THE PROBLEM WITH INVISIBILITY IS…YOU CAN’T SEE IT.

Often in my Lectio Divina meditations, a quote or saying pops up, like the one in the title: “The problem with invisibility is you can’t see it.” What sounds like innocuous doublespeak was, in fact, a gateway to thinking about one of the core questions humans must confront: Is invisibility real? Ordinarily, this would seem like a trivial hiccup in the quest for new ideas. In this case, the saying pushed me to think at the edges of my consciousness about what is. All of these ideas are invisible, in the sense that they contain no matter and no seeming energy, other than what comes from the synapsing of neurons that produce ideas from nothing (or so it seems).

The physical universe of matter is a framework that keeps our human experience in form. The mental universe is composed of matter but is limited to humans, with their ability to reason and choose what is good or bad for them. The human mental universe is diverse in its capacity to examine matter and ask how it fits with the purpose of life. The spiritual universe can be accessed only through an individual’s free choice, not a race’s. Once the individual chooses this way (The Catholic Church), the spiritual universe is divided into two citizenships, or realms. They exist together, intertwined, as the kingdom of Heaven on earth, which you and I see as meaning (The Six Questions of the Divine Equation), and get the answers from the Christ Principle, who lives in both the kingdom of Heaven on earth and the kingdom of Heaven after each of us dies and gives an account of our stewardship.

Let me share a new line of thinking I came across last night while doing Lectio Divina meditations. It has to do with the whole notion of visibility and invisibility as a template for reality. Knowing this premise has helped me to grow a bit deeper (or sideways) in my thinking about the Christ Principle. I hold that what is present in one universe is also present in the other two. However, they have different characteristics because their purposes are not the same—one reality, with three dynamic energies working as one but completely separate.

Let me illustrate. Using the visibility/invisibility concept as applied to the three universes of matter, mind, and spirituality, the first one is the physical universe (one in which all matter is and is subject to the invisible law of its nature; all matter from the hypernova (visible reality) has unwritten rules that govern it (invisible reality). In the mental universe, inhabited only by our species, as far as we know, matter is the object of our search for meaning. We, humans, can see the matter around us, composed of many shapes and forming the structure of the universe we can see. We not only see the physical universe, but also create languages to describe it and ask questions about it. We create incredible theories and pass them down to the next generation so they can take the baton and keep running. The mental universe comes with a special set of problems. We discover something beyond matter, another whole dimension of existence that uses matter as its base for existence but now asks for purpose: what is my purpose, what does reality look like, how does it all fit together, how to love fiercely, and finally, we know that we are going to die: now what?

That takes us logically to the third universe spirituality, one couched in mystery and not inhabited by any matter or time at all. Science does not do well with spirituality because you can’t see it or measure it with the instruments we use to ask questions. How do you ask what it means to love as Christ loved us when you have never seen Christ, and he never wrote a book, teaching instead with parables and stories that people of his time could grasp to a degree?

The notion of original sin, with its effects and influences on living and dying: what virtues help, or what vices hinder, the movement of our nature in complexity and consciousness towards its preordained end (Omega). Humans can get to the deeper spiritual part of their nature, one that is both visible and invisible, only with help from a higher nature to raise them beyond what human nature can do with innate energy from an individual. We need help.

In the physical universe, God creates a visible dimension so life forms have a base of existence. This base evolves to the point where humans are prepared to transfer from the visible/invisible universe to the deepest part of their human, but they hit a barricade. They are stuck in space and time with “No Exit,” à la Albert Camus. It might be like a robot vacuum cleaner that keeps bumping into the first rung of a staircase but can’t reach the second step. Without someone of higher nature to lift that robot to the next rung, life becomes hostage to its own limited nature. Instinctively, this human knows someone is out there, but can’t quite define what it is or where to find it. This invisible yearning in the human depths of its nature is threefold: the desire to know more about who I am and why I am here (purpose); the desire or yearning to love others with the greatest intensity possible for a human being (often mistaken for merely having the greatest sexual pleasure); and finally, the desire to know what is true absolutely and not dependent upon human interpretation or a way of behaving that won’t change with each new wind of change.

