CATHOLIC DEFENSE AGAINST THE DARK ARTS: Lesson Five: THERE IS NO EVOLUTION OTHER THAN PHYSICAL MATTER.

The notion of Satan as a snake in the Garden of Eden story of human creation is no accident. A snake represents slow, methodical stalking of the prey, creating an almost invisible bend of evil amidst the lushness of a garden. The snake uses invisibility to get close enough to prey to strike.

Such an image is a perfect depiction of evil as a snake. Suggesting to Adam and Eve a dose of false reality rather than killing them is an ingenious way of injecting venom into humanity so that they can kill themselves. “The wages of sin are death.” Such is original sin, the snake bite that all humans inherit from Adam and Eve. Baptism takes away original sin (snake venom antidote), but it does not take away the effects created by that act of disobedience. We would not have Baptism if it were not for Jesus becoming one of us, except that he did not have the venom that taints all humans. “He was like us in all things, but sin.” This is indeed an Immaculate Conception. God, whom the world cannot contain, is born of a woman who, herself, is created without sin by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit.

In my seeking to make new wineskins every day to hold the precious blood of Christ that I can pour into them, a transaction occurs only for those who can proactively make it so. My freedom to choose is the very vehicle at the heart of what it means to be human and not a Zebra. It is the one gift that God builds into the DNA of matter, no matter how small or large. Teilhard de Chardin maps out the flow of evolution at various levels of sophistication in matter, using the natural unfolding of reality each second towards its Omega, as matter adds complexity and consciousness as it moves as intended.

In this map of reality by Teilhard de Chardin (unattributed), reality goes from Alpha to Omega.

Life begets life is the paradigm.

Matter is alive in the sense that it fulfills the purpose for which it was created, as the platform for the next movement of complexity and the evolution of consciousness.

The evolution of inanimate matter (physical universe) culminates in animate matter (life), which in turn evolves into rational matter (mental universe), retaining all the characteristics from which it evolved.

Keep in mind that all reality is in movement from Alpha to Omega, and time is the roadbed along with it travels. But, and there is another important dimension of time, that of matter in each moment growing, moving, evolving, each atom to expand itself, while moving down the track set by the ultimate life outside of that time.

Teilhard de Chardin describes this growth as matter evolving in consciousness and complexity to such a degree that it cannot hold on to what it was, or even what it is, but moves to what is greater than it was before.

I like the term Father Teilhard de Chardin uses for the moment when matter went from animality to rationality. He calls it “bubbling over” from one dimension to another. Life continuously percolates within each atom.

Life evolves from animality to rationality, automatically, following the script implanted deep within the collective purpose of all matter, God’s fingerprints on each atom.

Reality has a purpose, a direction, is alive, and grows. The mental universe is only for humans, as far as we know, or maybe some other species somewhere out there that follows the same playbook.

Adam and Eve are the types of human existence. They signify the trauma humans experience in choosing what is good for all, because each person has free will and may make poor choices.

Humanity as a species grows, as does the context of all matter moving not from earth to the edge of the known universe (distance as time), also within each DNA from one human to another, moving inexorably forward towards something unknown.

God helped humans by giving them a little boost in their awareness of absolute truth through a covenant with a wandering Armenian, Abraham. All life continues to move towards its destiny in the Old Testament, with God setting boundaries to try to correct what Adam and Eve (our prototypes) failed to do. God reached out to establish a covenant with the whole nation of Israel. And still, life continues in all reality, but now, except for Israel, as the pilot project.

Time moves, and so does all reality within its borders. Israel grows and grows in awareness, or lack of it, until it “bubbles over” into the next universe, one that changes the paradigm before it. This is the Christosphere. (Check out the Teilhard map again.) The cosmic template is movement from nothing to something (The Father), continuing movement to the next paradigm shift, and movement from the physical universe (matter) and mental universes (humanity) to access the spiritual universe (restoration of humanity to continue growing in evolution toward its intended purpose). Christ opened the gates of Heaven to humans once again. By his death (the price of resonance) and resurrection (the new energy to be adopted sons and daughters of the Father), our evolution is now continuing to grow. Humans have the means (the way) to reach their deepest level of humanity; humans have truths that are absolute and immutable, guarded and maintained by the Catholic Church from the Apostles to the end of time and the Second Coming of Jesus, not subjected to the deterioration of time and matter. Humans have a life that evolution of the spiritual universe intended from the beginning, one bought back by Jesus, the ransom for many. All of this is that, using my reason and free choice, I can have the divine energy lift me to that level of evolution beyond matter, but within time, to begin dual citizenship (in the world until I die), and after that, to continue that spiritual universe in Heaven. What I learn about the Divine Equation, I can take to Heaven after I die. Prayer becomes not only external thinking, living, and serving God on this earth, but also the life that will be my life in a place that is “changed but not ended.”

The Seven Deadly Sins are those behaviors and relationships that corrupt the Center each of us chooses as that one principle, without which all others are possible. I call it the Christ Principle. The Devil does not want us to think about spiritual evolution or adoption by the Father as sons and daughters because that would crowd out evil and his control over us. This is not overt control in which the Devil forces us to do evil, but rather a more insidious corruption of human nature at its deepest level.

This is why prayer is important. If your prayer life is boring and seems a waste of time, this is a sign Satan has your attention. He wants you to follow the human instinct to avoid pain and inconvenience, to follow what feels good for your humanity at this time in history.

Satan’s way is always the easy way, while Christ’s way is the difficult way (the cross) to continue living on that deepest level of evolution, adopted sons and daughters of the Father and heirs to the kingdom of heaven.

Catholics, don’t let your guard down. Be diligent in prayer. Be obsessive in your desire “to prefer nothing to the love of Christ.” Christ is real, and you and I alone can make Him real in the upper room of our inner selves by longing to be in the presence of Christ, then waiting. Do What He Tells You.

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