insists that our story is the measure of all things and so seeks to label other stories as ignorant, dangerous, or inferior. It looks like it will take us some time, perhaps centuries, to resolve the human drive to exclude, to scapegoat, to judge, and to dismiss other peoples’ stories. Only nondual thinkers, mystics, and some saints seem capable of such universal capacity. [1]  

The Story

The fourth dome of meaning, which encloses and regulates the three smaller ones, is called the story. By this, I mean the patterns that are always true. This is much larger and more shared than any one religion or denomination. All healthy religions would, on some levels, be telling the story, as the Roman Catholic Second Vatican Council authoritatively taught. [2] For example, forgiveness always heals; it does not matter whether we are Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, or Jewish. Forgiveness is one of the patterns that is always true, although it reveals its wisdom in countless ways. It is part of the story. Also, there is no specifically Christian way to feed the hungry or to steward the earth. Love is love, even if the motivation might be different.  

The biblical tradition takes all four domes seriously: my story, our story, other stories, and the story. Biblical revelation is saying that the only way we dare move up to the story and understand it with any depth is by moving through and taking responsibility for our personal story, our group story, and other stories. We have to listen to our own experience, to our own failures, to our own sin, to our own salvation, and we’ve got to recognize that we are a part of history, of a culture, of a religious group, for good and for bad. We cannot heal or honestly examine what we do not acknowledge. [3] 

Questions for Reflection:

1. What are the important relationships or groups that make up our story for you?

   
   

2. How have you explored other stories? What reading, travel, friendships or other stimuli have enabled you to expand your consciousness of other stories?

   
   

3. What does the story mean for you? Can you think of other examples of patterns that are always true?

Footnotes: 

[1]  Adapted from Richard Rohr, introduction to ONEING 9, no. 2, The Cosmic Egg (2021):     17. Available in print and PDF download. 

[2] Second Vatican Council, Nostra Aetate [In Our Time], sec. 1–2. 

[3]  Adapted from Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, rev. ed. (Franciscan Media, 2008, 2022), 20–21. 

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