THE CHRIST PRINCIPLE: From complexity to simplicity

Based on my contemplation of the Christ Principle (Philippians 2:5), I have conjured up a strange contradiction. All reality from its inception (however that happened) is an intelligent progression from what is simple to the more complex. Yet, to fulfill my nature, I must move from complex to what is most simple. How can that be?

MY ASSUMPTIONS

I will use the Rule of Threes to tease apart my thinking (mainly for my sake, not to prove anything is true or not). There are three distinct universes existing at the same time, like three layers of pancakes.

THE RULE OF THREES: Whatever you examine or reflect upon, there is only one reality that contains three separate and distinct universes (physical, mental, and spiritual).

THE DIVINE EQUATION: The six questions describe what it is like to be most human as our Nature intended. The Rule of Threes is the third question: What does reality look like?

The six questions that come from outside of ourselves, and more importantly, outside our Nature, are from The Christ Principle, that from which everything flows and from which all reality takes its meaning. I call it The Divine Equation because it encapsulates all that the human collective and individual minds need to be fully human as Nature intended. Each one must be solved correctly before moving on to the next step. The questions and the correct answers come from being part of spiritual reality where we have been given the correct answers (Faith) but need to actualize them for ourselves (Belief). The key is The Christ Principle.

As someone who only lives seventy or eighty years (82;10, so far), I have the answers to the test that solves what it means for me to be human. Every human who ever lived has the answers to these questions. This is not a Gnostic Suduku puzzle to trick us like the Game Show, hosted by Monty Hall, “Let’s Make a Deal.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem

Here are the six questions about life each person must answer.

• What is the purpose of life?
• What is the purpose of my life within that purpose of life?
• What does reality look like?
• How does it all fit together?
• How do I love fiercely?
• I know I am going to die; now what?

What sounds like pure fantasy or fiction makes perfect sense when I use The Christ Principle as my power. Having the key and inserting it into the lock of the knowledge of good and evil are two different processes. The energy to turn this lock does not come from mere human power, which is incapable of opening The Divine Equation.

My Lectio Divina sessions with the Holy Spirit have tended to be cumulative rather than just one, then a different topic.

THE SIGN OF OPPOSITES: THE CHRIST PRINCIPLE CHANGED REALITY

Moving from complexity to simplicity as applied to many into just one doesn’t make sense if you look at the complexity of God. In human terms, the more complex something is, the more it has evolved into what Nature intended. The one-cell organization multiplied into what we have today, or know today as humans. Based on human knowledge, it looks like the future for humanity is limitless or infinite. That would be true if it were not for the corruption of the physical, the mental, and the tension that exists between the world and the spirit. Everything! Everything deteriorates with time.

What is the future if all moves to a complexity that ultimately deteriorates? Humanity had to intervene from a power source outside the normal flow of corruption. This is where that which was incorrupt by Nature (without sin) intervened into a corrupt and showed humanity how to fulfill their destiny by reversing the flow of simplicity to complexity to that of complexity to simplicity. Heaven is a state of complexity (using human terminology that is useful for us to grasp a concept totally outside our five senses and beyond our capacity to begin to comprehend it with any of the languages we have), and, as a nature, we had to reverse directions to prepare to live in the incorruptibility of simplicity (one).

An assumption of mine, call it a hypothesis, is that to fulfill our evolution or intelligent progression, our nature must die to the world to transform from being in the world but not of it. All of this is tied up with our freedom to choose. What we choose doesn’t make sense to the world. As one who must exist as a citizen of that world, this physical universe is the base we find ourselves (for seventy or eighty years, if we are strong). We have reason for a reason and the ability to choose what we think is good for us, even if it is not. I have reason to join that with Faith (Faith informed by reason) so that I can identify and choose to be a citizen of the kingdom of heaven and choose adoption by God as the reason I am here. Granted, that takes a leap of Faith (like the one Indiana Jones had to take in his movie).

This Divine Nature is one (simplicity) containing three distinct persons (complexity). It is intelligence (knowing) whose energy (love) creates more than the sum of its being (service). We humans, and I might add, all the angels, are the result of that love, that service. This DNA of God permeates the corruptibility of matter and mind and provides the only solution to our destiny as being fully what our Nature intended, The Christ Principle.

