INTELLIGENT PROGRESSION: Ever sophisticated ways of being human.

I have always believed in the efficacy of the Ten Commandments. I never challenged why these ten and not some other societal norms form the basis of my ethical (the World) and spiritual (the spirit) assumptions about what is good or bad for me. They originate outside of my human nature and are guidelines for one of the four lessons I must master in my lifetime, which allow me to proceed according to what nature intends.

Evil does not enter my crock pot of behaviors unless I put it there. Love, in the sense of loving others as Christ loved us, is not an automatic choice in me. I must reach outside myself to put it the vital choice is important to my behaviors. Where do I get the principles from the World or the spirit with which I choose to become more human, more spiritual, and fulfill the path of intelligent progression on which I find myself?

The Ten Commandments from the history of the Old Testament provide a clue. Up to this point, I have just thought about keeping the commandments for the sake of keeping the Ten Commandments. Recently, The Holy Spirit has been dropping mega bombs in my Lectio Divina, challenging me to go DEEPER into reality. I call this Vertical Prayer, for lack of a better description. Wonder if these ten principles show us how to be human as was intended before The Fall? Breaking them would indeed cause dissonance with not only an individual but also with cosmic continuity. These ten behaviors are the answer to the dissonance caused by Adam and Eve. They provide a “way back” from alienation and the despair of humanity being unable to reach its destiny. Doing these ten behaviors (and the other prescriptions of the Law) is a primal way for Israel to show its fidelity to the covenant proposed by God. Although given through Moses to the people of Israel, these behaviors form the basis of becoming human for all humans. Israel is a light to the Gentiles.

My deeper penetration into the Mystery of Faith has opened up a new paradigm for morality, one that I don’t just do because it helps solidify my covenant with that of Christ, but one that I keep because having these ten principles for what is good fulfills my humanity. I don’t use the key for what is good or bad for me that comes from the World, although these behaviors may or may not be evil. They are insufficient to lift me up to that next level of my intelligent progression- to be an adopted son (daughter) of the Father. I don’t have the energy, given my being of human nature, to lift myself up to the next level of my evolution. Jesus became human to not only tell us that there was a higher level of our humanity (adoption as a son or daughter of the Father), but also to give us the energy, through, with, and in him, to lift ourselves up and sustain ourselves as worthy of that gift of Faith from God.

I single out The Ten Commandments meditations and the fragment from Lectio Divina’s reflection. Other reflections are on My Beatitudes as a Lay Cistercian, and way, the truth and the life of those who live within the martyrdom of the ordinary. But that is another blog.

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS AS KEYS TO OPENING UP WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AUTHENTICALLY HUMAN

In the intelligent progression from animality to rationality, with God’s grace to lift us to that next level of our evolution, humans don’t have anyone to tell us what is right or wrong. There is no book of life that says “This is how you are to act or don’t touch this plant for it will kill you.” Humanity is a tabula rasa, a clean slate. In terms of evolution they must learn what is good for them (keeps them alive) and what kills them (predator animals and the deeper dimensions of the lion seeking to devour them) by trial and error. They make it up in each moment, based on those animal emotions, feelings, and instincts, but now with the addition of reasoning and the ability to choose (as an individual) what is good for them or not.

The default for humanity, up until the time of Abraham, is self-preservation, much like Abraham Maslow’s, concept of the hierarchy of needs. As a race, we move forward with God’s intelligent progression, learning what nature has captured in each of us, and doing what our physical universe dictates without thinking of anything more than surviving another day. But something else is going on, something unseen, unrecognized by humanity. We are evolving from animality to rationality more are more with the advent of time. More and more, humans become aware that they are aware, that they know that they know. Time is the elephant in the room that allows intelligent progression to do its job. We move from just existing to wanting more than that, although we don’t what that might be. We still don’t know. More and more, humans, now especially individual humans reflect on their humanity and seek to be free from the nature that binds animals to their nature, good as it might be for them. Abraham might be a person but he is certainly touched by a presence that was not there before and which human reasoning, by itself, would not be able to concoct. For me, I use the notion of paradigm shifts to make sense of this seemingly impossible feat.

