ORIGINAL SIN: The background noise of existing as a human.

I have always been intrigued by the scientific exploration of our universe. One such incident popped into my Lectio Divina (Philippians 2:5) recently. I share with you some of my ideas about the background noise of the universe of matter (the physical universe). The universe of the mind that humans possess has allowed me to reflect on the physical universe and generate observations as it pertains to my third universe, that of the spirit (for lack of a better analogy).

The confrontation of universes, or more accurately, the amalgamation of one reality having three distinct components, happened when I viewed the following YouTube on cosmic background noise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVnzcwYaJ8c. Some call this ambient noise or the sounds made from the Big Bang. My thoughts usually tried to figure out how anything could help me explain the three questions each human must attempt to answer before they die. They are

• What does it mean to move deeper into my humanity as I age, while expanding my depth of awareness?
• What does it mean for me to love fiercely?
• What is the truth that is absent of human contamination or corruption?

Each individual, and I do include myself in that statement, must seek these three core truths, whether they know them or not. I answer these three challenges with the sum total of my life experiences and how they have allowed me to discern the purpose of life and the fulfillment of my humanity as nature intended. What unlocks this puzzle so that, even if I don’t have a complete answer, there is enough curiosity and intellectual inquiry to keep my mind focused on these seemingly unsolvable elements of what it means to be human.? If these three questions have locks to open them, even if I succeed, which I find to be an ongoing process of discovery, new wrinkles in my quest keep coming up. I will share one such event which opened a door that I didn’t even know was there.

I have always tried to hold the hypothesis that what takes place in the physical and mental universes also happens in the spiritual universe, but with different components and complexities peculiar to that unique universe. For example, energy is a word, that, if I mentioned it to you, you would try to grasp it from the storehouse of your life experiences. A nuclear physicist would have an understanding that only a scientist knows the language of energy in the physical universe. Each of us has our own understanding of energy, but my hypothesis is that energy in the physical universe happens outside the control of humans, and humans, using the mental universe, can determine what composes that energy. Physical energy is different from mental energy which is different from spiritual energy. Energy takes its existence from the properties of that unique universe. In the case of the physical universe, we have the energy of matter and its natural pathway. When there is a Big Bang, there is evidence of that convergency in terms of what happened, which we are still trying to explore more fully. The mental universe allows humans the ability to reflect on physical energy with mental energy, posing theories about what makes the physical universe work, why, and how. That mental energy has many languages, one of which is scientific inquiry, but humanity explores more than the physical energy of space and matter; it is capable of penetrating the realm of interior space and mental energy. Humans can look at not only physical or visible reality but also that which is hidden but no less real. This progressive movement forward picks up each person’s notion of universality and assimulates it into one whole reality but now identifies a physical dimension, a mental one. With these two prerequisites, humans can now look horizontally (from beginning to end) but also vertically (how deep our intelligence and perceptions of those three fundamental questions) When I ask the question of why there is a physical universe, the notion of spiritual energy looms large for me. The physical universe is the WHAT of energy; the mental universe is the WHY, WHAT, HOW, and WHEN of energy using various languages that uncover meaning that hitherto was unknown or newly discovered. But, there is another dimension to energy, one which is not necessarily higher, lower, or better than the physical universe, one which explains WHY we are what we are. This is spiritual energy, for lack of a more precise set of tools with which to gain human awareness of something outside of human experience. It is not another level of matter but of existence. To begin to be aware of this next level of our human evolution, it takes the energy from this universe to reach down and enlighten humans with HOW to become more human. Not everyone sees this or even admits it is possible. To the Gentiles it is foolish and a fairy tale, to the Jews it is a stumbling block. This is energy no human could generate by themselves. It is the movement from one level of humanity to a higher level of existence, just as humanity is on a higher level of being than matter.

Teilhard de Chardin’s map (unattributed) of the swath of reality having both movement and complexity all purposefully moving to our final evolution as humans has helped me visualize that cosmic transition.

SOME ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT NOISE

There is one reality but it has both movement and complexity (see above).

I use the Rule of Threes to delineate three separate dimensions or functions within this one reality. These three universes are separate but distinct in their purpose and measurement. One is not the other yet all are one reality.

THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE — Noise in this universe is the product of what nature produces. All matter is contained in this universe, the basis of all that is. Humans are included in this, sans their mental and volitional capabilities (they are just animals, but very special ones). Noise is the background sound produced by what is and what was, but not what will be. (Listen to the YouTube at the beginning of this blog.)

THE MENTAL UNIVERSE-– Noise in this universe of the mind pertains to humans only. It is the collective sounds that emanate from human noise. We humans have evolved sounds that our reason and free will recognize as concepts and ideas, but with a caveat. Not everyone understands the language and dialects that communicate meaning and conceptual ideas. I don’t know French or Russian. Science is that great equalizer that looks at reality with a collective language accepted by many but not understood by all, to find out what is true from what is just opinion. In my own limited way, I use this scientific language, plus the collective assimilation of other languages (poetry, music, philosophy, psychology, spirituality) in my blogs to try to integrate the Tower of Babel inherent in being a human within my limited timeframe. I am aware that I am aware, in the same way, that I know that I know. What I know is as unique to me as it is to you. I am not you; you are not me; God is not us; and we, most certainly, are not God. Yet, all humans share the same noise during their lifespans. It is this noise that seems to be incoherent and chaotic that I must discover resonance from the dissonance of multiple ideas about purpose, meaning, what reality looks like, how it all fits together, how to love fiercely, and now that I know all of this and I know I am going to die, what now? , the individual must use the languages that I know to make sense of these three questions that allow my humanity to continue movement and complexity, again as an individual, toward being complete and fulfilling what my nature has intended. The fact that various people, who also have reason and free will to choose what they reason, do not agree seems to foster the idea that truth is relative. It is not. Here they are again.

• What does it mean to move deeper into my humanity as I age while expanding my depth of awareness?
• What does it mean for me to love fiercely?
• What is the truth that is absent of human contamination or corruption?

My awareness of this discrepancy that of the seeming chaos of meanings and ideologies that seek to explain these three questions is what I call original sin, or the background noise of humanity through the ages as it struggles with the fundamental questions of humanity. Forget about God. I find that when I am aware of my humanity, using these assumptions, I can never define humanity’s nobility. Still, I can begin to appreciate it in terms of my unique worldview, one that I have accumulated throughout my lifetime to make sense out of all the babble.

To do this without damaging my reasoning, I have to choose what I consider to be the template of what is reasonable, yet slightly out ahead of me, capturing it as absolute truth.

Because of this human background noise with others’ diverse and often contradictory claims of authentic truth, there is no absolute truth possible in my physical and mental universes. Yet, absolute truth (it is because it is what is) or the anchor or template that makes all things align in the physical, mental, but also in spiritual universes, demand resonance. I have human reasoning, and the ability to choose what my reason says is meaningful so that I can answer these three questions of what it means to be human.

The noise in this mental universe is not the background noise I can hear on YouTube about the sounds of matter and energy. Using my human nature, I can hear and see that all life in this physical universe is good (even humanity as it transverses the collective pathway from animality to rationality). Something happened to humanity when it evolved over the threshold from where we were as a part of the physical universe to where we are as a new paradigm emerged, the mental universe. Somehow, dissonance entered the complexity of what it means to be human. Just as it took a millennium to develop from animality to rationality, it now began the movement with its unique human complexity more and more away from being animal to that of what it means to be human. This intelligent progression is one where using my reasoning and awareness of environmental factors peculiar to my time frame, I make choices about these three questions I posed above. There is no infused knowledge I get when I am born into this human condition. I learn based on variables not always within my control.

The background noise that I notice in this universe is not only what I can hear, but, added to it, what I can see about myself that prompts me to form a way to make sense out of knowledge, love, and service to others. I answer these three core questions about my humanity and my purpose here with the innate abilities of the one who created me. My parents were my creators, but all of us carry the fingerprints, the DNA of the intelligence, love, and service who began the physical universe, our step one, to lead to step two, my ability to be aware that I am aware of those overt clues that help me to become more than an animal, more than just someone who is here today and gone tomorrow. This level of human reasoning can grow in complexity the more I assimilate the results of applying a methodology to how I interpret reality.

The noise of this mental universe is the dissonance that I can see right now in the human condition before me. It is the noise that I can see in the values and meanings that I attribute to life. It is the world of corruption of human nature, our collective trend to seek what is good for us and also what is bad for us (evil). It is the corruption I witness in my personal life as I seek to move forward in life using the complexities of knowledge, truth, and service as daily mantras.

