Friday, March 16, 2012

Spirit of Chaos & Order

"These were no longer two things, but two states or two aspects of one and the same cosmic Stuff, according to whether it was looked (Matter) at or carried further in the direction in which it is becoming itself or in the direction in which it is disintegrating (Spirit). Matter is the Matrix of Spirit. Spirit is the higher state of Matter. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Life is energy. Energy is Spirit. The Spirit gives life. Within the soul lies a fire (eros), the energy that drives us. But there is more...The Spirit is the adhesive that holds us together, the principle of integration and individuation within us. The Spirit integrates the mind and the body and all their thoughts and cellular processes into a whole being. The Spirit not only enlivens us individually, but it makes us one with all of creation within which the Spirit lives.

There is a principle of order and chaos within the Spirit - a tendency to come together and also to dissipate (birth and death). The human soul is the same. The energy within us - our desire (eros), our longing for completion is constantly in creative tension with our incompletion. Chaos and order. Fire and water. We live in a constant flux of psychic unity and disorder and social unity and disorder, and global unity and disorder and cosmic unity and disorder. This is the nature of energy and matter and Spirit in flux.

Spirituality is about what we do with that incurable desire, the eros/passion unitive energy of the Spirit within us, who wants to move us to order, but whose intensity is constantly displaced by our (ego) choices to channel it outside of ourselves rather than learn to harness its unitive power within. It is this latter ability that truly raises our consciousness in Christ who IS the unitive Spirit of Life.

Love is the method. Love is the vehicle. Humans can be unconditionally loving - first loving themselves (for this is to Love God or the Spirit of Life within you) and secondly to love your neighbors as yourself (which is every other human creature on the planet). Each of us has the potential to Love unconditionally. It is work. It requires a great deal of humility and patience. But this is how the Spirit brings order to chaos. This is how humanity is united in Christ, who is ONLY LOVE.
 
As we enter into this beautiful time of renewal, this springtime of earthen Matter, take time to reflect on what revives the sleeping winter world. What is it that greens the grass and fattens the buds on trees? What pushes crocus and daffodils from their dark bed of soil toward the warm sunlight? What urges the birds to procreate and migrate? You are part of this.

If you are Christian, you are celebrating this in your Lenten journey. As you move through the chaos of darkness with Jesus in these last days, open yourself to the Spirit of order that is calling you forward, the Light of your higher consciousness - Christ - that cannot be extinguished. Let this Spirit, that is You, speak to you and unite you with the Spirit of God/Christ that is bringing into unity all that lives.
 
Namaste, Peggy

The beginnings of this blog are inspired by a book by Ronald Rolheiser, OMI, "The Holy Longing, the Search for a Christian Spirituality."

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (May 1, 1881 – April 10, 1955) was a French philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist and took part in the discovery of Peking Man.


Below is a selection of scriptures that speak to our identity (our psychological being) in the Spirit. The creation story in Genesis would be a good place to find a poetic discussion of Spirit's uniting of energy and matter.
 
1 Corinthians 2:10....The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.
 
13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. 14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, 16 for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?”
But we have the mind of Christ.


1 Corinthians 3:16, 21.
16 Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?

All things are yours, 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23 and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Happiness and the Matrix

I am reading a book called The Steps of Essence, by Hanns-Oskar Porr, that describes the first call to becoming who you truly are with this analogy: In the movie, The Matrix, Neo can take a blue pill that allows him to live every day in bliss, but the trade off is that he gives up his autonomy and control to an unknown force that renders him a mindless slave - happy, but mindless. OR he can take the red pill which will afford him to learn the truth about himself. He will understand the forces that control him and learn to gain freedom from them, but at a steep price. The road will be hard; he will enter into dark places of His weakness: shame, guilt, neediness, greed, jealousy, fear. But he will learn to sculpt away these castings, these disguises of the true divine Self and realize that they must be held in paradoxical tension with all that is good and pure and true. The journey will reveal the truth and the truth will guide the journey. He will discover the essence of who he is. He will become his most authentic self. Happiness will look more like self-acceptance and deep joy, and Neo will be the Hero of his own life.


I was intrigued with this because I think I missed this point in the movie. Or maybe not, it has been awhile since I saw The Matrix, but I am familiar with the choices that the pills afford. So, the first step is to say, ok I am willing to take the hard road. But here’s the catch: everyday you get the pill choice again...Will you choose to wait for happiness to present itself to you, to be a victim of life, a sort of bystander to your own existence? Or will you choose to to be the Hero of your life, to confront your fear, put aside some of those things you think you "need," and ride the wonderful experience of your true Self? The choice to hold the tension between what should and should not be is the demand of truly living YOUR [authentic] life.

At my niece’s graduation, the priest gave a sermon on "The Road Ahead" for the grads. He said that Jesus would ask them at every turn, “Do you love me?” To answer to this question, we must make the choice of pills. If we answer yes, we take the red pill. We agree to be Christ-like in love which is to love ferociously, and, yes, to suffer for it. To love is to be vulnerable. It is to bear all the sweet goodness of your divine Self to the other, with no defense; to be completely compassionate. The red pill requires us to be loyal to truth, above all else. And the truth is, Love is who we are! Every day we are faced with the choice to be either authentic or robotic. Every day we choose to take the high road or the low. Everyday we can allow the circumstances of life to control us, or we can choose our destiny. To know ourselves as love requires incredible courage and strength. To remain positive, optimistic, “happy” requires us to be a warrior for love and kindness, even at those times when we would rather not be. To truly live into love, which is our authentic nature, is to encounter hurt, absorb it and love harder.

We can run from the demands of life and relationship and never know who we are, or we can meet life head on with the Wisdom (yes, this choice is a wisdom choice) that happiness means more that just getting what I want. Which pill will you take?

I "see" the beautiful Real (the Spirit) in you! I hope you will choose to "see" also!
Namaste, Peggy

© Peggy Beatty 2011