Like everything else in nature, it takes time for groups of people to find out what it means to be fully human, which turns out to be a process of intelligent discovery of what is good and what is bad for our species, It takes time to forge the capability and the capacity for doing what is right versus what it means to be easy. Trial and error is the crucible in which humanity made the transition from The pull from our animal history makes it evident that early humans were more animal than human. Eventually, over a long period of time, some developed a code of behavior that became popular. Power, the dominance of one person or group over another, and the very strong urge to propagate became those urges that compelled individuals to move forward. That tiring process of dominance by individuals or groups to dictate morality when they overthrow what is good to substitute it for what they consider good for everyone because it is good for them leads to the lack of a permanent key against which what is good or what is bad is indeed true.

Keeping this thought of a key that translates human behavior from the animalistic tendencies of survival and protection of the species, humans moved forward with two additions that gave them dominance over their animal cousins. These two attributes separate our species from all others in the physical universe. They are human reasoning to know what is good and bad for their development as humans and the freedom to choose what they reasoned as a behavior. But what is the source of such a blaring difference between animals? My thinking is that animality comes from animality but does not produce rationality without being lifted up by a source higher than itself. My intelligent progression is a way for humans to keep on their evolutionary path (not just generation to generation) but to the fulfillment of their humanity as nature intended.

This is where I find what is impossible for humans is possible for a higher nature (God, for lack of a better description) to reach out and lift all of humanity up a notch (not animals, only humans) to give the species something they could never evolve by themselves, something that is part of the intelligent progression of matter to mind to fulfillment, reason and the ability to say YES or NO to anyone or anything. There is a definite paradigm shift here. The problem with humans then, which still exists today, is humans have not learned to use these two unique powers as God intended. I find that this archetypal strain on being animal in nature and yet lifted up to humanity takes trial and error to know what is true and what leads to a degradation of behaviors that groups of humans thinks is correct but which leads them down the path towards spiritual anarchy. “Nobody, no god is going to tell me what to do, if I think it is good for me.”

Now comes the hard part. I must choose the key that tells me what is truly good for me, not just what feels good for the moment or makes me rich, powerful, an owner of people, a sultan of my sexual fantasies, the king of my earthy time on earth. These are keys that humans try to open the door to what it means to be fully human. They fail due to using the wrong key. The key comes from nature which created all humanity and provided them a jump start to move to the next step in their evolution, intelligent progression to knowing for sure what is good for becoming more human as evolution intended.

There is but one lock to gain entrance to that next level of evolution. Remember how stiff-necked people humans are, and they don’t what anyone to tell them what to do but relish telling others what to do. When God tells the people of Israel how to act to keep the covenant of love, there is a response demanded (Faith requires belief). The Ten Commandments are ten ways that humans can rise up from their animal past to claim not only the heritage of being human but also rise up from their humanity to become adopted sons and daughters of the Father. When Christ reaches down to lift each of us in Baptism, it is not to be God (Adam and Eve tried that), but to be what nature intended us to be, fully, completely, with no more intelligent progression. God selected the Blessed Mother to be the single prototype of this fulness (full of grace) and the Holy Spirit overshadowed her to fill her humanity with so much of God’s energy that her cup could contain no more without overflowing. Like Mary, we are not God but merely the receptacle to hold whatever in life we take with us to heaven.

The Ten Commandments are more than just a bunch of concepts chiseled out of stone; they are the fundamental principles of how to keep the covenant with God and, in a much larger sense, what all humans need to sustain their humanity as they flail about under the magnetic influence of Original Sin. Why are these ten behaviors so important? Why is it important for the Jewish People that these commands come from God and not Moses? Are there repercussions if the people don’t heed them?

Why are these ten behaviors so important? I see these commandments as keys to becoming more human and a concrete way to show the Israelite tribes how to sustain themselves in the midst of competing ideologies from other neighboring societies. They are the ten pillars or principles from which all morality springs. Doing these commandments keeps the covenant with God, and individuals and tribes thrive. In a more archetypal sense, these commands are the answer to the Genesis question about what it means to be human. Being human is not an infused condition as part of our intelligent design. It takes choice, each and every moment and to use a way of life that is conducive to being God’s people.

These ten pillars of behavior are guidelines for becoming more human. As intelligent progression evolves so does our appreciation of what it means to be human, to exist on this earth for a purpose.

Here are the ten principles of authentic morality that lead to the covenant (love) as they help both the Twelve Tribes and individuals become more human.

