1.2 A System of Intelligence and Energy
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This blog was born out of two deaths in 2021: my three-year-old granddaughter, Millie, and my faith. It is a travelogue of my second journey in search of meaning. Its primary intended audience is – me. You see, only as I write do I get a good glimpse of what I think, and only as I review it in black and white do I understand what I believe. That is my goal: to come face-to-face with what I genuinely think. My secondary goal is to leave a record of this exploration for my grandchildren and their children, hoping it may benefit them one day. It is not my intention to offend or convince but to merely think out loud. I hope it will be of some help to you.
As a catalyst for my thinking, I engaged John's account of his friend Jesus. I read it as one would “a Rorschach reading or inkblot interpretation,” as Crossan warned against, “which is when an ancient text means whatever your modern mind decides it means.” For this exercise, I trusted myself to interpret.
In the previous segment, we looked at the components of creativity: the creator, his creativity, and his creation. The function of imagination in creating a vision of our future was also explored. Today, we will begin by looking at the connectivity and continuity of all life.
JOHN CHAPTER 1
4 In him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
What is this “life” that was in him? John says the life force that brought him into being was also the life within him, and it served as the illumination for all people. The life force of the creator resides in the created for the benefit of the creation. Think of our architect, contractor, and building example in the first segment. The architect's creativity flows through the contractor for the benefit of those who will use the building.
“In him was life,” the creator's ongoing creative intelligence and energy. John is saying that Jesus is the prototype of a person aware of his energy source. This awareness enlivened his life and enlightened the consciousness of others, who, in turn, enlightened others. His life illuminated the path for all who chose to walk in this light. If we learn to live from this same awareness, to “walk in this light,” our life becomes a recurrent creative act of the creator. This awareness will ignite our consciousness, enliven our lives, and benefit those who come in contact with us. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Let's detour from the ancient spiritual to the current scientific to see if there is any agreement on this continuity and connectivity of life. In his recent book, Transformer, biochemist Nick Lane says of one of the founding fathers of biochemistry, Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins.
“Life, for Hopkins, was the combination of information, which specifies the protein catalysts (enzymes) that channel these pathways, and flux–the flow of molecules down particular pathways to form new materials for building or rebuilding the city of the cell.” Hopkins’ definition of life, or the life force, combines intelligence and energy. Lane adds, “To be alive means to have a continuous flow of energy and materials through this whole network, nanosecond by nanosecond, minute by minute, generation after generation. We do not merely inherit inert information in the form of genes – our inheritance includes this living metabolic network in the egg cell, a flame passed from generation to generation, without pause, right back to the emergence of life.” Imagine that! There are real, live genes (DNA) in our cells that are identical to and the offspring of our earliest ancestors! In the same way, we were “with him,” our first ancestor. The same intelligence and energy he received from his creator resides in us.
Lane continues, “Core metabolism has changed little in part because it was never powered down in its four-billion-year history. The genes are custodians of this flame, but without the flame life is – dead.”
Is exploring current science while looking at John’s ancient text okay? I think so. John intended to explain how Jesus’ life fit into the creation story and the creative process. The collective knowledge at that time limited it. I'm not implying that we are more intelligent than John, only that we have more advanced information. Even if one takes the conservative stance that God was dictating to John, therefore inerrant, we have to agree that he could only translate up to the limits of his current knowledge. Consider this: If we look at eternal truth through the microscope of current intelligence, we don't change it but bring it into more precise focus. When John's words are examined 500 years from now, new explanations will arise from his eternal truth.
5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.
This recurring act of creation mentioned earlier, when one person’s awareness ignites light and life in another, is known as unfolding consciousness. According to John, it is aligned with the creator’s original intention and cannot be stopped. It may be hindered but not stopped. We see evidence in the lives of Jesus, Martin Luther, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Let me give a personal example. When I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, segregation was the norm. There were separate schools for black and white children. There were separate restrooms for men, women, and "colored." Our ice cream drive-in had two windows for white people and one on the side for "colored." At the time, I didn’t think anything was unusual about this. However, looking back, I can see how wrong this was. It took the courage of men and women living out of the consciousness that "all men are created equal" to affect this change - to help me see the error, to change my awareness. You cannot stop unfolding consciousness!
6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
John shows that consciousness unfolds on a physical level over time, from the prophets to John the Baptist to Jesus. They all came from the source (consciousness) - the creator. It unfolded in time. Think of watching the sunrise as it approaches and then pops over the horizon. The sky goes from dark to light to lighter, then the sun pops over the horizon, and it is unmistakably day. There is first dawn, then the "true light” of day.
Key points:
Jesus made the truth visible (as plain as day) throughout his life, teaching us “how to believe.”
Consciousness unfolds over time.
“... consciousness is an ever-unfolding, deepening, and expanding process with no end point. We are infinite and complex beings, and our human journey involves not just a spiritual awakening, but the development of all levels of our being - spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical - and the integration of all these aspects into a healthy and balanced daily life.”
Let's dive deeper into the concept of "timing". Without it, one might assume that John is suggesting that God randomly decided to send his son one day while sitting on his throne, which is how we were taught in Sunday school. However, this simplistic interpretation makes it easy to dismiss the truth as we age. My goal is to develop an evidence-based faith that takes a logical approach to life that connects the spiritual and physical realms. Therefore, please bear with me as we explore this idea further.
Let's use the previous example of the civil rights movement in the US. We think of its leader as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but if we look closely into the past, we can see others like Rosa Parks, W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and Frederick Douglass. In 1776, the Declaration of Independence stated, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The eternal truth of "equality" had been articulated and demonstrated by Jesus. Still, it took time for consciousness to unfold.
We might think of Dr. King, the 1963 March on Washington, and his assassination in 1968 as the “tipping point,” where consciousness reached a critical mass. “In his book, Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell describes how certain 'sticky' ideas reach Tipping Point and hit a moment where they "spread like epidemics.” Typical characteristics of a Tipping Point change include its apparent suddenness, even though it has been building for some time, the irreversible momentum that takes place moving forward, and the often exponential nature of that change.
For even more: Critical Mass.
“This model helps to explain seemingly sudden and radical changes by identifying the transition between slow and hard-to-notice progress of an idea/ product/ belief/ video/ message as it spreads amongst a minority before it seems to 'suddenly' hit Critical Mass and ‘goes viral’ as it's quickly adopted by a broader audience. “Use this model to remind yourself that change does not always happen in slow, visible, and consistent steps. Sometimes, you'll hit an unexpected point of explosive change and undeniable momentum when you least expect it.
Critical Mass, or a Tipping Point, is reached after a period of slow change within a system suddenly accelerates in an irreversible and exponential fashion.”
In addition, here is a link to an interesting blog article on Unfolding Consciousness. I’ll close with a quote from Joseph Campbell and a question.
“The problem in middle life, when the body has reached its climax of power and begins to decline, is to identify yourself, not with the body, which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle. This is something I learned from myths. What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light? Or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle?
One of the psychological problems in growing old is the fear of death. People resist the door of death. But this body is a vehicle of consciousness, and if you can identify with the consciousness, you can watch this body go like an old car. There goes the fender, there goes the tire, one thing after another— but it’s predictable. And then, gradually, the whole thing drops off, and consciousness, rejoins consciousness. It is no longer in this particular environment.”
Key Takeaways
You are a system of intelligence (information) and energy. (flux)
The creative force that brought the universe into being resides in you, enlightening and enlivening so you can perform your unique role in the ongoing creation.
Question: “If I didn't see the injustice of segregation, what injustice might be right in front of me today that I do not see?”
In the next segment, we will explore how things might be right before us - yet invisible.
