THEORETICAL CATHOLICISM: The enabler of human evolution.

That which was destined to be the nature and Omega destiny (Teilhard map) of all reality, part of which is the movement of humanity, and within it my personal Alpha and Omega, my continuity with the flow of all energy, all matter, all time, all living beings, all humans, was thwarted by the archetypal sin of Adam to yearn to be what nature was not, needed to be reset for the flow to be at its peak again. Someone had to correct nature’s misalignment by a single act of choice, one that had to be not only complete but also powerful enough to change time itself through the introduction of a new paradigm.

Not just anyone could be the pontifex maximus to build a road between a wounded humanity and its intended nature, but only one from outside human nature, yet someone who represented all humanity, as did Adam. What sounds like a conundrum is at the heart of the Christ Principle. Those who hold the Rule of Opposites have that longing for something more that must be there for humans, the only ones who know that they know. The sign of the cross tattooed on each person baptized with water and the Holy Spirit is that indelible mark of one who intentionally seeks the Christ Principle as the Center of their lives, even if they don’t quite know its implications—caught up in this moment in time, where there is a great Chiropractic adjustment to all reality, in particular restoring the flow of life between divine and human nature. Imagine God as a healer, giving all humanity, as part of the movement of complexity and consciousness, a complete, full-body adjustment to realign what should have been with what is, restoring what is again. Only the energy of nature, not that of humanity, can bring about a realignment that heals what was broken.

Jesus is the redeemer who is both God and human nature, one who voluntarily gave up his life to pay the price of freedom and keep humans from being hostage to a wounded humanity, and to unlock the destiny that awaits all those who are aware that they are aware that Jesus alone is the way, the truth, and the life. He opens the gates of Heaven to those who have the mark of the cross on them.

What about all those, admittedly, the preponderance of all humanity, who, either knowing who God is in their minds and rejecting the existence of such a relationhip, or, who through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the invitation to open the door in this life to a new level of their evolution and begin to live the relationship with Christ while living, being facilitated by the Catholic Church? Read Gaudium et Spes, the encyclical about the Church in the Modern World. There is a very subtle trap here, all dressed up in imperatives and absolutes. What happens to those not baptized? This question might be a false one, in that it implies that you, the individual, can cast into Hell those who disagree with you. I deal with this seeming contradiction by allowing God to be God and realizing that those who for it to Heaven to play in God’s sandbox are judged not by me, one who has betrayed Christ by coveting the Seven Deadly Sins. Judging others for anything is way beyond my pay grade. “Judge not that ye be not judged.”

THE BOUNDARY BREAKER

Like a surgeon who sometimes must reset or break a leg bone to heal you, Jesus reset all of humanity’s dissonance through an ultimate act of love: “Greater love than this has no man that he gives his life for another.” But that is not quite the rest of the story, as the late Paul Harvey so often said. Jesus did not die on the cross; he gave his life up as a ransom for many. Jesus died so that humanity had a chance to join Him in a place prepared for humans to use their life experiences to live out the Christ Principle forever.

The Genesis Principle restores the symmetry of reality through an act of love, The Christ Principle, so that all subsequent humans have a chance to move to that deepest level of evolution, one only accessed by using an energy source not of human nature, but by recognizing The Principle of Truth and following its way to the next level of humanity and lead a life that is almost the opposite of human existence while still wrapped in shell of the human experience.

Far from being smug about being Catholic and a sincere follower of the cross of Christ, the true realization of what I have become due only to the energy of the Holy Spirit, only heightens a profound humility of thankfulness, expressed in its most intense form in the Eucharistic sacrifice. Key in all of this interaction is the awareness that all of it exists so that I might make it to Heaven, not automatically, not by doing prayers without God’s energy, but because that is the ultimate result of the intentions of the one who is the creator.

THE MAP OF COSMIC ENERGY

One way to look at the Teilhard map of cosmic flow is one I find highly provocative, mainly because it is the opposite of what my human reasoning is and all instincts to choose the familiar rather than another reality (adoption as a son or daughter of the Father and heir to the life to come beginning with Baptism and continuing to the completion of my human evolutionary process of Alpha to Omega.

