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November 2009 
Physical vs. Spiritual
Posted on Apr 6th, 2009
by 
Kevino
Kevino
It is likely that the entirety of "spiritual growth" lies in understanding the relationship between the physical universe and the spiritual universe. By understanding I mean putting them in accurate perspective for oneself. As one moves into greater understandings the line between the two universes becomes somewhat blurred. One is more of both.
Why is this significant? Because truth is the core of understanding. What is, is. And truth seems to be that we are playing a very large game across the entirety of the universe. Knowing the game from the ground up should make existence easier and more fun.
Earth is a much more difficult place to play from than free space, my opinion. That doesn't mean there is anything wrong with being here. It does mean that understanding may require assistance, at least to get started. If you are slugging away on your own you have my admiration. But you are running uphill and that means even tougher going.
Here's the problem in a nutshell: The key to the door of spiritual growth is understanding. That is the ONLY way through. Every person is living exactly the reality they want to live. That doesn't mean their life circumstances are what they want. It does mean what is real to them is exactly what they want to be real. Reality is our "post" from which we play the game. So to truly change means changing what is real to the individual. But how do you change what is real to you if what you are changing to is not real to you? It is a different existence!
The answer is the intention to understand. If you intend to understand your path will lead you in that direction. This creates the "combination" of spiritual and physical existences that begins the merge toward seeing this game as it is, and as you are. Every single thing you are aware of is worthy of understanding. It all leads in the right direction. This is one reason earth society can be overwhelming. You are seeing alot of stuff! So picking out what you want to understand and then moving to another is a reasonable course. Don't worry about whatever you don't understand. You are already aware of it so that is likely on the agenda. There's plenty you arent aware of that will come up.
If you want help look in the direction of systems of understanding. Philosophy, spirituality courses, the "classics" in literature, and practical understanding of any physical process. All understanding is useful. Your path in and through is completely your own and up to you.
Have fun!
Why is this significant? Because truth is the core of understanding. What is, is. And truth seems to be that we are playing a very large game across the entirety of the universe. Knowing the game from the ground up should make existence easier and more fun.
Earth is a much more difficult place to play from than free space, my opinion. That doesn't mean there is anything wrong with being here. It does mean that understanding may require assistance, at least to get started. If you are slugging away on your own you have my admiration. But you are running uphill and that means even tougher going.
Here's the problem in a nutshell: The key to the door of spiritual growth is understanding. That is the ONLY way through. Every person is living exactly the reality they want to live. That doesn't mean their life circumstances are what they want. It does mean what is real to them is exactly what they want to be real. Reality is our "post" from which we play the game. So to truly change means changing what is real to the individual. But how do you change what is real to you if what you are changing to is not real to you? It is a different existence!
The answer is the intention to understand. If you intend to understand your path will lead you in that direction. This creates the "combination" of spiritual and physical existences that begins the merge toward seeing this game as it is, and as you are. Every single thing you are aware of is worthy of understanding. It all leads in the right direction. This is one reason earth society can be overwhelming. You are seeing alot of stuff! So picking out what you want to understand and then moving to another is a reasonable course. Don't worry about whatever you don't understand. You are already aware of it so that is likely on the agenda. There's plenty you arent aware of that will come up.
If you want help look in the direction of systems of understanding. Philosophy, spirituality courses, the "classics" in literature, and practical understanding of any physical process. All understanding is useful. Your path in and through is completely your own and up to you.
Have fun!
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Hmmmmm… thinking gets me in soooo much trouble! So how do the thinking mind and the understanding soul transmutate, so to speak? : ) Could there be danger in thinking too much?
There is trouble in moving through emotion surrounding unconciousness to greater conciousness. There is danger in becoming something one is not. One might lose oneself! (Although in fact one becomes oneself) But thinking is not the process I mean when I say understanding. I mean examing the physical to the point where one assimilates it. In effect one is making physical reality a spiritual reality. We are God, and so is everything else. Understanding is a process of knowing “you” in everything.