I share some of the implications of the visible/invislble conundrum as I have applied it to the Catholic Church, based solely on the experiences I have had trying to answer the six Divine Equation questions and find answers that actually make sense to those three urges above that are never quite answered but which I never stop seeking. St. Augustine of Hippo states it this way: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”

For most of my life, I sought answers to the question of what would satisfy my hungry heart, without knowing what those questions were. And I tried to answer this urge for resonance with the dissonance of the world, with its solutions and ideologies that screamed for visible attention and adherence. All political ideologies, many of the religious and spiritual panaceas of the gospel of wealth and cotton candy morality, all of the failed mindsets that deny God but then can’t possibly identify what questions must be answered or where to find the answers, are games we now play under the guise of purpose and meaning that lasts. The cult of the individual, or, as I have tried to explain in other writing, which I call the Protestant Principle, plagues the Catholic Church at this moment and only leads to fractioning and mislabeling the real problem as that of the Pope’s authority, not realizing they make themselves their own Pope of their own unauthorized authority from Christ. What the Holy Spirit (invisible) has chosen, let no one of us put asunder, without the consequences of melting the message of Christ from the cross to cotton candy.

In his book, The Little Prince, Exupéry has a classic line that has always struck me as applicable to the notion that if it is invisible, then it has no meaning, because each of us has a right to hold what we want to be meaningful. No one can challenge us, especially the Catholic Church, which seeks to take away individuality in favor of a mindless conformity to rules that I did not make or that don’t make sense.

The mental universe, by itself, or life as we know it, can experience invisible attitudes, remember past incidents of physical pleasure (though more the circumstances than a recall of the actual physical emotion), all within the framework of the world’s physical and mental universes. But is there something more out there, a level of invisibility not dependent upon individual experience or recall, something that my human heart wants but can’t quite define or capture, something definitely invisible to the eye, yet deeply resounding in the depths of my consciousness– the cry that just maybe the mental universe of visible and invisible emotions and purpose has something undefinable, yet real.

The purpose of human beings as individuals (Churches don’t exist, but people who populate those parameters do) is a multitude of independent collections of crucibles of life experiences. What is present in the physical universe and mental universes leads to the next level of evolutionary step, where invisibility, like all matter AND MIND, depends upon that individual to use their Reason to fulfill its purpose and to choose the correct key that unlocks the next level of existence, one entered into only by an individual and not race, one that needs energy outside of human nature to walk down the stairs to lift that foot that keeps bumping into the step rather than reaching out on its own to move forward. This next level, unlike the physical universe of matter and the appearance of human reasoning, looks backward to see what is, how it is, why it is, and most importantly, what it means. What challenges evolution is looking forward, not to a future with matter or mind, but one devoid of anything that resembles the frame of existence humans have come to covet so fiercely. Entering the spiritual universe, one that is totally invisible yet contains reality that is the key to opening up a dimension of our humanity hidden from matter and mind, but accessible to those who know how to see “with the ear of the heart,” as St. Benedict taught us.

The concept of visible-invisible is a cross-cutting theme that, along with Alpha and Omega, the evolution of energy from matter, through mind, and ultimately to pure energy, is itself invisible. What makes spirituality unique is that it requires the individual (not the race or species) to use Reason and choice to discover how to enter this third universe, one invisible yet real, one that transitions humans through baptism (entry) to live in both the world of matter and mind and then, using the key (Christ Principle), simultaneously live a dual life (Heaven on earth until personal death) and (Heaven in Heaven after our bodies corrupt). Lay Cistercian spirituality, based on “Having in me the mind of Christ Jesus,” allows me to sit next to Christ in that upper room of my inner self and receive divine radiation (like the Sun hitting our skin and it soaks up Vitamin D). What goes against the nature of my humanity is that I must give up my preoccupation with having the world revolve around me, abandon the Reason of the world and just visible Reason, and “see what cannot be seen, and hear what cannot be heard.” What is preposterous to mere human existence (humanism in its noblest sense) is made complete by this act of belief: the individual admits that a realm is totally invisible (Heaven after we die), despite all we know about matter and mind. It doesn’t make sense. It is a fairy tale, as some stuck in the mere human world of matter and mind would say, not realizing the gold right under their feet.