The Ten Commandments.^*

1 Then God spoke all these words:

2^a I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,^b out of the house of slavery.

3 You shall not have other gods beside me.^*

4 You shall not make for yourself an idol^c or a likeness of anything^* in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth;

5 you shall not bow down before them or serve them.^d For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishment for their ancestors’ wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation^*;

6 but showing love down to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

7 You shall not invoke the name of the LORD, your God, in vain.^* e For the LORD will not leave unpunished anyone who invokes his name in vain.

8Remember the sabbath day—keep it holy.^*

9Six days you may labor and do all your work,

10but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God.^f You shall not do any work, either you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your work animal, or the resident alien within your gates.

11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them; but on the seventh day he rested.^g That is why the LORD has blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.^*

12^* h Honor your father and your mother, that you may have a long life in the land the LORD your God is giving you.ⁱ

13 You shall not kill.^* j

14 You shall not commit adultery.^k

15 You shall not steal.^l

16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.^m

17 You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, his male or female slave, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.ⁿ

1. God is real, don’t mess with false gods and fantasies
2. If you love me, don’t use my name in a profane way.
3. Keep the covenant by respecting the day on which you were created.
4. Respect your human and spiritual heritage.
5. Do not kill one another.
6. Respect human sexuality as God intended.
7. Respect the property of others.
8. Tell the truth and that truth will make you free.
9. Be happy with your relationship.
10. Don’t wish for possessions that are not yours.

God gives us what we need to be more human but does not force anyone to keep his suggestions. If you follow my commands, you will live (as a people and individuals). If you don’t follow my commands, you will die. The Scriptures are just documentation of how well the tribes did to follow the dictates of the Law. Through priests and prophets throughout the history of the Old Testament, other laws were ascribed. Keeping the Law became most important, but there was a problem. Keeping the Law would not lead automatically to becoming what the Law intended. Jesus would take the Law to its next level of intelligent progression–the conversion of the heart.

THE FOUR LESSONS THAT HUMANS MUST LEARN TO BECOME WHAT NATURE INTENDED. IT IS INTELLIGENT PROGRESSION.

I hypothesize (or reflect for those who have a spiritual bent) that there are four cosmic lessons that I must discover and then find solutions to. Doing so will allow me to put together the consequences brought about by original sin and how morality plays an important part in each of these four inquiries. At the birth of any human, our Faith tells us that we plop out into a world of disunity and corruption (not necessarily moral corruption but with the potential of choosing what is bad for our nature.)

• THE GENESIS PRINCIPLE: Humans must learn what it means to be human and not an animal.
• THE PRINCIPLE OF LIFE: Humans must learn what it means to love authentically as a human.
• THE PRINCIPLE OF THE MIND: Humans must learn the truth and the key to discerning what is good for them and what kills their being more human, as nature intended.
• THE PRINCIPLE OF ADOPTION: As an individual human, I must learn how to do these three things because they help me discover what it means to be fully human and fulfill what my nature intended

THE BOOK OF GENESIS IS THE PROTOTYPE OF THE PRODIGAL SON

Because of the Genesis Principle, or the status that humans have reason and the ability to choose what is good or bad for them, the Book of Genesis is an archetypal account of how we threw away our inheritance with God and squandered what nature intended for us. I find Christ’s parable of the Prodigal Son a striking and accurate parallel with Genesis. Adam is the type of humanity that doesn’t know what it means to be a son of the Father (Garden of Eden). He wants it all now and doesn’t want anyone telling him what to do. The first son of the Father keeps the heritage with the Father intact because he does the will of the Father and accepts the Father as Father. The Prodigal Son, in this case, Adam, does not accept what the Father has and takes his inheritance to squander it on things that are pleasurable but have no sustaining value once used up. So, what is left, when the product of your behaviors, which you chose to be good but were actually destructive to your nature, is no more and you can’t return to your former heritage? You must live, you must eat, and you must survive another day. You hire yourself out as swineherd, one where you must feed the very animals (pigs) that are the lowest life forms in your experience. This feeding of pigs is like (simile est regnum coelorum) original sin; the Son has lost his inheritance and can’t get it back. Then way back is to admit that everything that went before was wrong and that the way of the Father is true. This act of the will by the Son acknowledging that the will of the Father leads to symmetry and truth brings life. The Father, or in the case of Genesis, God, stands at the door of Heaven waiting for the prodigal son to appear, yet allowing his wayward son to discover his error and return. Even in return, he is not given his inheritance back. There is reunion but not satisfaction due to God. Then the second lesson we learn is The Christ Principle, which restores the covenant with humanity through Christ. Below I have what I consider to be the four stages of progression (cosmic questions and answers) about what it means to be human.

