Community Sharing – “Reality Ever New” Notes

Notes on the “Reality Ever New” Conversation
by Emily A. DeMoor, Ph.D.
https://christogenesis.org/recording-of-ilia-and-gregs-conversation-reality-ever-new/

Emily graciously shared with us her notes from the conversation “Reality Ever New” between Ilia Delio and Greg Hansell which took place in December. In addition to quotes, she also adds their timestamps which make them for a great resource for deeper study for groups and individuals.

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Ilia:

(7:22) Space time – matter and energy are incontrovertible.

(7:42)  Space time is the stuff that’s forming.  The past is the present. The primacy of everything is consciousness.  This can never be in the past.  It is always present.

(8:44) That past is what’s happening in the present.

(9:16) Teilhard says we’re a fragment of a whole.

There is an indecipherable whole.  Matter seems to emerge and give rise to things.

(10:52) The whole comes first. I am a part of a whole.  The whole influences the parts as the parts shape the whole.

(11:18) The parts are falling apart because we have no sense of the whole of which we are a part.

(14:38) The joy of staying alive in wartime…  Staying alive is the whole.  Wake up knowing we are alive. Experience that aliveness.

(15:00) What if we were to reshape all our systems along the lines of whole parts?  Whole politics.  Whole education.

(15:11) Whole sociology.  Whole culture analysis.  A new structure of relatedness.

(15:39) How is the whole being impacted by our choices in this present moment?

(15:45) What is the whole?

(16:07) Science – the plenum, infinite energy fields, infinite life or infinite consciousness.

(16:22)  Teilhard – the whole is that which escapes nature’s entropy.  The whole does not break down.  The whole becomes ever the more whole.

(16:46) No matter who bad things get in the world, they will not collapse completely because there is a principle of wholeness alive and active in the whole of life.

(16:50)  The principle of wholeness is the Omega principle.

(17:02) It’s part of matter.  It’s alive.   It’s irresistible.  It draws things into its domain.

(17:07)  It moves with life.

(17:12) And yet, it’s not subject to the same forces that pure matter is.

(17:31)  “Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution.”

Blessed matter is Omega matter or God matter.

(18:30) Omega is organic.  It’s part of biological evolution.

(18:49) For Teilhard, Omega is God.  God is the name of the unlimited depth, the infinite depth, of matter itself.  We can’t say anything apart from matter.  That’s the whole point.

(19:10) God is in evolution .

Science and religion have pulled us apart.

(22:30) God is moving “with the movingness of matter”.

(22:43) God is always creating and that’s what evolution is about.

God is always spilling over into the future….

(22:35) “The name God points to the sheer beingness of being itself.  That’s what the name God means” (23:40)– transparent divinity; revelatory…

God is deeply personal.  It’s the depths of who we are that is what God is.

(25:01) God seeks to become more God in us (24:24).  God is life and seeks to be more life.

(25:10).God seeks to be ever more whole in and through us, and we seek to become more whole in and through God. We are moving together.

(25:35) Science and religion are two ways of knowing the one world.

Awaken to the whole of life – cause to celebrate!

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Greg:  It’s because we’re part of a whole and the whole is moving that life everlasting is possible (28:27).

Disrupted consciousness – fragmented (30:00) creates anxiousness; lose sight of the whole (30:19).

Unplug – allow our minds to settle in to where we are; and there we will find God.

“Teilhard says that mysticism and evolution belong together…”  (31).

In order to make everything right again we have to see everything whole.

Detaching, centering and flowing into that wholeness of which we are a part (31:50).

This moment – the whole of eternity is right here (34:05) and what you decide in this moment could be the fate of your eternal life; how you will join in for all of life (34:18).

Flow (34:36).

“For Teilhard, where there’s life, there’s thought, and where there’s thought, there’s infinity” (35:09).

Evolution is towards thought and more thought (36:08).  To think is to form horizons of insight.  To think is to bring together ideas into a new synthesis (36:30).  I become alive in a new way…  I participate in evolution through my thinking…

Does your thought deepen life for you in some small way?

God is rising up through our thinking process (30:14).

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Greg:  Sacrament and spiritual practice – whole-making (40:56).

