Insights+into+our+Reality


 * Week 5: Insights into our reality: The Malkuta, Pregnant Void, Relationality, Morphic Resonance and the Wisdom of the Cosmos **


 * Gathering: ** Share something from last week that has been on your mind this week or share what image comes to mind when you think of the kingdom of heaven?


 * Recall: **Week 4 looked at the potential of religions to inspire action and help us develop and sustain aquifers of values that support a life filled with walking-wisdom. We looked at wisdom present in our own faith by examining the imagery present in Genesis and reflected on the intertwined reality of humanity, the earth and creation. Today we are going to look at insights we can gather from our understanding of reality. Starting with a new look at the traditionally accepted final reality for Christians – the kingdom of God.

pg 130 “Cosmology is the myth underlying the way we live…it profoundly colours our perception of reality, including our assumptions about the nature of change... a cosmological image is the frame of order of the psyche...our inner world. Everything we know or imagine is contained within it” pg 136 “Paradigm is a constellation of concepts “


 * Reflections/Thoughts: **

//**-When do we become 'adults'? As 'children' how are/were we restricted in our actions and who did we give authority to? How do we get from head knowledge to action? Must we wait for a crises, like the night before an exam to begin studying?**// //**-How do we work at nurturing good desires? The role our communities play in this process is crucial. Communities and Churches work to create cultures of 'good desires'**//
 * //- We need to MIND THE GAP between theory and practice. Our knowledge about the universe in the past 100 years has increased more than all the recorded knowledge we had prior to now in all of history. How can we work to bridge the gap?//**

__**Close reading of Selected Texts **__


 * Re-examine questions 3&4 relating to the Malkuta text on pg 331 (see notes from week 4 on the Malkuta)**

The way Jesus refers to the Kingdom gives a sense of "an organic, living principle or process unfolding in the world."

"Malkuta...[kingdom of God] points to the governing principles that guide the evolutionary process of the cosmos"

"a process leading the cosmos toward ever greater community, differentiation, and interiority..." Malkutakh d'bwashmaya ("Kingdom of Heaven"), is "not divorced from our world." "d'bwashmaya is based on the root, shem, "referring to the reality of all forms of vibration, be they light, sound, or even one's "name" that exist in our cosmos."

"We can think of heaven as the realm of that which exists in potentiality, the sphere of vision and possibilities..."


 * The Pregnant Void** a.k.a “the super essential darkness of God that is the ground of all being”

Pg 180 “Electrons vibrate nearly five hundred trillion times each second...the deeper we penetrate, the more restless becomes the universe; all is rushing about and vibrating in a wild dance...” Pg 181 “At any moment, a particle and its antiparticle can spontaneously spring into existence from this apparent emptiness...They seem to arise from the void-this “pregnant void” seems to be a kind of vast sea of energy seething with possibilities...Space is not static emptiness but a continuous opening process that provides a context for matter to manifest. Pg 181 “Matter is simply a small perturbation on an immense sea of energy...there is as much energy in a single cubic centimeter of the void than would be generated if all the known matter in the universe were to disintegrate” pg 182 “the entire universe is continually flickering in and out of existence at each moment. We perceive matter as solid simply because the oscillations occur so rapidly. Reality is a kind of vibration arising from the pregnant void, waves on a vast ocean of energy...


 * Radical Relationality** and **Quantum Holism**

//Contemporary science tells us that the static, compartmentalized clockwork universe is dead. In its place, on the quantum level, we find a complex systems of interacting and dynamic relationships// media type="custom" key="22099904" align="center"

Pg 180/193 “on some level everything influences everything else” pg 192 “Physics tells us that a rock is composed of a vast number of atoms. And these same atoms, which at the quantum level... are enfolded in ambiguity, conspire to engage in a great dance whose collective manifestation is a rock. The rock is pure dance. Its very rockiness, its inertness, its whole inner voice, are the manifestation of this constant movement and flux” 192 “a complicated tissue of events, in which connections of different kinds alternate or overlay or combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole” pg 196 "Picture a universe in which every atom, rock, and star drinks of the same boundless waters of creativity. Nature is a symphony in which new themes, harmonies, and structures are ever-unfolding. Life swims in an ocean of meaning, in an activity and coherence that blur the distinctions between animate and inanimate, between thought and matter...” Pg 280 “the observer is always related to what is observed…knowledge… is in some sense bound up with love for what we desire to know.”


