Prayer of Perichoresis - home |
Perfectible Harmony - home |
Perfect Harmony is a restful state. Whatever energy was once expended by the two
in striving to reflect and support the other is now a radiating warmth inviting
and encouraging a third, fourth, fifth, ... ad infinitum to strive toward the same state
within the bounds of their particular substance and nature.
A simple practical example are two of the same instrument playing the same note.
When they are perfectly in tune you only hear that one note. If they are even slightly
out of tune, you'll hear a "beating" between the two near same notes. The energy of the
beating resolves into a restful transcendant radiation of oneness when you can no longer
distinguish one instrument from the other.
A question for Christian theology: Is it possible to conceive of the eternal Father
and eternal Son as two of the same substance and nature expressing an eternal state of
Perfect Harmony which is affirmed by the radiaing love of the Holy Spirit?
Humans also have a spiritual nature even though we haven't the faintest notion of
what the substance of spiritual nature might be. We do know however that one's thoughts
and feelings can be so exactly similar as to be indistinguishable from one to the other.
That's probably because human thoughts and feelings have a grounding in human sensation
which derives from the their material substance. If two people really do think and feel
exactly alike we could say their spirits are in perfect harmony.
But we can only ever be in a process of striving for perfect harmony with the Eternal
because we're weighed down by what we can sense through our physical nature. We do
share a similar spiritual nature with the Eternal, but since our spiritual nature is bound
to material substance it isn't the same unbound spiritual nature as the Eternal's and thereby
limits us to striving for though never attaining perfect harmony with the Eternal.
Still, we also sense through our spiritual nature. But while physical nature senses
raw physical impulses, our spiritual nature senses the perceptions arising from what
is merely physically sensate. And it's at the level of perception that our spiritual
nature intuits the grace of the Eternal.
Perceptions are where we find our sense of person and the sense of person in another human being.
And perceptions are also where we derive a sense of something beyond material substance and
beyond physical nature. If humans have a yearning for something more than materiality, where else
does it come from than the perception of self in relation to others? Not just any relation either,
but a qualitative relationship seeking rest in harmonius being. We know all to well, that we can
never reach complete happiness and satisfaction in life, which has no doubt brought on the hope
that in death we will find rest eternal within the compass of the Eternal.
Which brings us to Perfected Harmony.
"Only moments" though, provide a taste which can leave a hunger for more.
More moments of perfected harmony and a greater variety of flavors. If I found a
perfected moment of harmony in music, why not also a perfected moment in movement,
companionship, care-giving and/or prayer/meditation? And why not perfected harmony
amongst music AND movement AND companionship, etc.. Perfected harmony is a qualitative
state marked by a feeling of transcending the lesser qualitative states leading up it.
Since Perfected Harmony is a state arrived at through a process AND there are evermore
intricate combinations of areas to meld into a the overall state of Perfected Harmony -
it should be clear that one person can never attain it in the temporal plane. Nor can one
attain to Perfected Harmony as an individual since we can only be in a state of harmony in
relation to-and-with countless others. As long as the process is ongoing in our dimension
of time even one's death does not stop our involvement in the ongoing process of perfectible
harmony. I might die the moment after I post this page, but if these written words affect even
a single other person, then I'm still in the game ... regardless of whether or not there
is an afterlife.
Perfected Harmony then is only a possibility at the end of times - when all temporality ends.
Or ... if you prefer ... it is only possible in eternal time as opposed to "clock" time. When
the process of perfectible harmony resolves into eternal time it does so as an encapsulation
of every spark/flame of life that ever animated any material form that ever existed at any
point of "clock" time - so long as that bit of life was not completely bent on discordance.
Perfected Harmony then, is a body of spiritual nature that was brought to the highest state of
parfection attainable by whatever substance our spiritual nature consists of. It is, as Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin noted- the Omega Point of existence. I consider it rheotorical, but
it is a question none the less, of whether life can attain to perfection by blindly groping its
way along throughout time. It seems perfectly clear to me that only the preexistence of a state
of Perfect Harmony could draw amorphous life along a path of perfectibility so that it could
become perfected by way of the perceptions of its spritual nature in harmony with the perceptions
brought about from the materially sensate body.
A question for Christian theology: Can the Body of Christ be considered as the
perichoresis of prefectible harmony that will be graced with the eternal state of
perfected harmony at the end of times?
Not that anyone needs to look it up, but a quick glance at a dictionary defines harmony as:
the quality of forming a pleasing and consistent whole; a state of being in agreement or concord;
with synonyms of balance, symmetry and like-mindedness. The simple act of standing upright is
already an expression of harmony. We maintain our balance by reflexive micro-movements and
shadow movements that are greatly simplyfied by the symmetry of our bodily proportions. This
all happens well below the level of conscious thought, but the firing of neurons to contract and
relax individual muscle tissues, flow of blood to oxygenate and remove waste from each cell
and visceral sense maintaining stability shows an incredible degree of like-mindedness at an
intercellular level - all in response to a conscious will to stand.
Standing upright is only a higher degree of harmony in the muscular activity other animals
engage in when on all fours, or flapping wings or slithering. And each type of cells needs
to maintain its own inner harmony. Even the simplest bacteria and bacterial culture needs
to maintain harmony if it and its culture are to survive.
There are hundreds of millions of years spanning the emergence of bacteria and the emergence
of coordinated harmonic movement in tandem with the emergence of articulated harmonic sound.
And that is still tens of millions of years before the concept of harmony would be articulated
in thought. What I see in this is not just life evolving to greater degrees of complexity, but
life evolving to greater degrees of harmony. Unfortunately, we also find humanity acting in
geater degrees of discord both amongst peoples and the natural world as civilizations developed.
Fortunately, when humanity finds itself in discord there is an inner yearning for a return to
concordance. To return not just to any old state of harmony, but higher and higher states of
harmony in an arc of perfectibility.