THE ART OF CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE: It’s about time.

Everything is in motion. Look around you. Use your Catholic Common Sense to see what it is and realize that humanity grows each moment towards something. I don’t mean in a straight line, but more as the fulfillment of what our natures are meant to be. Time is such a quixotic concept, an idea that intoxicates empirical and logical thinking, an actual framework in which each human is afforded the luxury of discovering three questions that haunt our mortal reverie. a) What does being human at the deepest level of our nature mean? b) What does it mean to love fiercely at that most profound level of our nature? And c) What truth transcends the corruption of both mind and matter?

Time is the context in which we discover what it means to be fully human as nature intended. Here are some ideas I have wrestled with over the years and still tickle my fancy occasionally.

There are three dimensions to time, each separate and with its own unique qualities, but all geared toward moving humans toward their destiny.

Ironically, each individual person who ever lived or will live (on any planet or in any star system) looks out at their seventy or eight years (if they are strong) and assimilated from the reality of physical nature, mental nature, or human nature, and their highest level of humanity, their spiritual nature.

These three paradigm shifts in cosmic time (the physical reality of matter, space, and time) lead to an evolution, or a movement of all matter and time, towards complexity because of consciousness. All it takes is time. We can’t stop time, nor can we reverse it? Why is that? Could it be that, just as we cannot stop the world from spinning just by wishing it, time seeks its own independent purpose of moving us forward based on the DNA of the one who said YES to all of that. See the Teilhard de Chardin Map (unattributed) as my formula for one reality with three distinct, separate universes.

When I look out of whatever comes my way each day, I do so with the mindset that I have an opportunity to discover new wineskins for the wine in which I can make sense of the ongoing movement of time with complexity and consciousness (first my consciousness, then asking how it all fits together).

Three paradigm shifts caused me to divide my view of one reality into three dimensions (physical, mental, and spiritual). These shifts were not the result of natural selection or the evolution of matter but an evolution in time itself.

Physical time (tick-tock) happened before humans, but with the intelligent progression of human nature, we learned to master how to measure time (a watch, from nanoseconds to light years in science). However, I always had questions about measuring what could not be measured by empirical language alone (although this language is central to my understanding of the physical and mental universes).

The physical time from creation (see the Teilhard map above) to when life started is the result of that movement and ever-growing consciousness. To my way of thinking, both time and matter had to contain the elements (the fingerprints or DNA of the one who created the whole shebang). Life creation is critical to my hypotheses, and it must come from a source beyond space and time (no matter how many universes there are).

Mental time has been a human creation since we first looked at the sky and figured out a calendar and the Zodiac.

When I look at the Teilhard map, I see that someone had to jump-start creation with an energy other than physical or mental. I see the same pattern of paradigm shift for human life (which evolved from animalistic tendencies). We inherit from animals those traits that make us less human (murder, envy, inauthentic procreation based on our rut or pheromone predominance).

So, the world of matter and time exists in the physical world we see daily. We would die without its unique combinations of gases and molecules. It is our foundation, our rock, on which each individual longs to answer those three questions that allow us to grow to our potential as nature intended. Sex is an authentic part of who we are as humans. As Erich Fromm states in his book, The Art of Loving, we are not born at that higher level of our humanity but must start at the bottom and assimilate what each of us thinks is the purpose of life and the meaning of love. We might indulge in many false paths, such as cotton candy, catering to our natural feeling of indulgence.

Because we are made in the image and likeness of that energy that is beyond any human capacity or capability to understand, the one who started this had to come down (and take on our nature) to show us how to move from physical and mental universes to the spiritual one, one that takes the abandonment of all that we know to assume new assumptions that actually allow humans to reach their destiny. (Philippians 2:5-12) Look this quote up.

This last level of our humanity is called spiritual, or the fulfillment of our physical evolution, or authentic mental evolution, to become dual citizens: Heaven on the Earth (until we die) and Heaven as our final destination of time from creation to Omega.

I communicate with God through the humanity of Christ in prayer and silence (the language of God). Christ left us Scriptures as a record, although one that contains only a few ideas of the writers or scribes who sought to leave a “How To” book on how to get to Heaven. Our sign is that of the cross, which means to be fully human, I have to live beyond the next moment (existere), pointing at Omga by placing myself in the presence of pure energy (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and, with a humble heart, waiting, just waiting.

To be continued…

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