Life in the Spirit, Part 9

Picture of God #90, Thurs 2/22/1

What is Life?

Jesus The Christ, Luke 12:15

Then he said to them, "Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions.

Here again we see Jesus' (constantly) echoed theme of asceticism.

But there is more here....MUCH more.

He's pointing us to a secret so powerful I consider it one of the "Spiritual Nuclear Bombs" in the Bible.

Should you be interested, I will explain.

Ultimately, what we want is an answer to the question:

"What is Life?"

The Hindus have a marvelous system called the Neti ("Not") System - The Not System.  You find everything you possibly can that God is NOT, and whatever is left IS God.

It's like the sculptor who's asked, "How do you carve such beautiful granite elephants?"

"Simple," said the sculptor.  "I start with a piece of granite, and cut off all the parts that don't look like an elephant."

Well, that's the Neti System in action.  (I use these "foreign" terms not to sound weird or hint or pretend that all religions say the same thing....none of that.   It's just that different cultures have developed different tools.  Using a western phrase like "Attribute description via negation remnant" just doesn't have the same simple ring as "The Neti System."  Plus you learned something.)

Well, anyway, that's what Jesus is pointing to here...The Neti System.

Enough introduction.  Let's get to it.

"Not even when you have an abundance does your life consist of your possessions".

Your life does not consist of your possessions.

Now, this should be the easy part.  What are your possessions?

Of course we could go on and on endlessly.....Certainly in America, and much of Europe, the Japanese, and many other developing nations, we are consumers, aren't we?  That's just what we do...we work, get the check, and head out to buy things.  You do it, I do, we all do it...And I'm certainly not calling it a sin.  We dealt yesterday with the fact that we do NOT follow Jesus' pathway to the Kingdom of God, but we also discussed there are, indeed, different methods.

So, OK...we like things...we buy things, collect things, wash our things, catalogue our things.  Fine...As long as we do that with some type of mind to the universal community we occupy, and the poor and needy around us, things can be fun.

But put ALL of your things together in one big pile, and they ARE NOT YOUR LIFE.

Your life does not consist in your possessions.

So we're done, right?  Not quite.

What else do you possess?

I'm not playing games here, and I warned you we were heading into deep, very very deep waters.

Face it...even in common language..."MY daughter....MY dog....MY husband..." point to the fact we consider these relationships a form of possession.  Again, no problem; we're not doing anything wrong that way.  Talking about "MY best friend...." is a beautiful thing, and not even remotely a sin.

We have many relationships, and in so many ways we DEFINE ourselves by what other people say to or about us...One passing statement, barely even thought of by the speaker, can have daily effects on us decades later.  Mom & Dad, broken home, what my 5th grade teacher told me.....Both positive and negative, we define ourselves by our relationships with others, and their opinions of us play a huge role in forming our personality and self-image. 

Frankly, many sociologists will say that it is ONLY through our relationships that we develop our identity and personality.  Plenty of books to buy on that subject.

But put ALL of your relationships together in one big pile, and they ARE NOT YOUR LIFE.

Your life does not consist in your possessions.

So we're done, right?  Not quite.

What else do you possess?

I imagine many of you had the unfortunate experience of being subjected to the Grammies last night.  Watching it is not something I can do, for I love music too much.  (I mean....OH, I could write another whole book here...once you have heard music, real music, and found your soul transformed by it's power, you know how cryingly sad is the artificial substitute that is being forced on today's generation....but that's another story...)

The main thing I notice about people in the Arts (and I understand it's an occupational hazard) is how into being "them" they are....THEIR style, THEIR clothes, THEIR next project, THEIR thing....it's all so limiting.

The point is that we hold on to our thoughts, opinions, hopes, memories and feelings as a part of us.  We do, indeed, possess them.  "Hey, I've always been a Lakers fan, that's who and what I'm all about...."  Again, I will skip the millions of examples I could insert here.  BUT YOU KNOW I AM TELLING THE TRUTH.  "It's MY dream one day to..."  "I don't have to justify myself to you, that's just MY opinion..."

Yes, our thoughts, feelings, opinions, ideas, and even memories are possessions we gather, collect, polish, protect and catalogue just the same way we do material objects.

But put ALL of your thoughts, feelings, opinions and memories together in one big pile, and they ARE NOT YOUR LIFE.

Your life does not consist in your possessions.

So we're done, right?  Not quite.

What else do you possess?

They belong to you....you own and absolutely control them (should you choose)..."MY body is strong..."  "MY spirit is soaring..."  "MY mind is confused..."

But put ALL of your body, mind, will, soul and spirit into one big pile, and they ARE NOT YOUR LIFE.

Your life does not consist in your possessions.

Carve away everything that doesn't look like your life, and what remains is the truth...LIFE...The REAL YOU.

And what are we left with, intrepid voyager?

There's a massive debate that's been going on for centuries as to the origin of life.  It boils down (after all the hundreds of books) to one of 2 options:

1. "Life" is a function of matter...The right matter, combined in just the right way, starts to be able to move on its own power;  attracted to some things, repelled by others, it even appears to make choices.  But when the bio-system can no longer function (aka dies) then there is nothing left except inert matter.  Turn off the TV, blank screen.

2. The other option is that matter is actually a function of Life...that LIFE is some "mysterious force' that is non-material in origin, that somehow weaves the material world via Life's innate abilities, much like a spider weaves the web it occupies.  From this view, "death" is simply Life removing itself from the web it has woven, to move on to parts unknown.

I will state as simply and plainly as I can, that all the scientific, medical, theoretical, and experiential evidence I have (remind me to write some of these down some day; I think others would benefit from such an analysis) says that #2 is the truth: 

LIFE predates everything, and the universe is woven out of Life itself.  Life is eternal: Life, like Energy, can neither be created nor destroyed, but only change forms.  And some day we will learn the connection between Life and Energy, but I cannot go into that now.

Of course we still haven't answered the fundamental question, have we: "What IS Life?"  The Neti System has given us a lot to think about in terms of what life is not, but the main drawback to the Neti System is that, in the end, its assistance is only circumstantial.  If we can establish, for example, that"@#@" is NOT a letter in our alphabet, probably we can draw many other conclusions (for example, based on the evidence just given it is most likely that "#@#" is likewise not a letter in the alphabet), but often we are left hanging, to meditate deeply on the results.

If, in fact, we have delineated all the things that X is not (and the trick is to be sure the Neti System has identified ALL of the non-elements), then it becomes a "rather straight-forward" (though often quite complex and time consuming) task to be able to say what it IS.

So....Having traveled this far...Assuming you are "with me" in all the above lists being Possessions (with a CAPITAL "P", instead of just the small "normal" possessions like our CD collection), then the Neti System has carved away quite a lot of granite.

What is left?

What is Life?

I will leave you to meditate on this tonight.  

If you're not "working" this material, meditating & thinking & struggling, doing Bible-Study, but just reading it like it's some cute little collection of happy-thoughts, then you are in the wrong place, and will get nothing out of this.  That's just a fact.

No student ever comprehended Derivatives of Trigonometric Functions without "getting their hands dirty" and working a few problems!

I would be delighted if you chose to email me your thoughts.  

Tomorrow, I will give you "my" answer, which I am convinced is also the Biblical answer, and the Truth of The Universe.

Till then......

Loving Life, I Am 

Ahyh

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