HYBRIDS, SPIRITUAL AND MATERIAL
This is what we are. Children of man, children of God. We have an exemplar who informed us clearly about our real nature. His story is that of Jeshua Ben Joseph, of Nazareth, called Messiah.
In Greek, the subject of this story is known as Jesus, called Christ.
Worry not. I am not evangelizing. I am referring to a story about our nature as homo sapiens. This story has had profound influence on the social and cultural nature of our world.
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Spiritual and material, eternal spirit dwelling for a temporary time in a physical body. Difficult to get ahold of. The difficult part for me is to get some accurate idea of what “spiritual” means.
Physical existence is what we know through our senses and other means beyond our senses, and we are always learning more what “physical” really means.
But, “spiritual”? Essentially not accessible through our senses (but not always), we find we must place our mind in a condition to “sense” what that may mean. I speak of meditation and prayer — mental exercises.
We have discovered that our physical nature is shaped by our mental condition, both conscious and unconscious. We are as we think.
Don’t carry that too far. Although our thinking, our minds, have profound influence on our physical condition, we are not free to conjure up mentally any condition we seek, and have it immediately manifest.
This is both good and not so good. Our minds can race out of control, dreaming up all sorts of bazaar circumstances that, on reflection, appear to be insane. We practice our entire lives seeking mental discipline, generally learning the hard way.
It is in our minds that we discover the interface between physical and spiritual. It is in our minds that our spiritual nature first reveals itself.
We question our own minds when this discovery begins. Spiritual considerations seem so strange when compared to our physical reality. We question whether or not we are just dreaming it up.
Discovery of our spiritual truth is not quick or easy. It generally takes a lifetime to gain some idea of what spirit is. This seems to be a purpose for our being here.
The combined nature of physical and spiritual is even more difficult. First we must begin to grasp what “spiritual” means, then we must discover how spirit and physical interact.
Along the way, an interesting added complication (or is it simplification?) arises with our scientific discovery that “material” is in fact an illusion.
The deeper we probe material reality the more we discover there is nothing there but energy and space.There is no solid particle to be found. It is all energy temporarily semi-congealed into an apparent but illusory form.
So, what does this leave us with? Spirit. That’s it. That is all we are, but this very convincing illusion of materiality is for good purpose.
The illusion of materiality is a convenient way to discover what it is like to have our consciousness temporarily removed from spiritual eternal unity. We learn while visiting the illusion of materiality the real nature of spirit, revealed upon our departure from the illusion.
Our adventure into material limitation is exciting, informative, and extremely difficult. We learn what can only be learned through our voluntarily entering this illusion for an educational journey.
Physical — touch a hot stove. Spiritual, get still and humbly quiet, and wait.
I can’t continue this exploration of the nature of spirituality without immediately finding myself way over my head, talking on and on only to reveal how little I know. The less we know about a subject, the more we talk trying to describe it.
Discovery of spiritual reality and the roll we play in it is an exclusively personal matter. No one can spoon feed it. It can help to find others on the same quest and explore together, for a time.
So, now that I’ve finally admitted I don’t know what I’m talking about, it seems best I let you go, if you have made it this far, so you can now ponder the nature of your own mind, the nature of infinity and the Eternal Now in which we exist, the nature of reality.
Remember to be truly thankful for ALL things. Things are as they must be, for our benefit.
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Interestingly, right after hitting publish for this article, I went to “home” and saw an article by Mitch Horowitz titled, “You Are As Your Mind Is”. I’m about to read it. I think Mitch and I are on the same page.