More or Less

To those who have much, more will be given. Those who have little will lose what little they have.

This New Testament assertion perturbs the part of me that naturally inclines to lift up the underdog, to demand balance and fairness. It is intuitively wrong, socially irresponsible! It seems very unlike other messages of Jesus that promise the Earth to the meek and the poor, that teach that the man of wealth will have a harder time finding his way to salvation than the humble man. 

But maybe it isn’t about that kind of thing. Maybe it isn’t about matters of body and society at all. Maybe it isn’t about fairness or any intent of reward or punishment.

Maybe it is about education. It is about the energies of curiosity, exploring, learning, growing in knowledge and wisdom. It is about the open mind, the consciousness that is willing to expand. That means being able to let go of cherished thoughts and beliefs, opening to new ones, better ones. It means being able to accept having been wrong, maybe even that we are always likely at least some wrong. 

Imagine swinging through the rings of a jungle-gym: you can only succeed in getting from one end to the other by letting go, reaching and grasping, and letting go again… Imagine there is no end to this jungle-gym, that it goes on infinitely, inviting us to never-ending discovery. 

To those who have much, more will be given. Those who have little will lose what little they have.

This is a truth that interfaces with our physical living, but it applies to spirit more than to body. While Body seeks survival, security, comfort, and reproduction, Spirit wants to soar, to be unlimited by things like gravity and entropy and all the physical laws that surround living things. Spirit disregards time and distances, it transports as instantly as ideas happen.

Bodies evolve slowly, life ascending from the very tiniest, the very simplest, to the more and more complex, the more able to understand and manipulate the world. Every life today stands on the figurative shoulders of billions of years of the experiences and lessons learned by the organisms that came before.

Spirit itself also evolves as consciousness expands experience by experience, realization by realization, lesson by lesson learned.  

I got to thinking about this while watching this series, ONE STRANGE ROCK. The episodes are presented by a number of astronauts who have seen the Earth from a rare perspective. I got to thinking about what kind of people are astronauts. 

 They can’t be slow, they can’t be ignorant, they can’t be bound by the limitations of mental processing or shy from emotional baggage. Which isn’t to say they don’t have these things, only that they are able to transcend them. As both human and being, they must be among the most highly evolved bodies and spirits among us.

That’s where I made the connection with that biblical assertion. It isn’t a promise or a threat, it is just the way it is: knowledge builds on knowledge, and is a foundation for further knowledge. Understanding allows for greater understandings. Curiosity and openness–the basis of all spiritual growth.