To save our humanity from the consequences of poor choices that lead us more towards animality than rationality, The Father sent His only begotten Son, Jesus, to earth (freely) to become like us in all things but sin (Philippians 2:5-12) so that all of us would have a chance to fulfill our destiny as intended but not die to the corruption of mind and matter that is the fate of all other existence. Baptism is the cleansing or washing away of Original Sin, but more than that. We are accepted by the One as adopted sons and daughters of a new dimension to our humanity, which demands we look at reality as the opposite of what our human nature tells us. According to St. Paul, the name for that is the world or the flesh. Human Nature is not evil or morally corrupt, but it is influenced by the choices it makes (good or evil) as it pertains to becoming more human or animal. The Holy Spirit takes over at Baptism to see us through the minefields of our life. We will make mistakes along the way, but we have the gift of the Holy Spirit to lift us up when we have fallen (over and over) through the Sacrament of Reconciliation and Eucharist, food from the Divine Nature to sustain us until we die and claim our inheritance, prepared for us since before there was anything that was. From the complexity of just the physical and mental universes, The Christ Principle gave all humans the capacity to be adopted sons and daughters of the Father.

I tied this into being a Lay Cistercian because, with the simplicity of The Christ Principle, all I need do is place myself in the presence of the One and wait. All the Divine Equation, all the Liturgy of the Hours, all the Eucharist, the Rosary, my contemplative Gathering Days, and my struggle each day with the martyrdom of the ordinary are just one act of belief based on Faith. My routine is to begin each new day as an opportunity to sanctify the moment by seeking God in whatever comes my way. For me, this is Lectio Divina and then writing down my thoughts from the Holy Spirit, crazy as they may seem, and putting them “out there” for others to read and judge what is true.

Heaven is a mystery because we humans can’t conceive of what pure love means; we must less have the capacity to stand in the presence of the Father and survive. With, through, and in Christ, our advocate, we have adoption as a son or daughter by the Father and the chance to exist in a dimension that is what our nature intended initially before the sin of Adam and Eve. With the Holy Spirit, we live the kingdom of heaven on earth, not deserving anything other than to say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.

The one event that causes me to think of The Christ Principle as the point that cut the old wineskins to have new skins to contain the new covenant or the beginning of the movement from complexity to simplicity was tearing the veil in the temple when Christ died.

The Death of Jesus.

45^* t From noon onward,^u darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.

46^v And about three o’clock, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?”^* which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

47^* Some bystanders who heard it said, “This one is calling for Elijah.”

48^w Immediately one of them ran to get a sponge; he soaked it in wine, and putting it on a reed, gave it to him to drink.

49But the rest said, “Wait, let us see if Elijah comes to save him.”

50^* But Jesus cried out again in a loud voice, and gave up his spirit.

51^x And behold, the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom.^* The earth quaked, rocks were split,

52^y tombs were opened, and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised.

53And coming forth from their tombs after his resurrection, they entered the holy city and appeared to many.

54^* The centurion and the men with him who were keeping watch over Jesus feared greatly when they saw the earthquake and all that was happening, and they said, “Truly, this was the Son of God!”

55There were many women there, looking on from a distance,^* who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him.

56^z Among them were Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

LEARNING POINTS

• From the beginning of what is to the end of all, there is in the physical and mental universes, everything compounds to form complexity (human knowledge, intelligent progression). Beginning with your Baptism, when God chooses you as an adopted son (daughter), The Christ Principle becomes your center and is ratified when you choose Jesus.
• From when you purposefully realize that Christ is Lord and your savior, you reverse the natural order and begin a progression from complexity to simplicity. Heaven is One.
• As a Lay Cistercian, the implication of that reversal is to move from complexity in prayer to simplicity. Before, my Lectio and Liturgy of the Hours were performed so that I could be in the presence of Christ. My entire day, including the Lectio and the Liturgy of the Hours, is one prayer.

Praise be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come, at the end of the ages. –Cistercian doxology