The Heart of Matter: The Map Is Not The Territory

“Physics is an abstract description of nature, although there are no abstractions in nature. What you see is not necessarily what is there. The map is not the territory.” 

Ilia Delio, The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the Relational Whole

+

“La física es una descripción abstracta de la naturaleza, sin embargo, en la naturaleza no existen abstracciones. Lo que se ve no es necesariamente lo que hay. El mapa no es el territorio.”

Ilia Delio, The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the Relational Whole

View print-friendly version View print-friendly version
Posted in

5 Comments

  1. George Marsh on February 6, 2024 at 10:08 pm

    A scientifically learned person who is also a person of faith can sometimes have the thrilling insight of a G. M. Hopkins who wrote,
    “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” We are blessed with the faith and the sensibility to appreciate this and other insights
    about our entanglement with the Great Mystery of a deity, both spiritual and partaking of the material, who wants our cooperation so that one day we may be fulfilled beyond our previous experience or imagining.

  2. Donald Miklas on February 6, 2024 at 12:09 pm

    “Seeing. We might say that the whole of life lies in that verb — if not ultimately, at least essentially.” (Teilhard de Chardin 1955) Spiritual growth is translating “seeing” into a person’s being and the entire world. That translation is evolution in action.

  3. J. Diane Knudsen on February 6, 2024 at 12:00 pm

    Thank you for this book. As much as I appreciate the maps of our reality, I also appreciate the reminder that the journey is experiential.

  4. Joe Masterleo on February 6, 2024 at 8:30 am

    The key in experiencing the presence of God is in purging one’s consciousness and thought of sensory, sense bound, and/or abstract (logical) preoccupations, inputs, and impulses. Such is dross or clutter to pure states of consciousness swept clean of same. That’s because pure consciousness, like pure honey, is another name for Spirit, consciousness with the “lower” (sensory) contaminants removed. It’s that simple. Only then is the slate clean to download (see and hear) higher liminal resonances, and that by listening and beholding, which are the heart of effective prayer. Let the theologians, physicists, philosophers, and neuroscientists fill their minds and the airwaves dickering abstractly over the definition of consciousness, which only prevents them and others from experiencing it. Besides, the brain and senses collapse divine light waves of into particles, so that you cannot see or experience them firsthand, creating a sensory illusion of solid matter, which in reality is 99.999% empty. Train the mind to become the servant of Spirit (pure consciousness), not the brain and senses, which have their own agendas. “Remove the dross from the silver, and the silversmith can produce a vessel” (Pr. 25:4).

  5. Cecilia Snape on February 6, 2024 at 8:29 am

    You have now given me a prize headache but I am immensely grateful for the challenge! Thank you !

Leave a Comment





icon-light-1

Related Posts

Heart of Matter Fallback Image

Heart of Matter: “The Divine Entanglement”

“While panentheism is a helpful concept, the language of pantheism and panentheism is based on concepts of ‘being’ and ‘nature’ that can lead to misguided images of distinct beings in…

Heart of Matter Fallback Image

Heart of Matter: “The Universe Completes God”

August 20, 2024 “Teilhard indicates that the universe completes God.  That is, God does not depend on the universe to be God; rather, the universe depends on God to be…

Heart of Matter Fallback Image

Heart of Matter: “Becoming More Than Human”

“As we awaken to the God-depth of our life, we become more than human; we become “ultra-human” or “Christic,” which impels us to move beyond the “ego” toward the “super-ego”…