REALITY

"I confess that perhaps nobody in the world complicates simple things as badly as I do. So you can rest assured that it is likely I will make complex things even more complicated. I apologize for my complexity-complex, nevertheless, I will soldier on.

"Where to start? Two approaches present themselves: one, is to approach reality from the surface of things, as our senses present them to us, the sights we see; the sounds we hear; the tastes we savor; the textures we feel; the aromas we sense; the memories we cherish.

"On the other hand, we might take the depth-science, neurological approach to the senses and plumb their intricacies. This latter approach pursues energetic processes and relationships at the subatomic level. I’m really not competent to go there, so we will be more superficial in our approach.

"From the micro-level approach we might resort to Einstein’s elegant equation, E=MC², which says energy is matter, or in reverse, matter is energy. This description is generally accepted as definitive of all reality, of all relationship. In that regard it is elegantly complex even as it is elegantly simple. It takes us into the complexities of reality.

"My first exposure to the nature of the cosmos as substance and process, to quantum relativity/ reality, was more graphic and less mathematic. I was told to look at a newspaper picture, say, the face of a person, and note the distinctive features of the person’s face. Look at the picture with a magnifying glass and see how the features of the face are distinguished by the ink on the page. See that the ink is put on the page in forms of many little dots of different density, size, color, etc. Now, enlarge a dot on the page with higher power magnification and you will see that the dot is made up of smaller dots. Keep enlarging the enlarged dots and eventually the dots become so small as to disappear.

"What gives definition and qualification to visible things is the relation of micro “dots”, and of energy that marshals the micro dots in some manner of distinction, as for example, a seed, a tree, a frog, a flee, an elephant. This is the quantum world of energetically managed dots arranging the physical structures of life in the quantum-electric universe.

"What is real is relationship, the enduring arrangements of energetic constructs that are informed and conformed by and to dot-relationships. All relationships are conformed to some purposeful rationality; all relationships are nature-arranged dot-conformations. The matters and manners of purposeful relationships endure and secure habits and associations that correlate.

"Life in all its complexity of process reduces down to conforming individual “dots”, micro-particles, to laws of natural transformation, whether in structures large or small, as in a tree, in its leaves, in the cells of the leaves, in the chlorophyll in the cells of the leaves.

"Chlorophyll is the organic mechanism (molecule) that steals sparks of light from the radiant energy of sunshine and uses it to disassemble water and carbon dioxide molecules, and to reassemble their parts, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen to create the carbon structures that are the basic building blocks of all life. The process is called “photosynthesis”. The complex molecules of diverse life are the stuff of our own selves.

"All life, all relationships are in and from the same cosmic cloth and spun from the same threads of deep cosmic energy. The spinning of vital cloth is always in process. The fabric ever changes, but is ever the same. It is who we are, what we become, what we know: reality is relationship. That is “reality”.

"Then there is that what religion talks about, “Ultimate Reality”. What is “ultimate”? One way to understand ultimate is to reduce things down to least particles, which is the ultimate, least level of reduction, that is, the wave/ particle interface of all relationship-reality.

"Another way of understanding ultimate reality is to understand it in the universal sense of material origin from and return to non-physical energy, what is “spirituality”. The organized energy of living constructs (bodies) is called “soul”, spirit — Spirit — that in which all has being and which empowers all becoming, the beginning (Alpha) of all and the return (Omega) of all, Whom/ what we call “God”.

"The correlative of “ultimate” is “contingent”, that which is always in flux, in process of changing relational forms. WE, all life, belong to the order of “contingent reality”, always subject to relational necessity. So, there you have it.

"From the personal perspective, “ultimate reality” is fulfillment of a lifetime of relationships. Transformational relationship is life’s ongoing process by which the Unconditioned comes to be conditioned in human potentials. The consciousness of being/ becoming is about understanding relationships. Remembrance and re-membering are a conscious unity, the continuity of reflective being and physical becoming. In being and becoming, human consciousness shares the divine purposes of destiny in the self-fulfilling processes of change.

"The fulfillment of being is in the experiences of transformation from means to end, from end to means. In the community, in common relationships, higher purpose seeks higher wellbeing, the transformation of intention from subject to object, from object to subject — the hypostasis of the divine/ human, of the human/ divine. Paul Tillich says: “Religion…is ultimate concern…religion is substance, the ground and the depth of man’s spiritual life.” [Quoted in Robert W. Whalen’s SACRED SPRING, pg 304]"

[From "GREEN RELIGION inside the Cultural Spectrum" The book is published in full at www.evolution101.org and can be downloaded free.]

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Religion is a green net, it can catch and save us, or it can snare and disable us.