I used to obsess with knowing who God is, the Trinity, and how it is that Christ can give humans the power to turn bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ. Not that this is not worthy of my obsession, but it ultimately leads to my failure because my human nature could never know (as God knows) who God is. I can know who God is by using my reason and free will but with a nudge from God to lift me up past the point where my reason says, “Are you crazy?” I say all of this because now I just try to be the fulfilled human that my nature intended. This process I call intelligent progression because of the work of Teilhard de Chardin on looking at the maturing or growing of matter and energy through its various stages. I offer this chart as a pathway for my thinking about cosmic progression.

• THE GENESIS PRINCIPLE –– This is the creation event, according to the Teilhard Perspective. All reality exists within this progression from this physical universe of matter and human reason to the next principle, that of the advent of Christ. This lesson is about how humanity became so messed up yet held much potential nobility in its spirit and how human history advances with the consequences of the choices of those in each age. We can choose what is easy (what the world says is moral and good behavior), or we can choose what is, by all accounts,, the more difficult way, where sometimes we must choose what is difficult but what is correct. God, as our Magister Noster (Teacher), tells us what is proper to be fulfilled as a human, but we can say YES or NO to all such choices. Throw in the mix that Satan challenges our minds and hearts to choose the NO (as did Adam and Eve and the Prodigal Son), and there is an existential confrontation of good and evil, as existed in the Archetypal story of Genesis. This first lesson is the reason the story of Genesis is the prototype for the Resurrection. Genesis is the attempt by early writers (at least four traditions) to address what is good for us, what is bad for us, and how humanity does not have the power to be the key to what is true. Truth comes from outside humanity, given to us to show us THE WAY so we can access authentic humanity. In Genesis, Adam has control of the whole garden except for one tree in the middle. God says, “This is my tree, and you may not touch it.” Reminds me of my mom telling me not to eat oatmeal raisin cookies. As soon as she said that, I obsessed with reaching into the cookie jar and disobeying. For me, there were consequences for eating those cookies. That look from my mom was a cruel punishment, far worse than any spanking or time out. Genesis is about God’s relationship with humanity (Adam being the archetypal example). Genesis proposes a framework within which humans lost their humanity due to a bad choice. This choice, like those of today, has consequences. Humans can fumble around at coming up with what is good or bad but most don’t have any idea of a key that might give them a moral compass. Even if there was, and there is, a moral compass from God, it would seem that most people don’t believe in God or just plain don’t care. In this case, humans slide down the slippery slope of relativism. The Ten Commandments are God’s moral principles to help humans become what their nature intended. They apply to all humans, not just the Israelites. Israel was not able to figure out how to move progressively on the way towards the truth, so God gave Moses ten behaviors of the Law to help them recenter themselves.
• The Creator gives of Himself to those proceeding from Him (knowledge, love, and service). This invisible DNA informs reality as it moves from simplicity to complexity. It begins with the creation of all that is and moves in complexity (intelligent progression) for its intended course.
• Life moved from atoms, gasses, and chemical interactions to the beginnings of life, which he called the biosphere.
• The Genesis principle is the natural course of matter and mind and spirit from Alpha to Omega.