Here are a few observations I have noted about the cross-cutting theme of visible-invisible reality (remember, several others are going on simultaneously).

Baptism gives each person a pair of glasses to see what is visible and what is invisible.

If you don’t put on the glasses (Faith informed by Reason), all you will see is the Physical Universe of matter with its natural laws, and the Mental Universe with its capability to see with the senses what is matter, but additionally, to ask the interrogatories using various languages (medicine, science, philosophy, poetry, literature, logic, etc.).

The Spiritual Universe depends upon the Physical Universe for its existence; The Mental Universe is life evolved to the furthest extent possible from matter and mind. This is not bad; it is very good.

Like a person walking up a set of stairs to reach the second floor, humans can’t make that step with their own strength because nature’s energy will not lift the foot, so it just hits the stairs over and over. Because we humans do that butting the stair step so much, it becomes “normal,” and we are content to stay on the first floor without being able to go to the next floor.

The next floor is the next level of our evolution, one for which we are created from “star stuff,” as some cosmologists like to tout, and rightly so. The question becomes: how do we lift our legs to go to the next level of our evolution? Humans do not produce the mind’s invisible energy to lift themselves. This means natural selection, or Darwinian evolution, can only go as far as nature allows.

That next step is one where the individual has to use what is hidden in the depths of the human subconscious and make it so that we at least know how to ask for help, even though we still don’t have the energy to move up the stairs to the highest level of human capability and capacity.

Some had to take the time and effort to come down from the second floor to that bottom rung and reach out a hand to lift our human nature with energy outside ourselves, one person at a time.

God, the divine nature, three persons yet one God, who is pure energy, pure love, pure truth, came down to help us but had to do so in a way where humans then and now could receive the energy they needed without their neurons being fried by an energy we could not now, or ever, take into ourselves without a transformer, a buffer, a mediator, one who was that energy but would give it out to those who asked, those who sought, those who knocked, as they had the unique capacity to receive it.

Mary was overshadowed and made perfect by having that last drop of divinity dripping into her cup, as much as her nature could absorb, up to and including the meniscus…one more drop and the cup would overflow. This is the template for those who are baptized.

With Mary’s fiat, God took her body, blood, soul, and humanity to the second floor to live with the fullness of what her humanity could experience. Christ, her Son, both God and Human, is at that place where those who die in the peace of Christ go to live out in Heaven what they have packed for the journey on earth.

God took Mary up all those stairs all at once. When God adopts us as sons and daughters, and we make a choice (daily until we die) to try to see Jesus and be with the one we love, Jesus lifts us up only on the first rung. For the rest of our lives, we will struggle to climb those stairs, carrying our cross daily, each of us in our own way. There is a difference.

Now we have an energy with which we can climb those stairs: Jesus, with the grace of the Holy Spirit, to make it to the top.

No elevator takes us to the top, where we can skip those stairs and get a free ride just because the Father adopted us.

Each of us must be winded and bruised by the climb. For some of us, the stairs are rocky, but that does not mean we are on the wrong staircase.

Each day begins a new journey to discover Christ and fill up with the Divine Energy as we can assimilate it (capacitas dei) and move forward.

If we take a step back, and all of us, except for Jesus and Mary, cry out for mercy, Jesus takes our hands and lifts us again to make all things new.

At the top of the stairs, those purified on earth will be weighed to see whether they meet the requirements for Heaven. No sin. Pure heart. Heart as light as a feather, as the Egyptians saw judgment. Jesus is the judge, not a referee. Jesus sees the heart. Those who have borne the heat of the day, had dirty hands and cuts and blisters from climbing those stairs, who are completely worn down, will make it with Jesus as Lord and Savior.

Jesus will reach out His hand to us with a broad smile, and we take his hands, noticing the nail marks in his hands, the scar on his side, and the place where he bore the sins of the world on his head. He will say. “Welcome, good and faithful servant. Come, share your Lord’s Joy.” Then he will add: “Come on in and let me introduce you to my mother and the family. Mi Casa, Su Casa. Forever.”

The problem with invisibility is…you can’t see it, but to those who can see with the “ear of the heart.” That is all there is because that is literally all there is.

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