The Heart of Matter: Change

12 Comments

1. jim foreman on February 22, 2022 at 2:06 pm

   I feel that discourse such as this is helpful…in identifying and following our true nature…as children of a completely loving God/Creator (by any name). That process has many paths; though in my view they have similar elements. One must learn to differentiate between what is “loving” and what is ;not; what is the world’s definitions of love, what are the ego’s notions of love, and what is genuinely the Love Within as shared by mother/father/God/Creator Within. Once that love within begins to be discerned…the “change/growth/admonishment (of what is not genuine love within), and the yielding (acceptance) of that love within takes on various paths and forms…according to the nature of both one’s mistaken views, and what will lead to the Truth of God’s Love. This process can be seen in all of the answers above…in my view. Yet discourse alone is usually not sufficient. There needs to be a practice, and a practice where one can “turn over” one’s dilemmas to a “master” spiritual teacher…Jesus/Buddha…etc.

   
   
   
2. Joe Masterleo on February 22, 2022 at 1:47 pm

   Response to Mr. Burke (above). Merton was tangentially on the trail of a viable synthesis between science and spirituality, though his primary focus later on was connecting the dots ecumenically, which, I conjecture, would have led him to the greater mystery across ALL disciplines. But his life was cut short, and besides, even if he was to pursue same, he didn’t have either a science mind, or the science at his disposal to then do so. But he could write, brilliantly, as so was wordy in making his points (as in your reference to him). Now we have the science to do the synthesis, and if u look into the quantum world, particularly string theory, you may sooner recognize that matter, energy, and consciousness are One, comprising an undifferentiated whole of energy condensed and arranged in various forms vibrating frequencies, visible and invisible, like a symphony; in effect, notes, chords, and harmonies orchestrated by a Grand Conductor. As for the latter, music, composition and syntheses (symphonies) are his/her life, not his/her livelihood. It makes him (and us) feel so happy and so good. He plays from his heart, and he plays from his soul; and he does not know how well he plays, it just makes him and everything else whole. If Einstein and theory-of-everything seekers can boast of summing it all up in one or two inch equations, we should be able to do them one better, by at least 3/8ths inches, and in a single word — music! (played or sung, not written)

   
   
   
3. Aaron Redsicker on February 22, 2022 at 12:23 pm

   “Masterly” mused!

   
   
   
4. Aaron Redsicker on February 22, 2022 at 12:19 pm

   Might it help to draw us closer to knowing and experiencing LOVE by moving forward and building upon the idea of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit to Their truest identity LOVE?

   In the Name/Identity of
   LOVEr
   BeLOVEd &
   The LOVE

   
   
   
5. Annmary Andrews pbvm on February 22, 2022 at 11:46 am

   My attitude of self sufficiency need to change and I need to grow in trust and yield the fruit of flowing with life depending on God of the Universe.

   
   
   
6. Ronald Burek on February 22, 2022 at 11:38 am

   I have difficulties with what is meant, in the context of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s work, by the phrase “The Heart of Matter.” In particular, the word “matter.” My last course in physics, decades ago, barely introduced me to quantum theory and the Schrödinger wave equation. Much later, I read Ken Wilber’s 1984 book.* Now, I’m re-reading the latest book** by Robert Lanza et al.

   Is it too naive, too simplistic to say that there is no “matter,” maybe no “energy,” either; there is only consciousness?

   Below, I quote*** at length from Thomas Merton, who seems to be saying the same things as Lanza et al, and others are saying:

