Breaking out of our limits has been a primary passion of humanity since prehistory. Artists appreciate limits for the liberating revelations they give.
Before the Big Bang there was a yearning to be known and to fellowship. The Yearning manifested in forms. Only by way of form can the Beyond be known by us. And form came into being with the imperative to change and change, eon after eon until it became seen, touched, and eventually embraced.
The manifestation of the Beyond — in form — converses, imagines and interacts with thoughts.
Love is what we call this yearning to know and be known, and it resides in us creatures inherited from the first instance motivated by it. Life springs unquenchably in that yearning Love from before. It presses on into forms more and more capable of communing in this eternal, developing dance. Without limits there would be no dance.
Dreams
A king had a dream about a magnificent statue made of different metals in sections progressively from a golden head down to its feet which were mixed iron and clay. This represented the successive empires invented by humanity. A great rock carved without human craftsmanship out of the mountains flew against the statue, crushing it to dust which the wind blew away. And the rock grew of its own accord, filling the earth, expanding as did the Love that began in the Big Bang 13 billion years ago, before such a thing as years existed. (Daniel chapter 2)
People at some point began impressing one another with sensational displays of expression in word, feats, building, destroying, forgetting where we came from, misunderstanding the yearning we inherited from the beginning. We still have the Love which began creation but are largely numb to this ultimate power, until we awaken to it in our core.
Watching that Statue
Observing each invented empire turn to dust and blow away, we re-double our determination to make a civilization which will last forever. And this is what forgetful humans strive for mostly, to save their civilization, wherever it is in the timeline of reality. Observe the frantic efforts today and know these efforts are, indeed, born of a passion related to our original Love, but fixated upon grasping our own, invented things out of sync with the power that expressed all things 13 billion years ago.
Waking from the Dream
Still, there are some who want to wake up to the whole. In our awakening we discover and express our finds in our beloved languages, writing, images, rituals, systems of thought, hierarchies, all of which excite us so much we want them to be the whole story. We hold our discoveries tightly and pass them down through the generations until, forgetting again, we believe we have contained that power which started everything.
But that power has moved on; it has kept moving as we have tried to stop and worship various containers we have made for it.
Not to worry, it hasn’t left us behind. We are gradually realizing it cannot be contained. We are awakening to the reality of being contained by it, even permeated by it. We are the very expression of it in some state of development as if still in a womb.
But we feel viable, now, frustrated though we are with the limits.
Dave Olson
Mark,
This is profound! I like naming “The Beyond”. It calls me to reach beyond all names and understandings I have held about “God”. Your whole piece is in the vein of Teilhard de Chardin.
markart
Dave,
Thank you so much for reading thoughtfully and getting what I am writing. I do seek for other words than the ones we are all too familiar with and attach so many cultural assumptions to. And this, I think, is part of what Teilhard de Chardin was attempting as well. Of course, it goes beyond language but language is the medium we use to share what we are finding, each on our part of reality. I hope not too many readers will worry that I am a heretic because I use other words.