 * Morphic Fields and Resonance – The Theory of Formative Causation**

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Read Pg 218 “The regularities of Nature are more like habits than laws…they’re not fixed for all time from the beginning…Nature has a kind of inherent memory… Each kind of thing has a collective memory of previous things of that kind… Memory depends on the process I call morphic resonance, the influence of like upon like through space and time. Similar patterns of activity or vibration pick up what’s happened to similar patterns before.” pg 244 “To the extent that we try to live in new ways that model the future we wish to create, we begin to create new habits and ways of being that – through morphic resonance - make it progressively easier for others to do likewise. It would seem likely that, as more and more people put into practice a new habit or way of living, the morphic field for this behaviour would also become increasingly stronger” pg 251 “Creation does not happen once and for all time; rather, creativity is an ongoing process that manifests as a series of stages or steps” pg 212 “in the systems view, order is not imposed from above, by mind exerting its will on dumb material forces, it is intrinsic to the self organizing nature of the phenomenal world itself.... Our ability to affect reality no longer depends on the brute force of our input, but on the subtle webs of relationality inherent in the exercise of power-with” ex. Rats experiment, fluctuations of speed of light pg 238

//The fringe idea of Morphic resonance gives a powerful way to think about how prayer (specifically repeated prayers like the Lords Prayer) helps develop habits that 'bring the kingdom'. Perhaps it is in the small things we do where we are able to most align ourselves with the unfolding kingdom of God.//

As I read through these quotes, the one that stands out for me is:  //“To the extent that we try to live in new ways that model the future we wish to create, we begin to create new habits and ways of being that – through morphic resonance - make it progressively easier for others to do likewise. It would seem likely that, as more and more people put into practice a new habit or way of living, the morphic field for this behaviour would also become increasingly stronger”//

In effect, this is saying that the habits we develop have the power to change reality whether or not we intentionally communicate them.  peace, Mary Anne
 * As you suggest below, this is encouraging when thinking about prayer, especially a prayer repeated by many like the Lord's prayer.
 * This is discouraging when thinking about all the people playing violence-based video games.
 * Wisdom of the Cosmos pg 278-289**

Through studying the cosmos we are called to revitalize our cosmology from one of: Machine to Organism; the Deterministic and the Random to Creative Emergence; Eternity to Evolution; Objectivity to Participation; Purposelessness to Meaning Pg 281 “three key characteristics mark the cosmic story of evolution: differentiation, autopoiesis, and communion…”


 * Differentiation:** pg 282 “cosmic drive toward breadth…” seen in “diversity, complexity, variation, disparity, multiform nature, heterogeneity, and articulation”
 * Autopoiesis**: pg 284 “cosmic drive toward greater depth…increasing mindfulness, and…consciousness” seen in “subjectivity, self-manifestation, sentience, self-organization, dynamic centers of experience, presence, identity, voice, & interiority”
 * Communion**: “the growth in relationality…that binds the cosmos together “interrelatedness, interdependence, kinship, mutuality, internal relatedness, reciprocity, complementarily, interconnectivity, and affiliation”

-When I picture the kingdom of God what do I see? How does or should that effect the way I live?
 * Encouraged Questions and Thoughts: **

-How does my understanding of reality fit with my life? What outdated concepts do I cling too? What novel thoughts do I ignore? Which ones do I engage with? What new sense of identity should we be striving towards? Am I ready to invest in change? media type="youtube" key="UxvuU9BJem8" height="251" width="448" align="center"
 * Additional Resources: **

Poetry and writings by Drew Dellinger ([|A cosmology of connection])

[|Global Oneness Project]

Is the Trinity a model for the cosmos? [|Radical Relationality]

A pastoral reflection on climate change from Irish Catholic Bishops Conference: [|Cry of the Earth] This document provides a good summary of where and how we need to catch up our practice of life and faith with our knowledge of the cosmos, specifically climate change

Some prayers of [|St. Francis of Assisi]

**Prayer ** (St. Francis of Assisi's vocation prayer)
"Most High, Glorious God, enlighten the darkness of our minds. <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;">Give us a right faith, a firm hope and a perfect charity, <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;">so that we may always and in all things act according to Your Holy Will. Amen." <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 1040.5px; width: 1px;"><embed src='http://perimeterinstitute.ca/sites/all/libraries/mediaplayer/player.swf' height='360' width='640' allowscriptaccess='always' allowfullscreen='true' flashvars="&file=http%3A%2F%2Fstreamer2.perimeterinstitute.ca%2Fmp4-med%2F12030128.mp4&image=http%3A%2F%2Fperimeterinstitute.ca%2Fsites%2Fperimeter-www.pi.local%2Ffiles%2Fpirsa%2Fvideo%2Fthumb_12030128_12030128_7.jpg&plugins=viral-2h&viral.onpause=false&viral.pluginmode=FLASH"/>