Ilia:  The whole of life is sacramental (41:14).  Is God there?  It’s how we do what we do; it’s what we bring to it.  Everything’s holy.  Everything speaks to the depths of God’s love (41:43).  Everything is moving in that love towards more wholeness (41:47).

Dispose of things in a just way; in an ecological way.  Sacraments are about awareness (42:17).

Eucharist:  This body of Christ sacramentalizes all life (42:46).

We need to slow down.  Be conscious of your consciousness.  And what are you aware of?   — being alive in the wholeness of life, which is God.

Slow down and breathe.  Think from your feet.

How do we think with our whole person?

Prayer – deep dialog with life and the author of life.  A prayerful life is one that we know we’re not alone (46:27).  …There is an other with me, and that other is life, is God, is love, is the future, and I know that whatever happens, my life will prevail in the fullness of life.  So slow down, unplug and pray (46:57).

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Greg:  learned in grade school – grace is God’s felt presence in the world (47:33).  Gratitude – to be fully mindful in the world.

Franciscans – nature is grace.  God’s goodness is what life’s about.

(41:51)  Life is filled with God’s goodness; with love, God’s love.

The internet can be used in a positive way.

“Teilhard would say, “This is an evolutionary world!  It’s unfinished!  We’re being born!  Isn’t that beautiful?  Isn’t it wonderful?  And the internet is extending what we are” (52:22).

Teilhard would look at technology as a positive step, but it can be used to undo things if we don’t harness its power and help shape it for what it can be for us and for the whole of cosmic life” (52:59).

“We’re just babes in the arms of the cosmos.  The cosmos is like a young child, and the future is far ahead of us.  The past is what brought us here.”

“The future is always the fullness of the possibilities of life” (53:40).  But if we’re too afraid, too worried, too skeptical, too distrustful, we will not imagine and create that new future we have the capacity for.  And God will be evertheless diminished because of it” (53:59).

Faith in God – this is good.  We must have faith in the world because God is at the heart of the world (54).

Let go.  Let God. (55:29)

Be still and know that I am God. 59:14 – stillness; flowing into the beingness of life.

This kind of contemplation is a work of social justice 1:00:03

1:02:03 –  Climate change.  Structural and systemic changes are needed.  Religion needs an overhaul;  Religion and science have to work together. 1:04:31

Teilhard can address climate change.1:05:00

Believe in the whole – we have to reorient our systems around wholeness.

Hope is in the wholeness.  The future is our hope.  We have to believe in the future. Reaching out to what does not yet exist.  1:06:48

1:07:36 – The Quantum Revelation – Teilhard and quantum physics?

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Ilia – “Making all Things New” – book – Teilhard was a pan-psychist 1:09:50

Matter and spirit; mind and spirit

1:12:00 synod on synodality – people have input in stage 1; the bishops will shut it down after this?

The Church has nowhere to go.

“The People’s Synod” – 1:13:40 (Shannon – participant is going to do this) Separate faith from institution (church)

Have faith in the Gospel.  Allow Gospel to live in this world. 1:15:00.

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1:16:35 Question– our systems are killing us.  How to build new systems.  Feels powerless.

1:18:10 Ilia – “Don’t spend a lot of energy on the systems that are in place. …We have a responsibility to be ourselves.  Let go of ideas of how to change the system and think new about how you can spend your energies to live in the whole and create a greater wholeness wherever you find yourself” (1:19:23).

Power is the ability to persuade.  Personal wholeness; personal holiness.

Patriarchy is breaking down.  It is resisting.  Do not let yourself to be conquered by that.

Allow that wholeness to shine in your life (1:20:50).  Get over anger.  They want us to be angry.

1:22:00 Younger generations are a mutated version of homo sapiens.  “They’re thinking differently.  They’re already thinking of a whole because they’re wired that way….”  (1:22:18)  Their notions of identity, power, justice – much more oriented towards the whole.

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1:22:53  Question– Omicron – al matter wants to be in relationship.  Are we called to think of this matter in a new way?

1:24:00 – Ilia – A naturally occurring pathogen has become a deadly pathogen.

