A MOSAIC PIECE OF MY LIFE: What key I chose to fit the longing of my hungry heart.

Let’s recap. I have three innate longings that plague my unconsciousness, and I am anxious to resolve them. They are: a. What is that next level of my humanity that keeps pulling me towards a resolution of my next level of evolution? b. How can I love fiercely with all my mind, heart, and will? c. What is true outside of the corruption of matter and mind?

All I have in my unique lifetime is my ability to reason based on my accumulated good and bad experiences, plus my free will to choose what will make me happy. Suppose the ideology, theology, or philosophy that I have assumed into what I consider to be my person can answer these three questions until I can move deeper into their implications. In that case, I will select that paradigm as the template key to open The Six Locks of the Divine Equation, which I will begin in the next blog.

FIVE CANDIDATES FOR THE PARADIGM THAT OPENS THE DIVINE EQUATION

SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY APPROACH—I use the scientific approach to reality (what I can measure and from which I can extrapolate meaning) when appropriate. When I apply this methodology to my three essentially invisible questions with invisible yet real answers, I find that this approach does not do well with that part of reality that does not contain matter or is invisible. You can’t measure what is not there. The scientific approach will not identify, in my calculations, either the questions or answer them. It is not a question of which method is better but which is more appropriate for my task. I rule out scientific inquiry not because it is not a critical language to decipher physical reality but instead because it is not built to delve into more metaphysical questions where there are only historical trends and assumptions that make sense. I need something to address matter and mind in a way that fits what I have accumulated in a lifetime of trial and error. I continue to use this approach, but I find it inadequate for traversing the non-physical geography of the mind.

THE THEISTIC APPROACH–

ATHEISM AS A PARADIGM– I have always been fascinated by Atheism as a philosophy of meaning for my life. Again, I want a paradigm that can answer the three innate questions of my burning heart that lead to resonance. When asking, “If you remove God from the approach to meaning, then what? What remains of this methodology that can help me plug the holes in my leaking heart?” Denying that something doesn’t exist does not explain The Divine Equation’s six questions about what does exist and how it all fits together. Beyond a shared common contempt for the theistic approach, Atheism offers me nothing beyond denial. What is the next step in our evolution? None? I have not found a philosophy of life from Atheism that describes the next level of my humanity, how to love fiercely, or a systematic approach to truth beyond each individual’s opinion. I am open to more information but skeptical from what I can read. I am not concerned with atheists believing whatever is consistent with their human nature, but rather what they believe or, more accurately, what is missing from this approach incapable of resolving my longings.