I am examining the process from an engineering standpoint. These are the plans to the skyscraper. Walking around in a hard hat at 60 stories is a rather different experience than looking at the blueprint. Believe me I am not suggesting any exact route for anybody. I have no idea what you or anyone should do. But if someone wants to understand how the process works this information might be useful, to the point one wants to look at it this way.
3 or 4 years ago i reorganised most of my books, reflecting my understanding of truth(s). Down i put science, philosophy in the middle, and spirituality on top of that. Books contradicting too much of the other shelves, I put somewhere else, and i barely touch them …
These days i do not often read about physics anymore, but when some authors start talking about things like quantumconsciousness, i often feel disrespect for them when i see they haven't got a clue what they are talking about.
About thinking: there seems to be this natural order body - mind - soul, reflected and extended in the perennial philosophies, or in the multilayer world of wilber.
Thinking itself also has many levels. But in my own life i found that the thinking has to come to terms with the soul before that soul endeavours too far in the world of spirituality.
An incomplete psychology will sooner or later reflect itself in a “pathological” spirituality [the word pathological might be too strong] where too much ego is blindly neglected or a shadow of the self becomes a mister hide of its own.
don't take me too seriously :-)
bert
Hi bert,
What is the world of wilbur?
Funny, I was thinking about the quantum world yesterday then you bring it up. Much of the relationship of the physical to the spiritual seems to be in terms of relative speed. One is as aware as one can change one's viewpoint. Viewpoint is a physical item in the universe as well as a spiritual one. When you understand something anew, you shift space. Other “things” move through space at their relative speeds but a handle on their awareness has to do with how much space they cover. For example a world traveler generally has more awareness of more things than a stay at home. Emily Dickenson is an exception, but she traveled spiritually. Being able to move at light speeds is a product of understanding.
The quantum world is the basic of our physical setup. All is God, including the apparent physical universe. To exist it must operate as a thing but knowledge of a thing assimilates it. In other words it becomes part of viewpoint, which breaks up the game because our game is viewpoint into this place. So we made a universe that constantly creates and uncreates. We are the quantum universe, creating and uncreating, knowing and unknowing, loving and unloving, every instant. This process keeps the apparency going. As one understands more the world gets sharper, then begins to blur. Time and space are not as firm. “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut has the general idea. (It is also a really great read and the movie is pretty good.) I'm curious where the process will lead. But I have an idea!
Thanks for sharing! Your thoughts set off some interesting stuff.
Hi Kevin,
Seems i have one week the freedom to write down some thoughts …
1. The imminent danger is to use literal scientific language and prosaic language (for things one doesn't exactly understand) and mix both (at a different level) to prove one or the other point. One can not prove transcendence through quantum mechanics, neither can quantum mechanics prove a buddhist concept like emptiness.
2. Ken Wilber is a contemporary philosopher, who has created a strange description of our world. It might or might not be correct, but he tries to bring many worlds together. Thereby he created a kind of spiritual table of Mendelejev …
Time and Space are indeed not so firm, but time and space really are.
Philosophy: When the objectified becomes part of the viewer, perception breaks apart.
Science: When the quantum is measured, the measurement influences the quantum.
There is an isomorfism between the physical quantum world,
and the philosophical grounds of emptiness,
but neither can prove the other.
Science keeps itself busy with a descriptive viewpoint from afar, the “it”. Spirituality keeps the viewpoint inside, the “I”
We can use scientific methods in the world of “I”, but we are not doing science in that case. We can look at physical processes in a meditating subject, but we are not doing anything spiritual in that case.
I think this is very short and insufficient, but the core of what i want to say is more or less here.
:-)
have fun, and think
bert
I'd say it is all about understanding. No one has it all complete. But one can understand process and structure as a basis for knowing how things work, and move through that framework. My viewpoint is not about science and philosophy but one's existence in this physical plane.