• THE PRINCIPLE OF LIFE — The second of the four steps or principles builds on what went before it. Using Teildhard’s map or “cosmic spine of reality,” there was movement (evolution, or as I term it, intelligent progression) is ever more complex assimilations of life as time moves forward. Life is different than non-life; not better or worse, but different. Matter is good, life is good. It is good because God’s DNA (fingerprints) are on each atom (remember, the hairs on your head are all numbered). Life doesn’t have control over its evolution or progression. It acts according to its nature, in this case, the Laws of Nature. Because the Laws of Nature do not have the cosmic energy to move matter from its chemical and physical properties to that next level of evolution, living matter is not either quantitatively or qualitatively the same as before. It builds on what came before but exists at a higher level of reality. There is a new paradigm at work, one that must originate from outside of itself for its energy to move to the next level of evolution. The Principle of Life is simply what I term that energy that “lifts up” matter to the next level of its fulfillment. Life continues gaining in movement and complexity, like bacteria growing and thriving in certain conditions that favor its growth. This movement continues in complexity with the movement to animality.
• THE PRINCIPLE OF THE MIND- Matter became so complex that life emanated from it. Life became so complex that from life, the mind broke through the Law of Nature binding it to eternal sameness, and exploded into beings that now possess the new paradigm of reasoning plus the newly acquired freedom to choose something that breaks with nature, choice. This new ability is trapped inside a new nature, no longer animal nature, but one possessing intelligence to know that they know (self-awareness) and the freedom to chart their own destiny, not hostage to the Laws of Nature. Even so, humans retain the remnants of their animal past, those traits that allowed life to survive and evolve into whatever best allows them to exist.
• A characteristic of humans is that they must be consistent with the movement and complexity of life as it continues to grow. Early humans had no book to tell them what was the best way to become more than they are. Like today, we humans are growing individually, but also as a species, we must learn what it means to be a human being consistent that the Las of Nature, learn how to love fiercely, learn what reality looks like in its past, present and future, plus how it all fits together. Once more, humans don’t have that kind of intelligence nor energy to lift themselves up to that next inevitable level of our fulfillment as humans, the realm of the invisible yet real. If the mind, using reason and freedom to choose the purpose of life for each individual, can begin to conquer visible reality, then this next level of movement, the spiritual universe, lifts us up to see how this fits into the grand design or “spine of reality.”
• The one set of instructions we have is the Ten Commandments or ways to organize visible reality into something that makes sense. The Ten Commandments are principles of behavior that all humans must try to follow to become human. If there was no other set of behaviors than the Ten Commandments, we would be on a good track to position our race to move to that next level of reality. Unfortunately, not everyone holds these pillars of moral evolution as even remotely applicable. The problem is that humans are individuals with the power to say YES or NO to anything. Humans don’t like to be told what to do. We do like it when we see something that we like and want. In Genesis, this is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The problem here is that God defines what is good for us in our quest to find purpose in life, or we define it on our own. Choosing my own moral compass sound very tempting until we reality that we are all creatures that seek our wills as dominant to others and have difficulty with the invisible realm telling us what is right o wrong.
• THE PRINCIPLE OF ADOPTION— Humans hit a speed bump when trying to define visible reality with the same characteristics of matter and mind of the visible universe. They are different realities but all are part of the same intelligent progression moving toward something way out there. Once more, divinity had to lift up humanity to continue to move forward. The Christ Principle is where divinity had to assume the condition of humanity to not only tell us how to “get it right,” but to show us. Christ wrote no book yet was the Word Made Flesh to show us the only way forward towards what our nature had intended all along. With the freedom to choose what we want, we chose what is easy rather than what is right. Still, many, if not most humans do not get it. With Christ, we still don’t have the power to be adopted sons or daughters of the Father, but God does. That is why we must have the mindset of humility and giving away the one power humans possess, the power to say YES or No, a fulfillment of the choice of Adam and Eve and the redemption by Christ’s passion and death as a ransom for many, and the YES of Mary to abandon self to embrace not only what it means to be human, but what it means to live at that next level of our evolution.
• Adoption is when I show up for 83 or so years on this “spine of reality” and seek to find out my purpose in life and discover what it means to love as part of that purpose. This is the Divine Equation, not that we finally solve who God is, which is not possible, but who each of us is, and particularly who I am. With the power of the Holy Spirit (Truth), I can wobble don the Way with Christ, towards Omega (Life). I now have the power of adoption, if I am aware that I have it and how to use it. I use it, not for power, more money, more adulation, most sexual gratification, or more titles of the world, but to simply sit on that park bench in the middle of winter and be present to the invisible but real Christ sitting next to me. I am overshadowed by the Spirit of Truth, not knowledge of things or formulae, but what it means to be fully human, what it means to love fiercely, and the meaning of joy beyond all telling. This is the third heaven of which St. Paul speaks when he says we have no way of even knowing how great our fulfillment as humans are in heaven, our destiny, the fulfillment of “the spine of life” for me, and Omega for all under its umbrella.