   “When ‘the world’ is hypostatized (and it inevitably is) it becomes another of those dangerous and destructive fictions with which we are trying vainly to grapple. And for anyone who has seriously entered into the medieval Christian, or the Hindu, or the Buddhist conceptions of contemptus mundi, Mara and the ‘emptiness of the world,’ it will be evident that this means not the rejection of a reality, but the unmasking of an illusion. The world as pure object is something that is not there. It is not a reality outside us for which we exist. It is not a firm and absolute objective structure which has to be accepted on its own inexorable terms. The world has in fact no terms of its own. It dictates no terms to man. We and our world interpenetrate. If anything, the world exists for us, and we exist for ourselves. It is only in assuming full responsibility for our world, for our lives and for ourselves that we can be said to live really for God. The whole human reality, which of course transcends us as individuals and as a collectivity, nevertheless interpenetrates the world of nature (which is obviously ‘real’) and the world of history (also ‘real’ insofar as it is made up of the total effect of all our decisions and actions). But this reality, though ‘external’ and ‘objective,’ is not something entirely independent of us that dominates us inexorably from without through the medium of certain fixed laws which science alone can discover and use. It is an extension and a projection of ourselves and of our lives, and if we attend to it respectfully, while attending also to our own freedom and our own integrity, we can learn to obey its ways and coordinate our lives with its mysterious movements. The way to find the real ‘world’ is not merely to measure and observe what is outside us but to discover our own inner ground. For that is where the world is, first of all: in my deepest self. But there I find the world to be quite different from the ‘obligatory answers.’ This ‘ground,’ this ‘world’ where I am mysteriously present at once to my own self and to the freedoms of all other men, is not a visible objective and determined structure with fixed laws and demands. It is a living and self-creating mystery of which I am myself a part, to which I am myself my own unique door. When I find the world in my own ground, it is impossible for me to be alienated by it. It is precisely the obligatory answers which insist on showing me the world as totally other than myself and my brother that alienate me from myself and from my brother. Hence I see no reason for our compulsion to manufacture ever newer and more shiny sets of obligatory answers.” pp. 151-152.

   Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World’s Great Physicists, Edited by Ken WIlber (Boston: New Science Library/Shambhala, 1984)

   ** The Grand Biocentric Design: How Life Creates Reality, by Robert Lanza, MD and Matej Pavšič (Dallas: BenBella, 1920)

   *** Contemplation in a World of Action: Second Edition, Restored and Corrected, by Thomas Merton (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998) 280 pages.

   
   
   
7. center4joy on February 22, 2022 at 10:02 am

   As I read this message, read the questions, unbidden, calmly came “Flow”. Never could I have thunk-up that response. Just an inkling is that “dynamic” must have touched something within, and that flow is both a verb and a noun, a subject if imagined for example as the current in a stream. “Flow” reaches out to me, a gentle, powerful invitation to soften, meld, put a toe in the water saying “Yes”.

   
   
   
8. Joe Masterleo on February 22, 2022 at 8:54 am

   To discover what love is, not so much as an experience (psycho-spiritual), but in its essence or substance (science) is to crack the mystery of God, who anchors and “fills all things” (Col.2:10) at their invisibly convergent center points. Said Victor Hugo, ‘music expresses that which cannot be said, and on which it’s impossible to be silent.’ Said Longfellow, ‘music is the universal language of mankind.’ Said Einstein, ‘playing my violin (music) gives me the greatest joy.’ If in the above quotes the word ‘love’ or ‘God’ is substituted for the word ‘music,’ one is led to conclude that God, who is love, is a universal vibratory reality. The two main vibratory realities known to physics are sound and light, both invisible, both in relationship, and both foundational to the created order as per the Genesis and Big Bang accounts of creation. In Genesis, after declaring “Let there be light” (as foundational), on the 6 successive days of creation, God spoke and what he said happened, so that sound, light, love and God imply each other as resonant energies vibrating at various frequencies on a Jacob’s Ladder of sound and light. This invisible ladder is left for us to ‘climb’ in consciousness via prayer, the contemplative disciplines and song (hymns). Thus, said Augustine, ‘to sing is to pray twice.’ In evolution, we’re on the brink of a major ‘vibe shift’ taking us to the next highest rung (octave) on the scale of vibrating frequencies, and with it consciousness and identity.

   
   
   
9. Darryl Nelson on February 22, 2022 at 8:25 am

   Loving those I have least in common with is my greatest challenge. I need some strategies for this most important work.

   
   
   
10. darrylandmaryDa on February 22, 2022 at 8:23 am

    The hardest task is loving those I have least in common with. Strategies for doing that is paramount and my biggest personal challenge.