THE MEANING AND MYSTERY OF US, OF OUR TRUE SELVES.
We have created a world that is often efficient and sensible and productive, and yet is too often divorced from our own true nature because it is too often mechanistic. We succeed in this machine-like world of ours, but it is not always clear that we flourish. We are brilliant at creating things that fulfil what are primarily mundane and mechanistic purposes. And that, at one level, has to be good. People need to eat well, and they need to be clothed and sheltered well. All our physical needs can be met in this modern world of ours, and indeed so many of our emotional needs too. But we only have to enter an old church and sense its atmosphere, or watch the eyes of two young lovers, or embrace with our hearts the smile of parents as their small child takes their hand, to know that there is something else, something deeper and far more meaningful about us. And ‘meaningful’ is the key. For our modern mechanistic and superbly efficient world is devoid of that meaning that transcends the mere physical and that actually gives authentic meaning to ourselves and to our lives. The world’s religious and ancient sites, regardless of the dogma that their creators were obsessed with, reflect something greater about us, something that is deeper and that at the same time transcends the mere words of belief. The words of our religions too often create divisions and exclusiveness. But the deeper motivation behind our attempts to create scriptures, our attempts to create theologies, and our attempts to build places of divinity and worship, is the fundamental need to find spiritual and sacred meaning in our world, in ourselves and in our shared destinies. We are sacred, spiritual pilgrims deep-set on our mystical quests for ONENESS with each other and with the ALL of the Universe, the ALL of all of God’s creation. . Every time we acknowledge our responsibilities towards our Mother Earth, towards our Gaia that sustains our lives, we are touching that search for, and awareness of, our human-deep meaning. It is not the words of scripture that is the key to our finding that meaning. It is our becoming quiet and open and inclusive in ourselves: beyond words, beyond all the machinery of our modern lives. Our spiritual awakening, our spiritual unfoldment within the mystical quest of our lives, is to be found in the true meaning of our being here on this Mother Earth of ours.
The scientific revolution of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, and of course subsequently, led to an undermining of long held religious beliefs, as the scientific methodology and its extraordinary consequences in terms of understanding our world and then manipulating our world through scientifically based technologies, seemed to make a mockery of long-held and long-cherished religious beliefs.
This is an extraordinary time for us. We appear to be immersed in a hopelessly materialistic world. But the very materialism that has entrapped us, is also the key to our liberation, the key to our chance to transcend our present state, and thereby the present state of ourselves. Our materialistic world has become to successful, we can no longer pretend that it is not possible to properly feed and clothe and house the entire population of our world. Because we can. And that means that that we can at last rediscover meaning in our lives, rediscover the true spiritual purpose in and of our lives, rediscover the profound sacredness of ourselves and of course of our Mother Earth, our Holy Gaia. This time of all-pervasive and all but all-corrosive materialism contains within it the seed of our liberation from that materialism, and it could be argued from ourselves, that is the individual and collective selves that we have become. The true meaning of ourselves and the lives we lead here on our Mother Earth has never been lost, but has been buried deep within the detritus of our material stuff and of the materialistic state of our minds. But the true and sacred meaning our spiritual selves is awaiting our rediscovery. The mystical healing of ourselves and of our Mother Earth, our Holy Gaia, also await us. They say that the darkest hour is always before the dawn. And so it is. The depths of our materialistic selves has threatened us as individuals, us as nation states, and also the precious Mother Earth which we inhabit with an impenetrable darkness of the spirit. But the dawn is all but upon us. Our spiritual awakening, the discovery of the spiritual meaning and purpose of ourselves is truly nigh. Our sacred and mystical pilgrimage is not finished. In fact, it has barely begun. But to walk the sacred way knowing that one walks it, to feel the sacred, mystical and spiritual purpose in and of our pilgrimage, is to see in our hearts the holy light that we have forever been reaching for. Perhaps only our hands could be seen above the dark waters of the detritus of our materialistic lives. But lo, our arm rises and is in view. Our head rises and our eyes come clear.
Lo, at last, we see our way.
The world without meaning is meaningless.
The Word without mystery is dead.
And the meaning and mystery of us?
It is God.