"Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now."
-Bob Dylan
I find it interesting in our intellectual, philosophical and religious arrogance how we, including myself, are attached to and will defend an idea of reality. We get into arguments with others and feel we just have to defend our point of view. This is because we see or believe something and determine it an objective fact. Meanwhile, we point our high powered radio telescopes into the wider universe and determine it an objective reality. But, is it really?
I have been in various discussion groups on the internet. And, I have written several pieces where people get to comment. This is an enriching experience for it makes me question. Many times I find myself confronted with my not truly following my deepest Truth, and that is, anything that can be said about reality is false. This means letting go of attachment to any of the ideas I present. Yes, there are times when I am wise. In my Sophia's Web: Reclaiming Wholeness in a Divided World, I literally say to the reader, "don't believe anything I say."
Yet, I don't make that philosophy fundamentally clear all the time.
A few spiritual people of the various faiths often talk of non-attachment. Non-attachment in this day and age is very difficult. Indeed, it is often deemed that there is something drastically wrong with someone who is not attached to a philosophy, creed, scientific theory, religious theology, or political ideology. It is also difficult to write and speak without it sounding as if one is attached to a particular philosophy, creed, theology, belief and so on. Yet what are these other than hot air emanating from someone's mouth?
I too am full of hot air. I sometimes will say that Consciousness is primary, for example, and will wind up in a debate about this issue. Yet, I also know that this is a fallacy, for Matter also is primary. Indeed, when Genesis 1:2 of the Bible states, "and the Earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep (female Tehom)," I think of Matter. This verse then says, "and the Spirit (Ruach) moved out over the face of the Waters (Tehom)." Sometimes the Spirit is referred to as Wind or Breath and has been linked to Sophia, or Wisdom. It is after this movement that a Voice (the Word) speaks the infamous "Let there be" lines. At this time, there occurs a differentiation of matter (i.e., the Waters) beginning with a division of the upper and lower waters (symbolized in the Hebrew Aleph (see below)) and from there divides exponentially into the multiplicity we have today.
This division mirrors the actions of a fertilized egg first dividing into two and then becoming multiple cells that ultimately become a human being.
So is matter primary and consciousness secondary? Or are they not two, like water and wetness? What drives the sperm towards the egg? Is he like salmon swimming upstream to spawn, returning, as it were, to his source of origin? Is this forever locked in his memory? Is our beginning also known in our gazing into the starry night remembering the home we have always inhabited and will always be part of? Can we continue to divide consciousness and matter?
Perhaps there is no answer for how can you say consciousness is primary to the presentation of matter. If you have no consciousness, you are presumably dead. Yet, your body at death has a programmed way of deteriorating and becoming compost for the soil (given you don't put yourself in a box, i.e., coffin). Death is a living and intelligent process existing in relationship to everything else. Furthermore, decaying matter, such as feces, works very well on gardens as do decaying plants. Likewise, the decay of animals in the wild does wonders for the ecosystems. Death is a living process that is intelligent if you define intelligent as being for the sake of the whole. Just as Christ is said to die for the sake of all, so do you and so does the decaying tree in the forest. This is why He, i.e., manifest life, is eaten and drank during communion.
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