My evolution as a member of my species does not stop when I die. Even if all I have discerned in my lifetime is just limited to my attempts to solve these three core questions, the flow of life continues on and on towards what seems to be something more than just my “time in space.” I have found a continuity or flow of intelligent progression from creation through its ultimate fulfillment, that of Omega (using the Teilhard map above). The physical universe is the platform where I can exist, while the mental platform allows me to look at this physical universe and ask the questions, WHAT, WHERE, HOW, and WHY something is such.

But, where can I find out the template, the principle that I can overlay on these three core questions of humanity, ones that seem to be lacking that next step, one where the WHY of my speculation meets the Divine Equation that drills down deeper into my humanity to explore regions that reason alone shudders at entering? In my progression, I had to determine what that Divine Equation was for me. Oddly, my researching and thinking about this idea of God led me, with the encouragement of St. Thomas Aquinas’ approach, that we cannot know God as God is but only as we humans are. In effect, I must turn everything I know about the world and its conclusions upside down (also called dying to self) so that I not only retain what I held before to be accurate but now have the tools to apply a new way of thinking, one that virtually upends everything I know by viewing its opposite to be true. It is not a convenient way of thinking because it is all about seeking to love others who may, or may not, love you back. This addresses, at least initially, that second core question about what it means to love fiercely.

I have come to some conclusions about God. The Divine Equation, which are the six questions I use to listen to the whispering of God to me in Lectio Divina, has nothing to do with who God is, which I have neither the capacity nor capability of knowing. What I can determine is how to answer those three, core questions about who I am in relationship with the vast array of “isms” that claim to be the key to unknown knowledge. There must be a way to find out the truth so I can live the life my nature intended. There is. It is called the spiritual universe and can only be entered through Baptism and free choice.

THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE — Not everyone has my assumption that there is a deeper dimension of my humanity and certainly no other human has my unique take on it. I am not you, you are not me; God is not us; and we, most certainly, are not God.

When thinking of the background noise of the spiritual universe, I have parsed it in the spiritual universe on earth (while I live) and the kingdom of heaven after I die. It is the same noise but my ability to receive it while I live is limited in understanding how to access this noise and to understand its language. Going back to the mental background noise, there is noise but not all ways of interpretation lead to solving the problem of what ONE way is there so I can move to the next level of human intelligent progression and use that ONE template to make sense out of the chaos. That is my choice as a human.

I am limited as a human being to interacting with my environment to pick up those things that I find to be essential to answering those three questions about being human. I can seek to answer the six questions of The Divine Equation, but how do I know they are correct? Enter my Magister Noster (Our Master), one who is of the nature of God but also now, one of us, one who shows us how to answer those three fundamental questions of my humanity using the Divine Equation in stories I can understand. I can seek love, but how do I know what love is? Again, the template for what is true is Jesus, who told us to follow in his footsteps so we could avoid being blown up by the minefields.

I have chosen to join, and have been selected by Lay Cistercians of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery (Trappist), as a way, while I am on this earth, to listen to the chaos of the background noise of the physical universe, using what I know of life to interpret the background noise of humanity as it moves forward in its complexity to lift me up to that next level of my evolution, the kingdom of heaven in heaven. This way of thinking about my humanity based on Cistercian practices and charisms is like a picture within a picture. I am a member of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church with all that heritage and responsibilities but I also have opted to grow deeper by being accepted by the Abbot to seek to transform my thoughts and actions using the traditions of Cistercian spirituality. http://www.trappist.net

Not only is there an evolution in the physical universe but the mental universe is also that which is collectively common to all life forms on Earth. Spirituality, if properly aligned with truth, is the key to unlocking the mysteries right in front of me.

If the background noise of the physical universe is an undistinguishable sound of creation, and the noise of the mental universe is the dissonance of how humans fumble over what is good for them or what leads them down paths of love and truth that are not helpful to our being human, then the spiritual universe is the resonance to that dissonance of being human, the deepest level of our humanity, that which makes all things new each day. To gain entrance, I must be a sinner, which all of us, except Jesus and Mary, and say “Let it be done unto me, according to your word.” As a Lay Cistercian, I try to delve deeper into my humanity daily using the energy of the Holy Spirit while I sit next to Jesus in the upper room of my inner self. I am a work in progress.

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