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I will provide a short analysis that might assist in providing a conceptual frame signifying the hierarchy of Being, or evolution of Spirit. First, this is one framework among many, and this is only a pointer, a relative, flawed one, but I have found it a helpful window onto Truth. Likewise, being on this human journey, we move into awareness of oneness developmentally. Oneness itself always is and manifests spontaneously, as human and otherwise: all is expression of Spirit. Spirit does not develop, however. In our last writing, I referred to the spontaneous revelation of oneness with the young boy in Virginia ~ comparable to that at the Atlantic shoreline. When I saw that youth, oneness shined forth, so to speak, through the cloud mass of polarity, for oneness is always present, untouched by the knowing of or ignorance of oneness. So, all relative fragments of nature express and manifest Totality, Spirit. The ocean and I are fragments related in kinship in and by the Totality; the young boy and are one, likewise, in Oneness.
1) Matter.
This is the stuff, the energy of nature. Physics pertains to this aspect of Spirit. Everything is thingness; so, energy refers to nature seen and unseen at its most elemental level known to us. While many, over the last decades, have sought to utilize theories in physics as supporting spirituality, physics is the beginning of studying the manifestation of Grace, even prior to biology, psychology, ... Air is matter, even as a bear is. Here, no difference exists between a rock and a drop of rain, between a piece of bread and a human body. Many mistake this shared thingness for oneness; yet, matter is a beginning toward oneness, to Spirit. Spirit makes matter possible, matter is an expression of Spirit; matter does not make Spirit possible, Spirit is not an expression of matter. Oneness as Spirit is beyond matter, Spirit is not developmental, matter is. One way of saying this is ~ Matter is in oneness, oneness is not in matter. All regressive philosophies, including pagan teaching on the absoluteness of nature, so Nature, tend toward this materialistic reductionism of Spirit, the relative being interpreted to be absolute. I have even heard persons say, with utmost certainty, "God is energy." That is saying, "God is stuff, is matter, is thingness, being no different essentially from a peanut hull or squirrel or tree bark." Who would want to worship as the Absolute a peanut hull, a peanut hull that is matter-with chicken shit? An awakened being does not adore nature, thingness, as he or she would God, or Spirit. All matter is a sign of God, not God, matter being at the bottom of the ladder of development, Spirit at the topless top.
2) Body.
Energy takes form as the movement of Spirit to higher, more complex configurations, life forms. Here we have the bodies of trees, elephants, roses, rain drops, dogs, humans, ... Most religion is located here and at the next emergence, as in my childhood: heaven is a place and much better than this place, God is on a throne sitting beside Jesus, the Bible is the only inspired Word of God, church is the building to worship on Sundays, God said he expects ten percent of my money, and the bodies of the dead will rise into the sky at the resurrection of the just. Usually, persons who give undue sentiment to nature will point to the beautiful forms of nature, while ignoring that in these first two rungs of emergence, violence is pervasive. So, persons post online lovely pictures of flowers, for example, but not of an animal eating another animal. Nature is beautiful and brutal. Nature lives off nature, bodies eating bodies. I have joked with persons, "We're all going to be worm food." Yet, here, a body is given as a grounding for higher capacities, for evolution of a more embracing embrace of Grace than physics or biology explore.
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