CRUNCHING ON GOD

Often, I receive Lectio Divina meditation thoughts that seem unorganized and not linked to anything I had processed before. Like I did, you must think against these ideas to form your own conclusions and meaning. The photo above is of Martin Buber, Jewish philosopher and author of the I-Thou and I-It approach to reality, which I have absorbed into my unique thinking.

WHACKY THOUGHTS ABOUT GOD ON WHICH I CRUNCH

• Most, if in fact all, of my intellectual concepts about God have been anthropomorphic. I think of God from the framework of my lifetime capacity and capability of who I am. We toss around images and concepts of existence or non-existence like they were stuffed toys for use but not abused. This first thought was, What if I look at it from God’s view (again, which is my view of what or who God is)?
• God has a problem, or, more to the point, I have a problem trying to decipher God’s whispers.
• The product of pure energy and pure love produces a result that is pure truth. Pure means 100% of its nature (whatever that is).
• Humans can never be of divine nature; they are only subject to the corruptibility of humanity.
• The three levels of human evolution are physical (matter and time), mental (capability and capacity to look at physical reality and ask why, and spiritual evolution or universe, which answers the longing of the hungry heart to ask Why? and What is love, plus how can I discover truth beyond the corruption of matter and mind)?
• Each of us is born into imperfection and condemned to run the gauntlet of meaning to reach the fulfillment of our human nature.
• There are three levels or universes of reality, each separate and based on unique assumptions: physical, Mental, and Spiritual.
• Evolving from one universe to the next requires help outside that universe’s energy.
• My humanity, one of those levels (mental), comes from what went before and exhibits the characteristics of that level, in addition to adding to its own through time.
• Time is movement. It combines consciousness (unique to the mental and spiritual universe alone). Although circular, the spine of reality has a beginning and an end.

• This is the Teilhard Map (unattributed) that I use as my spine of reality and its stages of ever-progressive consciousness towards a point out there with spiritual maturation of my three levels of humanity (animal or life, human or being conscious that we are conscious) and spiritual (the deepest level of my humanity and its fulfillment both on earth and in heaven).
• One equals three, one nature, and each separate dimension of only one reality. I look for this non-scientific formula now as part of God’s whispers to me.
• I hear with the ear of the heart and the unlimited depth of my humanity through reason and free choice.
• I must choose the spiritual direction with my free choice, so I know I can choose what I think is good or evil for my humanity. God is just the template of what is actually true or evil so that I can know the answers to the questions in my heart, in a constant process of wanting to be true and resolved.
• These three longings of my heart, which I have struggled to capture only to find that they are fulfilled only by being in the presence of pure energy (God), are:
  • What is that last level of evolution of my humanity, without which mere physical and mental existence is insufficient to explain my purpose?
  • When I reach a process of awareness that only comes from interacting with energy outside of myself, how can I love in a way that fulfills my human nature at its deepest level?
  • What does it mean to have absolute truth in a condition without the possibility of anything absolute?
• What fulfills my thirst for dissonance at being just human? Where can I find fulfillment in my constantly low-grade nagging of my human thoughts?
• I must choose a way of life that brings me the fulfillment of my humanity and shows me that it is only by giving up what I think life is, to put on the mind of Christ Jesus, the Christ Principle, that I gain the fullness of my humanity as intended by evolution. I need the help of a force outside of myself, a higher power, to give me that energy (also outside of myself) to soothe my savage heart in turmoil until it rests in Thee (St. Augustine). This reliance on a higher power is not a sign of weakness but a source of strength and comfort.
• All I have to do, as I practice it as a Lay Cistercian (www.cistercian.net), is to deny myself of what I think is good by abandoning everything to take on the posture of just waiting in the presence of a God, I cannot see but can feel and discern the whispers of the Holy Spirit if I
• Being a loving Father came down to us through His Son, Jesus, to show us how to grow to that next level of our humanity since humans were about to go in the wrong direction. (Philippians 2:5)
• The problem was that I had to give up everything that my nature says was good for me (B.F. Skinner’s notion of operant conditioning) to choose the opposite (the cross) or what was good for my next level of humanity, which is to be with God forever.
• It is an accident that humans (not animals) have crossed that threshold from animality to humanity (although retaining a strong residue of procreation and self-protection). Humanity had to have the opportunity to freely choose what their reason dictated to them, and I might add, without repercussion. I have come along with my eighty-four years so far and have to interact with my environment and people with the lessons and learnings that help me focus on realizing that my entry to heaven is Baptism. My sustaining energy is the Real Presence in the Eucharist (a definite sign of contradiction and not one for the faint of heart).
• Far from leaving me as a pilgrim in a foreign land, after I abandoned everything to follow Christ as way, truth, and life, I have the real presence of Christ through Eucharist and Eucharistic adoration, the Lay Cistercian (among others) that help me focus on Christ and learn how to relearn who to listen to the whispers of Christ and the gentle rustle of the wind from the Holy Spirit surrounding me like a fresh breeze when I first open the window to a new day.
• Eventually, I have to be able to live in a future world that is not like my own but like the Garden of Eden before the fall from grace or energy. That doesn’t make sense to a world that is just out for its own personal satisfaction. This is why the purpose of life is “to know, love, and serve God in this lifetime, in order to make it through that next level of evolution (but one requiring my reason and free will to do so).”
• Using my human instincts and life experiences, my life while I live is to try to determine how to listen to the whispers of God, interpret the Scriptures, and listen to the silence of God with the ear of my heart (St.Benedict in the Prologue to his Rule).
• What I experience is no less the joy of my humanity being resolved once again with its purpose. Tied into this joy is my realization that what I experience is not just human feelings of happiness but, more profoundly, my humanity fulfilling its threefold longing, which I have struggled with my whole life.

Enough.

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