There is just one hard and fast rule in the universe and that has spawned a host of relativistic phenomena. These phenomena are interrelated. No thing is exactly as it seems but the overall picture is what it appears to be.
Any viewpoint can be understood if laid out point by point. Anything can be known. The only limits to understanding are the individual's wish to know and a person's ability to lay out a viewpoint in understandable form. And every understanding is a viewpoint.
No one proves fact or fiction. One knows it for oneself and as oneself. There is a way this process has transpired, and a means to lifting the veil. Each person has to do their own lifting. But it helps to know the veil is there in the first place, and what it is made of. We are all on the journey, one way or another.
There is something not here… but since you both have a higher perspective point, you might be clearer in adding it. There is a sweeping Grace to some transformation, and elements of what appear as bliss and love. And although the paths of both science and philosophy, of intellect and introspect, can be catalysts, there are those who do “nothing” in these categories and reach ungraspable heights in the realm of Truth.
I tend to be rational, logical, and methodical to a fault, and I want steps to be steps. So, ya, seek and ye shall find. But don't freak out if you are drown without going near the water. : )
Let's say we are composed of love, understanding and attention (or focus). That is who we are in this place. Any of these three can therefore be used as a tool toward greater consciousness if one accepts the idea there is greater to be had. Love more, understand more, focus more. All are used as tools in one way or another.
But I doubt, seeing how things work, that one can neglect any of the three if one wishes to advance without falling back. That is the tough part. We each have arranged to lack some thing in order to stay where we are.
For me, focus and love can be worked on, especially love. This means experience, being love, being focus, and moving through what is there to get to that point.
No one understands it all. We each take pieces and assimilate as we wish. There is no right or wrong to it.
The only important “step” is the continual intention to understand. With that, all bridges will be crossed, sooner or later.
Any spiritual path has to take both sides: ascend to the sacred, and descend from the sacred.
Ascend is desire for the divine Love,
Descend is spreading the received Love either as Loving Kindness or Compassion.
When I grasp for the intellectual road to Love, I'm on my ascending path, entirely neglecting the purpose of the ascend: spreading the Love.
But I need that understanding.
Without deep wisdom, I might become like the thought police. I'll have to respect everyone and everybody, opinions and belief systems, cultural and individual differences.
Many profets who tasted the divine love, came descending as angels of doom. And their interpreters became even worse.
One can only avoid that through an ever deeper understanding of the Multiverse we live in. This multiverse has to respect the laws of physics as well as the laws of ethics and mutual respect. The clearer the blueprint, the easier we avoid the pitfalls of conditional love and conditional compassion.
As an example: I often see the laws of karma (that i don't understand) interpreted as “you get what you deserve”. Ony incomplete understanding can give rise to such a cruel and inappropriate interpretation.
Another example I want to touch is the deplorable situation of the rich and famous. We tend to feel less compassion for them, since they have it all. But they don't have it all. They deserve our deepest compassion just as much as a beggar on the street, or my friend or family member. This is conditional compassion.
I'm sure there as as many roads to wisdom-compassion as there are individuals on earth. Some people tend to emphasize just a little more on ratio and the mind to understand the complicated world they live in. But whatever approach you take, there is always a “world-image” that you use as a looking toward this world.
My concepts of the multiverse are as diverse and complicated as yours, or any other individual. And I feel that this “world-image” is standing more in the way of understanding each other than any other thing. So talking about “our” own understanding is only there to bring us a little more together. Whether I can express my world-image as a philosophical system, or as a love-system, only makes a difference in view of the audience.
But in the end, there is no world-system, there is no love-system, there is only reality. And to view reality without the blinders of my love- or world-system, would be a much better way to understand the other, since in that case, there is only one rainbow of concepts to penetrate.
Suppose the other has no concepts either .. we would instantly mindmelt :-)
have fun and think
bert
Now that's my idea of a blog!