The Material Is Divine

There are so many different view of the material world, the body and the spiritual world. There is an equally long history of people arguing over such things. I am not a historian but I do have a general outline of how our modern world came to view the body and the physical world as separate from the divine, and somewhat lesser and then the eventual shift to the material as the only and superior truth albeit not divine.

Briefly, I will review what I know of this history (mostly for western culture to my understanding) for context of what I will explain later.

At one period in time there were many indigenous cultures that were much closer to the land and spirituality intertwined although we know little about the depths of many of those cultures but at some point religions of transcendence and denial of the body began to show up. These narratives aimed to place the physical world only a step up from the damned and the body as the place of sin. Then after a time of this, and probably in my opinion in response to this, we decided to separate the material even further by declaring science would be the measurement of the physical and of reality. Mystical phenomena was not to be included, as decided by a few men some odd years ago. And over time the material with its reliable measures has come to dominate much of the foundation of our world. Although the religious and dogmatic is still ever present.

I am sure a historian could tear that apart but lets hope enough accuracy is present to explain my point. I recently listened to a book with much more in depth explanation of this titled The Enchanted Life by Sharon Blackie and the documentary What the Bleep Do We Know goes in to detail about the second half (if I remember correctly).

As someone who is connected to the spiritual realms and believes the transcendental experience can be very healing, I can understand how many started to focus entirely on it. And also with the logic, perceived consistency and reliability of materialism I can also see how we now come to treat that as modern dogma. As what many believe in solely.

I am not hear to debunk either, but to add a third door.

What if the physical and material is divine? It is my belief that the body is not merely a housing for my soul, one which limits me, but is a creation of and therefor an aspect of my soul. Equally, my soul is a part of the broader spectrum we call God (but certainly not all of it, thank God) so too nature and the earth is not a plane void of spirit but one of its many vast creations and illuminated with spiritual essence.

I will admit that there are days where I don’t feel this and I long to be in my spiritual home more than the physical, but oddly few of those days have been surrounded by nature or where I was truly present in the body. I was, in fact, in a more mental reactivity to mans’ stories and societies narratives. Narratives based on separateness, narratives based on the lack of divinity in what is. The only world I don’t wish to truly inhabit is not in fact physical at all but merely separateness and the temporary creations of it. So was it really the world I wish to leave or the current landscape of my thoughts?…

Separateness is not, in my experience, our true essence so it’s merely a false dream.

Recently I shared about life being the dream, which could have you leaning toward the lack of merit in it. While there is growth in the separateness, like most things that are stretched are expanded, eventually we must return to truth. We think of dreams as unreal in our material world so when I express that life is a dream I imagine many could assume I ascribe to the idea of this being the illusion. But even sleeping dreams are a real experience. And a dream is real expression of consciousness it’s just not all of it. And separateness is a dream that shows us what the truth is not.

Just as the body is not all that we are but it is also not separate from what we are.

Our lives, our world, our bodies are divine. They are beautiful creations, things we have dreamed in to this moment. Even the illusion of separateness (that is all that is because when it dissolves you truly feel it was just a lens you were looking through) is an aspect of truth for it is a creation of our divine intention to experience life in a human perspective. So it too is divine although the joy in releasing it is more satisfying than the experience of living it.

With anything that is created, focus must be present, so it seems natural that as we focus ourselves in to humanness we may lose sight of the wider aspect of ourselves, our souls.

But remember this, your soul is not contained within the body, but the body within the soul. Think about how your friends can feel your energy in a room from a certain distance. You are beyond the body. But your body and our earth is a divinely intentional creation, one that is constantly responding to experience and even communicating and working with you the creative soul.

Your body, with it’s pleasure and pains shows you what stories we hold, where we let love in, and where we withhold. It is designed in such a way to create a unique experience for our soul to express in a unique and intentional way. But believing in nature and the material as separate from the divine would rob you of this knowledge.

Materialism robs us of our intuitive dialogue with our divine knowing. It robs us of our relationship with the physical world that can be felt spiritually not only in the five senses.

Conversely transcendental ideology that is present in many major religions robs us of the joy of the material. It thieves the magic in skin, tree bark, rainstorms and stags.

When we recognize the divine is here in this world we will become one with it, but when we also realize there is much more than this world as we currently know it, that the unseen is ever present, that the invisible is more dominant than the visible we will become more of our spiritual truth animating this physical creation.

This may all sound like a lot of philosophy but I encourage you to imagine what might change in you if you saw your body as divine, if you thought God lived in the soil while simultaneously realizing your soul is bigger than any current limit and is connected to ancestor and angel; stone and river.

Beauty is the dominant expression of life, and the disillusionment we often feel is merely the contraction that precedes the experience of it.

Walk as a divine being, like your cells are Gods intention, like the earth and even civilizations of it hold mystical wonders. Breathe like the suffering is a temporary state that peels off a restriction to further magic.

I know I will be trying to do the same. I will continue to commit to waking up from the false dream and gaining the wisdom from it. I will receive the objectivity of separation and celebrate my tiny homecomings as they slowly unfold.

I know I will continue to attempt to shine light on your truths and celebrate the remembering of your magic. I will continue to take delight in the splendor of what we have created as surely as I wake up from an uncomfortable dream.

I hope you join me.