NOTE: This is part of our series where we answer your New Thought and Spirituality questions. If you have a question for Mark, be sure to post a comment on this blog or send him an email at revmarkgilbert@hotmail.com
Question: What is really real? Some say only Spirit or God is real, others say only physical matter is real. Which is it? And, if it’s both, how do they interact?
Answer:
Well, first off, everyone is free to believe whatever they wish about reality. However, through my spiritual journey and experiences, I have come to believe the following….
Our ultimate Truth or Reality is God or Spirit. We can call it by many names, the Absolute, the Timeless, the All and so on. It is the Source from which we were created. It is an undivided Oneness and of which we are always an individualized expression.
This Absolute Oneness seeks to express Itself and experience Itself though Its creation. That creation includes this physical universe and more.
This Absolute Oneness imbedded Its creation with certain characteristics of Itself which includes consciousness; an inner push towards growth, novelty and evolution; a push to create and more. Within all aspects of Its creation is Itself. Hence, we might consider that everything is God, Spirit, etc.
This Absolute Oneness allowed Its creation to “forget” Its source so that coupled with a degree of free will choice, it could be left to make choices and discover the world and learn and growth through those choices. Ultimately those choices would lead each individualized expression of the creation back to discovering the Source from which it came.
So the material world is ultimately a playground for expressions of this Oneness to be creative and rediscover its source. As everything in the physical world rediscovers its Truth via its interactions (or relationships) with other aspects of the One, we refer to this world as the “relative”.
The relative world is a world of physical forms moving through an experience of time. In the relative world, each form appears separate from the other forms even though in the realm of the Absolute they are all One. In the relative world, the forms experience their relationships in the movement of time where as in the Absolute there is no time, it is beyond time and is considered “Timeless”.
We might envision the interaction like two ends of a polarity, the Absolute on one end, the relative on the other. They are all interconnected in Oneness. They are all vibrating at different levels. The Absolute has the fastest vibratory rate, the relative (material world) is vibrating at the slowest rate. As we move up the vibratory scale from the relative towards the Absolute, at some point we move into aspects of the creation that transcend the physical world and enter the realm of the “metaphysical”. These non-material vibratory levels include the areas of emotions and thoughts and more. At the ultimate levels we reach the aspect closest to our Source. Although this Source is embedded throughout Its creation, it is not “absorbed into” Its creation. It is both in it and transcends it. Another way of saying that is that God is in all of Its creation, but is more than Its creation.
Everything is real in one way of looking at it. However, the Spiritual realm of the Absolute is the “Ultimate Reality”. The material realm is simply real as expressions of “forms” along with all of the experiences of these forms that are based on this relative world, including the “experience of time” . The physical world is real as our experiences as we grow and evolve in our awareness back to remembering our Source.
I hope this explanation is helpful.
Mark Gilbert