A LAY CISTERCIAN SHARES HIS STRUGGLES WITH THOSE WHO ARE PUSSILANIMOUS

Life is a process, so it stands to reason that, my Lay Cistercian Way is also subject to those same tendencies to live life just a tad before what is happening now. This trend takes much of its direction from the milieu in which I find myself at the moment, and, I might add, changes with the winds of what is easy to do rather than what is more difficult and correct. In my observations of humanity’s search for what it means to be human, what authentic love is, and what and who controls truth, I offer the following observations.

THOSE WHO STAND ON J-ELLO

Imagine yourself standing in a huge, ocean of J-ELLO. You don’t sink into it but keep bouncing around with no firm grounding to stop the swinging and swaying each time you take a step. It smells like strawberry, which is a plus. There is no port of embarkation or debarkation. All there is is you trying to travel without a lighthouse to reference your travel. Nothing is solid. The total focus of any conversation has to do with being grounded on what is solid land, all the while without realizing that there is no frame of reference for anything other than your own view of what is truth. Truth based on J-ELLO as a foundation is constantly decrying the lack of stability and solid land yet never moving beyond the vicious cycle of constant seasickness and then rage that there is no stability.

WALKING ON THE SANDS OF WHAT IS REAL

The reality for some is akin to walking on sand, solid but still not an easy walk. The sand squishes underfoot, making it difficult to take steps without expending great amounts of energy. There is no solid ground with sand, but at least you can walk with difficulty. If all the roads in my city were sand instead of concrete, my car would still be able to move but be held hostage by constant stalling out and having to be rescued by AAA. To drive on sand means I need special drives (4 wheels) to expend the maximum traction to navigate this terrain. My approach is to caravan with others in case I get stuck.

WALKING ON WATER

If I try to walk on water, I sink, according to the laws that govern my physical world. I can, however, swim, if I know how, and navigate with a bark (boat), if I have one. Jesus was the only person who could walk on water’s top and defy nature. What is true in this case must be under the laws of physics and natural progression.
This process of existence must be within certain, immutable limits, not subject to the whims of individual desires but based on human nature’s penchant for reasoning and free will.

DON’T MESS WITH MOTHER NATURE

I must always use the immutable laws of nature as the basis for my physical self, laws that are beyond my personal ability to change them because they are what they should be. My human nature, unique to all life before or since the creation of all that is, is an anomaly of sorts in that this one species, Homo Erectus, has developed the ability to choose that which is against nature, but only in the realm of what I term the mental universe, the combination of the physical world and our collective ability to say NO to certain laws and concepts. For example, our collective consciousness and ever-expanding complexity allow humans, particularly me during my short lifespan, to explore the possibility of a way of thinking that is not normal to the sedentary human reaction of “we never did it that way before.”

Humans have reason for a reason, and we cannot change this. It is who we are as a species, each person as unique as a leaf on a tree but all tied together in our combined consciousness with one direction in our evolution. I have reason so that I can discover how I can move to a level of intelligent progression whereby I can move to the deepest and most authentic person I can be, according to the laws of nature and the confines of my mental awareness. But to think this way, I must give up or abandon my personal biases and what I thought was real to embrace what, to some, is a “fairy tale.”

Moving to this deepest level of my humanity, which allows me to fulfill my preordained destiny, requires knowledge, love, and truth that is beyond my human nature but one that lifts me up with its pure energy, not to be another nature (as in divine nature) but to fulfill what has been set in motion from when Chronos time began. As I write this, I am doing so against the assumptions of what I understand to be how Teilhard de Chardin looked at reality. These thoughts are not the new wine of Chardin but the new wineskins I have created right now to hold some contradictory thinking about who I am and where I am going. I am the only one (as are you) who can create new wineskins. To do so is to move to this next level of reality beyond physical and mental abilities and capacities to enter the highest level of what I think it means to be human, spiritual consciousness.

The big caveat of the spiritual level is that my human nature cannot move beyond what it is designed to be. We don’t have the power to morph into this seemingly unreal and natural state where we break the physical and mental nature of humanity to put on that cloak of immortality which allows us to take all those human experiences of what life is, the meaning of love, and what it means to be fully human according to our creation DNA, the fingerprints of God on all that is (visible and invisible). Thinking this way demands a higher level of consciousness and energy that my humanity can produce. It is only when the divine nature intervened in space and time, not to alter reality but to help it step to what it could not do by itself. (Philippians 2:5-12)

As far as I can determine, this possibility of being beyond mere physical and mental humanity is given only to individuals, not races, tribes, or especially politicians. This is why Baptism is so necessary. It is when this higher reality reaches down to an individual and marks me with an indelible mark (a holy tattoo) that I carry in this life and will be the secret sign that I am not merely a citizen of this world but of the world that is the next step of my evolution. I enter this only because I realize that the deepest part of my humanity is to exist to the fullest extent in discovering true knowledge, what it means to live authentically, and to help others to reach their destinies without forcing them to do this or that or be this or that.

Physical nature is my base for evolving my human nature of knowledge and free choice so that I can choose what is right but which requires me to die to self or my humanity is the abandonment of free will to an undefined source of whatever in the future that not only allows me to live forever but to bring with me all those good experiences and learnings from my life in the world.

It all comes down to this. With all the human characteristics and languages I have learned in my lifetime, I HOPE that I have it right and that the words to me from Jesus are true:

The Judgment of the Nations.^*

31^f “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne,

32^g and all the nations^* will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

33 He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

34 Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

35^h For I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirstyy and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me,

36naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’

37 Then the righteous^* will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?

38 When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?

39 When did we see you ill or in prison and visit you?’

40ⁱ And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’

41^* j Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

42^k For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,

43 a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’

44^* Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’

45 He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’

46^l And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/25

MY RESPONSE

Each night, I rise to say the Penitential Rosary (it is usually because I have to take a bathroom break, to be honest), one I began when I read the story of Our Lady of Akida.

Make your own conclusions, as I have.

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