1. JUDAISM AS A PARADIGM--As a way of thinking, my Catholic heritage is grounded in Jewish tradition and Scriptures. I can’t use Judaism as a paradigm for answering the call of the poor (Anawim) in my heart because, with the Christ Principle, Christ turned right, while Judaism turned left on the road. My main concern is that there is a progressive movement forward in Judaism to inclusion rather than excursion, a path inconsistent with the way. The New Testament and Old Testament complement each other and presuppose those elements in the Old that must be changed for the New Wine of Christ to keep from spoiling. Old skins hold old wine; new wine (Christ) requires new skins (The Church). Secondly, the spiritual progression or evolution seems to point towards the message from the Old Testament writings and prophets being expanded to all nations rather than recycling it to a mere race of people, even the chosen race. I reject this philosophy, not so much that it is entirely wrong, but rather that it is limited by a movement toward including all humans in the covenant.
2. PROTESTANTISM AS A PARADIGM — Granted that all of these paradigms are mere sketches of the depths of each such prescription for solving the three innate longings of the human heart, in my case, I did not choose Protestantism (generic) as a system to answer my three questions of the human heart. I felt I had to experience what Protestantism offered me as the template against which I must answer my three heart longings. I took instructions from my local community for a year to become an Anglican. I dutifully went to all the instructions as required. What amazed me was the deep sincerity and faith of those Anglicans who shared their spiritual journey with those of us seeking a possible other approach (for me, being Catholic Universal). I still remember sitting alone in the Anglican Church and asking God’s will be done. One thing I could not shake was the nagging void I experienced deep within me.
   Something was wrong, and I could not commit to that faith home, granted that the members inspired me to move on. The Protestant Principle, as I define it, shifted belief from a living repository Faith that comes down the rocky road of truth to one of the individual becoming church authority, its only guarantor of truth and heritage, and the highest authority being the individual’s right to choose what is right. The unintended consequence of what was a noble attempt to recenter oneself on Jesus instead of just keeping the laws constructed by the Catholic Church was a fragmentation in the fabric of a living tradition of belief, encumbered as it always will be by human frailty and original sin. In essence, The Protestant Principle replaced The Christ Principle by changing the pathways of intelligent progression within spirituality by protesting, throwing out, and tinkering with the fabric of what has been held to be valid from the beginning (Pentecost). Again, I respect the ability of anyone to choose what they think is best for them. What they discarded was done with sincerity and the firm belief that there had to be a better way than what Catholicism presented to them. There was. It just took a bit of mining for heavenly gold to dig past all the crud of the time. Not everyone wants to dig.
3. CATHOLICISM AS A PARADIGM — I find it ironic that the heritage into which I was born and baptized would end up as The Christ Principle. I say that because I owe a debt of gratitude to the whole Atheistic community for allowing me to deny all that I knew and know about Catholicism and start with a tabula rasa (clean slate). I gave up my Catholicism in the same way that Atheists give up God as a possible solution to prove with scientific terminology and technology that there is no such Being. Still, instead, it is the fairy tale of some broken-down, old, out-of-touch clerics. To ensure you know I am flying my true colors, I asked: What are the charisms of being Catholic (Orthodox) as my heritage, and how does it answer the three innate longings of my heart? The answer, strangely enough, came in my 82nd year of life, at the end of the process of struggling, not at the beginning. Maybe that is what is meant by “digging for heavenly gold?” You never know if you are going to strike it rich or not. The answers came and still do from another person. All I had to do all these years was ask for help, which would be given to me. Until two years ago, I was oblivious to what was before me all those years. To put myself in the proper frame of mind, I had to become a Lay Cistercian and follow those charisms as best as possible. I realized that I had to die to the old wineskin to place my new wine from the Holy Spirit to keep it fresh. Similar to dying to my false self in Baptism and then, each day, through conversio morae (conscious conversion of my will to be open to what awaits me each day, having in me the mind of Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5), dying to my notion of Catholicism raises me up to a higher level of awareness and belief that my choice has, and always will be the template against which I measure the three longings of my heart…and receive what is true. Thanks be to God.

EXISTENTIALISM, AS I KNOW IT, AS A PARADIGM

I am no pop-up existentialist expert in any sense. Still, throughout my life experiences, I have taken those who have the perspective of being present to reality as it is and incorporated My Catholic Way so that it enhances my views about life, not hinder them.

From early in my formation of what it means to be fully human, I tried to assimilate the works of Martin Buber (I-Thou Realtinships), Erik Fromm’s notion that Love is an Art to be mastered through practice, Abraham Maslow (Hierarchy of Needs), Heidegger and Husserl (Existentialism and Phenomenology in their most simplistic sense for a novice like me), but mainly, from my introduction to existentialism in my studies at The Institute of Pastoral Studies, Loyola University (Chicago).

My lifelong struggle is making sense of the “ontic possibility of the manifestibility of all being encountered.” I find that the end of life is just the beginning, having been allowed to say YES to the invitation of The Father to be adopted and thus rise above the corruptibility of matter and mind to that next level of my humanity, destined to live the treasures I collected in my lifetime, forever.

THE UNIQUENESS OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT

• Don’t let anyone co-opt your right to choose what is good for you according to your reasoning and accumulation of a lifetime of experimentation.
• What is good or bad for you must be tested on the anvil of human experiences, not the least of which is The Christ Principle.
• Atheism is a way of thinking that can only use the physical and mental universes (matter and mind) to explain how they fit together. It is not bad as much as inadequate in actually saying what they would use to answer the three innate questions plaguing my human heart for resonance.
• The greatest threat to the humanism movement’s next step in evolution is that each person must realize that step and then choose it freely.
• Only one template addresses The Divine Equation’s six locks, which undo our bondage to believing only in the physical and mental universe.
• Like a power of attorney for your estate, don’t give your right to choose what is good for you to anyone but God, and certainly not the Devil, The Catholic Church, Atheists, Politicians, or mindless new-age cotton candy fads.

To be continued…

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