THE EQUILIBRIUM OF NATURE

We don’t make our nature when we are born, but our nature does make us who we are. As a human being, I can know that I know. Having the ability to reason seems to be hampered by my freedom to choose what my reason tells me is true. In this sense, each human is independent of the other but, ironically, depends on our individual past and collective learning to piece together what is good and what is bad for us. In other words, humans learn from their mistakes.

The equilibrium of our human nature is one of the various types of nature, as I use the Teilhard map as my guide as I think through these ideas.

Equilibrium means all reality seeks its own level of being, much like my front yard proceeds in a natural progression if I don’t cut it every two weeks or so. Left to its own devices without any intervention, each level of nature seeks its own level of what it is intended to be. One nature is not the other, as far as I can tell. I like the Teilhard map because it provides me with a conceptual framework for looking at a macro view of reality, one that contains three separate and distinct universes or natures, yet interconnected and one reality inexorably moving towards its finality with complexity and consciousness.

If nature seeks its own level of default in the physical and mental universes (visible and invisible reality), one which humans can’t control but only seek to comprehend so they can use it to help them achieve the highest level of human potential, then there must be the same thing going on in the spiritual universe (invisible reality). Using Teilhard’s map to think against in my research of this reality, I noticed that. The implication of this statement that there is evolution of complexity and movement within the spiritual universe is one which I enter through Baptism and ratify each day as I battle the everyday forces of original sin. Physical and mental universes contain power relative to their nature. A supernova explosion can obliviate all living things due to irradiation. Yet, humans, who can only live in a controlled environment of gases and thermal temperatures, are more powerful than the supernova, in the sense that we know that we know, whereas a supernova only exists to the norms of the nature of matter and time, which we humans also share with it. This is intelligent progression. Intelligent because humans can look out at reality and seek to know the answer to the interrogatories. Part of that inquisitiveness for me is realizing that the spiritual universe also has its interrogatories, which I have termed The Divine Equation. I do so not because solving this equation will finally allow me to know God as I know myself, which is impossible, but more to approach the mystery of human existence with six questions, both questions and answers coming beyond myself or human nature. They are:

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

I have approached an answer to these six questions based on what I find by applying The Christ Principle. It has taken me a lifetime of discernment to identify both the questions and the answers. It continues to be a process of discovering complexity and movement as long as my human nature exists. Being a Lay Cistercian has helped me to clarify these questions and their answers. The process is one of daily seeking God as I live what whatever comes my way. The process is reinforced by the two dimensions of Lay Cistercian (Cistercian practices and charisms):

CAPACITAS DEI: Growing in height and depth by being in the presence of Pure Energy (God) in the person of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. I grow physically and spiritually towards a destiny defined just for me from all eternity. I can only do this, not with human energy or even the physical energy of a hypernova, but by sitting on my couch in silence and solitude and waiting to hear the heartbeat of Christ next to mine. No words are needed to hear the whispers of knowledge, love, and service that invisibly overshadow me with an energy beyond my nature. This is the complexity of my human evolution, one which propels me to the next level of my human movement, my adoption as a son (daughter) of the Father and heir to the kingdom of heaven, with all that entails. St. Paul said, “Eye has not seen or ear heard what God has waiting for those who love him.” All I have to do is to die to my false self daily, to rise with Christ to become what my human nature intended.

CONVERSIO MORAE: The second important dimension of being a Lay Cistercian is a conscious awareness that each day is the opportunity to be open to the manifest ability of God’s presence through knowledge (Father), love (Son), and service (Holy Spirit). Seeking God daily without regard to what comes my way is a liberating experience. I don’t have TO DO anything out of the ordinary. In this sense, nature’s natural equilibrium, the mind’s tendency to be busy or do something meaningful, comes into contact with the spiritual univerer’s abandonment, in itself a unique kind of equilibrium. This is the struggle to be spiritual. Baptism is a diversion of the normal equilibrium of the physical world, as well as the mental one. It is not an aberration but one of those steps in Teilhard’s map (he calls it the Christosphere) where human nature by itself cannot lift itself up to the next level of our human evolution, but as adopted sons and daughters of the Father, we are lifted up (Faith) so we can then abandon our wills and our hearts to beat against the heart of Christ. This transformation from merely human to superhuman (not Superman) but now possessing the capability and the capacity to be aware of our awareness of a deeper reality right in front of us each day. Conversio morae is my personal living out whatever comes my way with, as St. Benedict says, “That in all things, God be glorified.”

This dual citizenship (citizen of the world until death) and (citizen of the kingdom of heaven from the moment God accepts us as adopted sons and daughters beyond death), we must live out in such a way that we prepare to live in a place where we are unfamiliar. Christ tells us that the kingdom of heaven on earth is like the kingdom of heaven later on. We must get as close as we can to the heart of Christ that we transition with all the riches we can carry with us (those riches that make it through the “eye of the needle” are God’s riches, not our own). It would be a mistake to wait for heaven without savoring the knowledge, love, and service that God has bestowed on us if we only have the eyes to open to the kingdom of heaven on earth each day. My Lay Cistercian practices, as I use them, help me to be aware of my human heritage, one that is not to live and die (which is good), but to live and die in such a way that I fulfill what my nature intended as created by God’s DNA (which is perfect). This destiny is the equilibrium that God imprinted on the matter and channeled in time toward an ending that is not oblivion but our inheritance as those who are aware of the greatness of what God did through physical nature, animal nature, and life, and our human nature. According to Teilhard de Chardin, this relentless movement is toward an Omega Point, the fulfillment of all matter, time, space, life, humans, and adopted sons and daughters. All I have to do is be aware of it and give praise, honor, and glory to the Father, through, with, and in Christ, by the energy of the Holy Spirit.

Equilibrium means each nature has movement towards complexity, inexorably pulled toward a big white hole (Point Omega) from which nothing escapes but also which is the terminus of the purpose of my personal life and that of my species (wherever it might be).

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