Characteristics

What follows below is the dynamics of reality interacting with one another to restore resonance where there was, and continues to be, chaos.

1. God, the one who creates boundaries but who has no boundaries, sets in motion a scheme for me to be able to do it to the deepest level of my humanity and fulfill what human nature should be. Adam and Eve wanted to be the authors of the boundaries of their own human choices about what was good or evil.
2. They thwarted the natural resonance of life’s flow from Alpha to Omega.
3. Humans continued to live and seek meaning using their own boundaries (prone to both good and evil).
4. Humans, as a species, lacked the energy to take the next step and had to wait for the soil to be prepared to receive the boundaries God had set.
5. Humans don’t like other people telling them what the boundaries are (Don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good or evil, or you will die). An individual must choose to find purpose and meaning without God’s help. There is no norm or consequence to choices made with me as the source of truth, no absolute truth against which all reality must be measured.
6. The Son of God (The Christ Principle) came to reestablish the boundaries that Adam and Eve had rejected, with the consequence of their wandering in the desert until a Redeemer came. (Philippians 2:5) Jesus showed us HOW to access the umbilical cord of the only energy that can lift humans to the next level of evolution. But there is a catch to this gift. Once you place Christ at your Center, the ruler of this world (Satan) constantly tries to unseat your choice, and so you must fight the good fight to keep Jesus as your Savior each day, in all you do, without ceasing. The Church may be the conduit of Jesus to individuals, but I, and I alone, have that precious gift of choice to make my will align with Jesus and reestablish for me each day, the life-giving power to sustain Christ as my Center.
7. There is a helper, another Advocate, to help each individual as time moves forward. The Catholic Church, a pioneer of the accumulated Faith of those who have gone before as pioneers to forge Chsit in each century.

The Christ Principle allows me to live a double life, one still confronted by the challenges of the human condition, with all its wonders and deep ravines of false trails. As a novice pioneer, forging my way through what is good or bad for me to allow me to fulfill my destiny, in the past, I have chosen dead ends, aka The Seven Deadly Sins, not just one action, but to put them at my Center as the purpose of my existence. If I choose Sloath, for example, and there can be many archetypal sins existing at the same time, all my reasoning, my assumptions, my choices are made with this false Center in mind. This is not a one-time event, but the constant choice to do evil, which I have been seduced into thinking is good for me. I can’t hold two centers in my life, only one, and it is a revolving Center, one that I must constantly choose to keep at the top, be it good or evil.

The Lay Cistercian Way, as I understand it, is seeking to have Christ increase as my Center (capacitas dei) by the struggle of daily conversion (conversio morae) or the awareness of the energy of the Christ Principle over the pull of my fallen human nature (original sin). In seeking this higher form of my human evolution, I need help to sustain it (Eucharist and Penance). The stamina to overcome the temptations to live as a human with the limited values that the world teaches (Contemplation in the upper room of my inner self with Jesus, sitting there and waiting in the presence of the only energy that sustains my Christ Center (Philippians 2:5) in this life until I see Christ face to face and claim my inheritance.

I am not an orphan in this solo race for the heavens. I can love authentically because Christ has first loved me, and the Father has chosen me; I have not chosen God. The Catholic Church, that living umbilical of energy flowing from God and transformed by Jesus so that we can use it as we are able, is the unbroken lifeline with the only energy that can save us from the fate of Adam and Eve. Like a conduit through the ages (not from me to Jesus) but from Pentecost to each day of my life as I try to live out what I think Jesus is telling me about the Divine Equation and how I can continue to unlock the mysteries of the Mystogical Catecesis as a reality not a fiction, I must constantly ask to receive, knock to have the door opened, and seek for me to grow ever deeper in mining spiritual gold, the treasures that I can take to Heaven after I die.

The next, and final reflection is The Principle of Truth. God does not leave us orphans. Emmanuel is still with us in the Eucharist just as He was in that upper room with the Apostles at the Last Supper.

Copyright, 2026, The Center for Contemplative Practice. All Rights Reserved.

uiodg