There’s no normal to go back to.  This is our new reality (1:25:53).  We’re probably part of the disruptive behaviors of viruses and pathogens (1:26:19).  We need to slow down.  Maybe this pathogens can find their way back to a more natural habitat and stop mutating.  But our lifestyles have given rise to conditions that favor mutations, and mutations in a pathogen are deadly for the human community (1:27:08).

Slow down.  The virtue of “enoughness” (1:27:40).

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Question:  regarding God being in people and systems that are not working; dysfunctional.

Ilia – God is there, but what God is it?  Is it the God of Genesis who is creating?  …”It’s not just any God.  God is always a God of creation.  …”  How do we live as a just whole?

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Question: developing capacity and managing change.  In New Zealand the whole always comes first.  How do we work on wholeness, rather than parts?

Ilia – we have to redesign how we educate; how we develop public policy – incorporate wholeness within the structures of our lives? (1:35:39).  “Life is the whole of which we are a part.  How do we make life the priority in anything that we’re doing?”  (1:35:50).  “Is what I’m doing – does that enhance the overall wholeness of life?”  (1:35:58).  Rethink this wholeness as the primacy of what we’re about.  “Life itself must be the first concern of anything we’re doing” (1:37:29).

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Question:  Question about dreams – The Oracle of Night book, by Sidarta Ribeiro.

Ilia – deep in the subconsciousness; images and patterns are operating in our lives.  The archetypes and images are affecting us on some ways; shaping our decisions and patterns of life (1:39:13).  Dreams are “an important indicator of how we’re evolving (1:39:27); of how at home we are in this universe or not” (1:39:30).  They can be our deepest fears of where we’re going, or where we’re not going (1:39:41).

Consciousness is woven into matter (1:40:31).  “The levels of consciousness are deeply a part of our physical being” (1:40:38).  And that’s a mystery to me.

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Question:  Thomas Berry – The Great Work – Is there a wholeology?  Artificial intelligence – driving our intellectual evolution.  Can machines draw all of this together and find that big algorithm?

Ilia – Teilhard.  As much as all that science gives us, it’s a very small part of the whole (1:44:32).  “But what it doesn’t address is we have a spirit, we have emotions, we have a longing for ultimate meaning, we have a longing for purpose.  That’s completely out of the purview of science” (1:45:01).  Teilhard is saying that science is too reductionistic and too fragmentary.  “…It has given the illusion of knowledge.  But, in fact, it does not give us the whole knowledge.”  Teilhard says that’s why we need religion …as a dimension of science (1:45:24).  Religion – the ultimate depth dimension of reality.  We can’t develop a sense of the whole when science and religion are kept apart (1:46:12).

Artificial intelligence kind of does what science does – tries to create super intelligence; increase our capacity to know.  “But, can… we enhance love?  Can we enhance compassion? Can we enhance forgiveness?  …Artificial intelligence, like science itself, is the lure of totality, like we’ll be able to conquer all of life, when, in fact, it cannot.  There are things that science cannot do that only religion can do.  And that’s why technology without religion will be as blind as science without religion” (1:47:13).  …”We’ll still have this ultimate longing for unity and for love and compassion and for something that is beyond what science itself can give” (1:47:38).  Teilhard says do not be lured by the dreams of science.  “We need God, truthfully, if we are really to be whole” (1:48:00).

Fundraising – The Center offers a new vision of how science and religion and culture can work together to create a new paradigm for our systems.

“Christogenesis is about cosmic personalization” (1:50:05).  “…we’re becoming something more in this flow of life” (1:50:11).  What is it that we’re becoming?  C for C addresses that question in its many dimensions. …(1:50:30).  We have work to do.  We are in this together.  … We are creating something together… “We can change the world.  I am absolutely confident of that” (1:51:15).  “And if we don’t do it in our own lifetimes, we must leave something for younger generations to grow into.  A new vision.  A new paradigm.  A new way of seeing God in world in the flow of evolving life.  So it’s not just about our life.  It’s about the lives that are coming after us as well.  That’s what it means to rest on the future” (1:51:30).

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You can watch that conversation here: https://christogenesis.org/recording-of-ilia-and-gregs-conversation-reality-ever-new/