The Materialisation of Spirit and the Spiritualisation of Matter

 So much that is called religion does the opposite of what religion is supposed to do. What religion should do is elevate the material to the spiritual. What it often does do is reframe the spiritual in the context of the material. It pulls spirit down to the level of matter. The bizarre absurdity of the prosperity gospel in which faith in God translates to wealth and power in this world is just the most extreme example but anything that regards the earthly human as the focal point of spiritual endeavour also falls into this category. Spirituality is not about feeding the hungry or healing the sick. Does that shock you? I am not saying these things should not be done but they are not what spirituality is about. Yes, Jesus did feed the poor and he healed the sick. He even raised the dead. But this was to show God's power. It was not the point of his mission or else why did he not do it a lot more?

Nor is religion about saving the worldly man. That is to say, it is not about change but transformation. If the earthly man is saved he is still earthly, still a material being on the inside. No one is saved who does not transform his mind which you do through faith and a complete turning around of focus. I would suggest even the physical atoms of the brain are affected by this. In fact, the whole body is, becoming more sensitive. This might be regarded as the first stage of the eventual transformation of the physical body into a body of light which for most people, if it happens at all, happens only after death but is something that can be seen in the lives of certain saints while still in this world. What else does a halo represent?

The materialisation of spirit means bringing the truths of spirit down from their proper level and applying them to the material level in the context of the material with that as central. Spiritual truth should be brought down to the material level but without losing its spirituality. The incarnation of Christ is a perfect example of that. He, spirit, became man, matter, and lived in this material world. But he lost nothing of his 'spiritness'. And he did this precisely so as to spiritualise matter. Spirit became matter so that matter could be brought back up to spirit, infused with spirit. But if matter tries to trap spirit to itself, as so many spiritual approaches do, if it pulls spirit down to itself and interprets spirit within a material framework, it kills it. It will not rise.

This spiritualisation of matter is the meaning of Christmas. People now say that Christmas is really a pagan festival that the Christians appropriated. Not so. Some aspects of Christmas may have their origins in paganism but these have been baptised and raised up from matter to spirit though the power of the light shed by the Incarnation. Christmas is indeed the birth of light in darkness but Christ is spiritual light and his presence at this time grounds and gives full reality to a hope, an aspiration, a yearning that was present but not fully realised in pagan myth. Christ is the substance that lies behind these myths and makes them come alive. They are like dreams but he is those dreams come to waking reality and given concrete form.

Christmas comes at the winter solstice, the darkest time of the year but also the time when the light starts to return. In terms of a wider cycle we are living through very dark times, a period in history when mankind is further away from spiritual light than it has ever been though many of us don't recognise that because this very spiritual darkness has, for the time being anyway, this may not last, allowed for a certain efflorescence of material well being as energies are concentrated in that sphere of life. Is it too much to hope for that a tiny glimmer of light may start to reappear in human hearts at this point in time and inspire us to look heavenwards once more for the true meaning and purpose of life? At any rate, this is the Christmas message. However dark it seems, the light will come again.