Analogue 28: The Flow of Creative Energies

The Flow of Creative Energy

Faith receives and love gives. Without faith no one can receive, and no one can give who does not love. We are, therefore, made to trust in order that we may receive, and caused to love in order that we might give. For if one gives without love, there is no benefit in the giving. Anyone unreceptive to the transcendent continues on in lower realities.

• This analogue presents perspectives on spiritual practice and qualities of the soul. 
• The reciprocity between faith and love—giving and receiving
• A seeker cannot receive anything without faith or trust. 
• The superiority and necessity of love over belief—especially systems of belief that demand rote actions in order to comply. 
• Love is the necessary ingredient in any form of giving—without it, giving is unproductive or ineffectual. 
• This is another perspective on the theme of receptivity that began the Gospel in Analogue 1.

COMMENTARY

The Circulation of Divine Energy

If theosis (the process of human deification) is to move us towards our destiny, it must involve inner spiritual practices that help to catalyze what is unfolding within the soul. From the previous analogues, we have seen that for us to truly understand what deification is requires an extraordinary form of visionary seeing. In order to see its destiny, the heart itself, as a cognitive center, must be open to realms beyond this world. Once the process of seeing leading to transformation begins, however, two vital elements described by this analogue are activated, working together in a kind of dynamic fluidity: The giving through acts of love and the receptivity of faith or trust. Love is catalytic and faith is receptive and together they act and flow dynamically, creating essential pathways for the divine way of Life. 

Trust allows one to be receptive to whatever is entering in order for it to become catalytic in the soul’s unfolding. Examples of this abound in the human world. If you trust someone you can receive from them. An exchange is possible. If you do not trust them, no matter what they say, even if it is the truth, it is unlikely you will receive it. By its lack, normal relationships are interrupted. In the realm of spirit, the same is true. Learning to trust the divine energies as they move through the conduits of ordinary life catalyzes transformation, which is thus always preconditioned upon a fundamental level of trust. 

Spiritual practice requires that we trust the processes of divinization since it is largely out of our control. These energies are being guided by divine Providence, through the sapience of the Sacred Spirit, towards a definitive possibility (deification). Trust, however, is not unidirectional. It is more like a field in which other forms of action may flow in a circular manner—an inflowing and an outflowing so that which is being received by faith is being given away by love. This spiritual circulation is life-giving and transformational.  A trusting heart receives more and more from beyond and may then be able to reciprocate with the same spiritual energy through love. Like blood flowing through the body, it is the means of both giving and receiving life —this is an exchange that makes the individual spiritually alive. 

Fluid Dynamics

Within this circulation of energy, the quality of giving is as much a part of the gift as the gift itself. What is given without love is without benefit, and what is not received in a spirit of trust or faith cannot transform. But when love and trust work together in a dynamic exchange, there is a qualitative increase in levels of being: together they become catalytic and expand the nature of life from one form to another. Without both divine elements in circulation, one can only remain in the lower levels of reality. Spiritual growth is arrested and divinization is impeded.  

These principles were understood and practiced in the divine mysteries that Yeshua transmitted to his students. He was spiritually powerful because he had catalyzed them through the praxis of what we might think of as the fluid dynamics of Spirit. His wisdom brought clarity to spiritual life on the level of daily practice, an advanced understanding perhaps never known before in earlier spiritual traditions. Though these principles exist energetically in all sacred traditions, they are being clarified here in an explicit way. 

A contemporary scientific form of these same fluid dynamics exists in the physics of chaos theory. Yeshua and Philip appear to understand and practice something akin to this in the realm of Spirit. Though details of this practice may be missing from our understanding, our own participation in it, and the learning that comes from it, may revive its significance for us as we live and learn these principles and and practice them personally. 

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• How is faith not simply a system of belief, that is, how is it different from believing in certain ideas, doctrines or teachings? Does this challenge or confirm your own ideas about faith?
• Faith, as used in this Gospel, involves a living system built upon relationships that we come to trust. What is your trust level in the human world? Compare that to your trust in the spiritual world.
• This analogue describes a spiritual circulatory system that can keep a human being alive and growing in the realm of Spirit. The growth of faith or trust is required in order to become receptive and this is vital to its flow of energies: energy is received in and then circulated out through love. These are the two fundamental elements of spiritual practice. How do you define faith? How would you characterize love? Have you felt these divine elements or energies circulating through you? How have you experienced them? How does their circulation work?
• What is love like as you give it? Is love received different from love given? If so, how do you experience those loves?

Notes for Reference and Further Study

1. There is a curious division between the way we understand faith theologically and the actual practice of it as seen from the viewpoint of the original texts of the Christian scriptures. Typically in modern use, faith is understood to be about having certain religious beliefs that one accepts as true. For example, one believes that God exists or that Jesus is the Son of God. These may be part of one’s beliefs which become a system of propositions that are then built into a structure called a particular religion or faith tradition. This text, and most of the early texts of Christian scripture are not talking about faith in this way, as  beliefs that one holds together in a belief system or faith structure. Rather they are talking about trusting something or someone and then acting on that fundamental trust. For example, if you come to a bridge, you can believe it is a bridge built in order to cross the chasm, but the core question is, do you trust it enough to actually walk across? If you do, you will act not just on the belief that the bridge exists, but that it is trustable as a means for safe passage. This distinction is part of the Greek language being used here. The Ancient Greek word pistis is about fundamentally trusting something and not simply believing it exists. Trust is far deeper than faith and involves a voluntary action based on that sense of trust. See for example the way the words ‘believe’, ‘faith’, or ‘trust’ are actually used in the Gospel of John (John 2:23-25, for example, where people believe Yeshua, but he does not trust them.)
2. One could make the case that faith is a flowing, and that the energy of that flow involves love. In this analogue the two are working together in a synergy that might be understood to be like fluid dynamics and spiritual circuitry. These spiritual elements and realities are not static states or sets of beliefs but flowing reciprocal relationships that involve trust and love. Belief systems are static and usually encoded in statements or creeds that are maintained without change over time. This analogue defines and describes these elements as if they are alive, existing between persons in relationship, and reciprocal. These are exchanges taking place between beings who have personal knowledge of one another and are in loving and trusting relationships. This is very different from the way we describe religious beliefs today. 
3. In contemporary science, chaos theory has to do with the flow of energies and how, as that flow increases, it changes the nature of the flow pattern itself. A dripping faucet is one pattern, but as the flow increases (and the energy changes) water appears chaotic as it gushes out until it is stabilized at a yet higher volume into a steady stream with a new flow pattern. Could this illustrate, then, the work of Sacred Spirit and her energies as a form of “fluid dynamics” in which we might expect sudden shifts and changes, even chaos, at certain points as changes are occurring and the energy is increasing?

Notes for the Translation

1. The essential meaning of the Greek word for faith is not about belief in things, but about trust. Faith and trust translate the same Greek term “pistis.”
2. The Greek term used for love, “agape”, is unconditional love—love without requirements and preconditions.