Daily Meditation: Monday, March 30, 2009

By concentrating their efforts on the transformation of …

03/30/2009

By concentrating their efforts on the transformation of matter, alchemists had a better understanding of spiritual work than many so-called spiritual people, who concentrate all their efforts on escaping matter and separating the body and spirit. Alchemy does not cut humans in two: into a spirit, which alone is worthy of our attention, and a body that should be ignored, despised and mistreated. No, spirit and matter, the spirit and the body, have work to do together. The body is not the spirit’s tomb. Or, to be more precise, the body is only the spirit’s tomb for those who have not understood the meaning of the first verse in Genesis: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ Yes, not just the heavens but the heavens and the earth. By ‘heavens’ we are meant to understand ‘spirit’, and by ‘earth’ ‘matter’; if God created both, it is because they have something to do together. To separate the body from the spirit is to separate a house from its roof: exposed to bad weather, it collapses, and what does the roof do if it doesn’t have four walls to rest on?