Backwards Up the Tree of Life

I just had a spiritual world-view altering thought. It happens. My mind is like an cluttered attic in an old house; you never know what you'll discover when you go rummaging around.

As I've said here before, I'm not a believing Christian (though I am a defender of it, because it wrought Western Civilization), but I am not an atheist either. I tend toward the general spiritual view that the Great Spirit/God/Goddess/Cosmic Intelligence/Creator IS creation,...and that the universe and everything in it consists of emanations of Him/Her/It, and is animated by Him/Her/It.

I think it's likely there are more worlds than the material one and that they run the gamut from slightly less dense than ours to those of pure spirit, and that each has inhabitants of the same order.

Now, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Kabbalists, New Agers, Theosophists, Hermetics, etc. presume that pure spirit is the highest form of being. And that the less material one is, the higher one's spiritual quotient. By definition then, material entities are the lowest on the spiritual evolutionary scale and their goal is to rise from their primordialness into less and less dense energy until they can, with heads unbowed, share the planes of glory with the exalted entities that exist on those "higher" planes, closest to the divine source.

But, why should that be so?

It seems to me it takes quite a spiritual constitution to survive all the depredations of living in the material world. The seductions of the flesh are monumental. Sex is but one of the sensuous joys of being material. Eating, sneezing, sunlight on skin, dancing, smelling a forest or the salt air of the ocean, petting an animal, seeing a sunset or a master's painting, bathing, laughing, hearing music...What disembodied pleasure can compare with those?

And the difficulties are harsh. We have DEATH to contend with. Pain, disease, loneliness, grief, loss...are you kidding? What bodiless calamity compares to these?

Perhaps I am too enamored of the material world...but I cannot imagine that weak, immature, "starter" souls would not be drowned in the sensuous delights and/or morbid fears of physical existence.

So here's my theory:

Any soul inhabiting a body on the material plane is a probably a highly evolved spiritual entity who has reached the level of knowledge, wisdom and control that permits the risk of attempting to cope with corporeality.

Being human is not the bottom of the heap spiritually. We're not the "lost" ones, or the "fallen" ones or spiritual "children". We are the souls who are advanced enough, and courageous enough to clothe ourselves in flesh, to withstand the seductions and suffer the pains in the crucible of materiality—and (hopefully) survive with soul intact—to complete our spiritual journey.

Rather than this being the beginning point, this is the graduation ceremony. A well-seasoned, well-traveled soul, when it is ready to graduate to perfection...comes here for the final test.

It's the Bar exam, the Olympic event. And you have to get the Gold...a perfect score.

Everyone doesn't make it the first time. Hence, reincarnation. It's pretty obvious to all of us that some are better at it than others. But none of us are novices in this Spiritual business. If you made it far enough to be born in the Physical Universe...as a human on Earth...you are a marvel of spiritual growth already.

The challenge is to live up to our spiritual potential.

There are probably some souls who find the physical challenge too great, retreat a grade to train better, to study up for a century or two, before trying again. (Maybe that's the Astral Plane that psychics talk about, where souls rest after incarnation...before another try at the Big Safari!)

I think that sometimes unprepared souls who are not ready for the challenge of the Dark Continent try anyway and become the spectacular meltdowns and the flaming wrecks that appear among us occasionally.

I don't have a complete theology that weaves this idea into a coherent whole. But here's a bare bones idea. Souls emanated out of the Cosmic Intelligence begin their journey with baby steps, coming to sentient awareness of their individuality, and work toward spiritual maturity on a number of spirit planes from "the top down"—from pure spirit, where individuality is almost non-existent, down the ladder to total separation via material existence. The goal is to perfect the emanated individual soul into a conscious, unique god entity.

If you think about it, working it the other way round doesn't make any sense. If you start with undifferentiated Divinity, why bother with all this mess if that's what you want to end up with anyway? Which is exactly what all religions and mysticisms—behind their myths—teach. The goal of "Union with God"; the undifferentiated "Oneness" of Nirvana or Heaven.

I don't believe in creation by a transcendent God, but rather in the outpouring of spirit itself becoming "creation", which more closely resembles the process of birth, were the infant initially has no self-awareness, and cannot differentiate itself from its surroundings or its mother. So the soul newly emanated from the Cosmic Spirit, rather than being a more perfect specimen than one who has evolved all the way to corporeality, doesn't even yet know itself as itself, and must grow in maturity as it traverses the path from Pure Spirit to Material Manifestation.

The Kabbalists use the Tree of Life to demonstrate the emanation flowing from the top (pure divinity) to the bottom (physical manifestation). And they teach that each station, and the intelligences abiding there, are more pure and more advanced than the one below. Grant they may be more "pure" in that they are less defined and differentiated, less individual (and less interesting) , but certainly not more advanced. In no process is something closer to its source, less complex and individuated called "more advanced" than that which has evolved further from its beginning and become more complex and unique. This applies to crystals, cacti, tadpoles, children, biospheres and cultures.

I think the organizational rules of creation are consistent. As Above, So Below. Therefore the more we evolve from our source into more defined, self-aware, differentiated, individualized entities, the more advanced we are.

Goodness or Perfection must be a choice or it is only an instinct for which a soul cannot take credit. Choice cannot exist without individuality, independence and self-consciousness. Individuality, independence and self-consciousness cannot exit without separation from non-differentiation, and autonomy. Therefore, the only entities that can be GOOD are those who as independent, separate and autonomous beings, choose Goodness. Entities too close to, and in the thrall of Divinity may act good, but they are not self-directed actors, and therefore cannot claim godhood. They are like the fingers of a hand that blesses, but cannot bless (or curse) of their own volition.

So all those Angels may have more beautifully shining countenances that us sweaty humans...but don't let them intimidate you. You're farther down the path to god-ness than they are!

The Gunslinger