Go to the potato chip factory. You’ll see the raw materials going in the machine on one side and the finished product comes out on the other side.
Gravity works in a similar way. The mechanism that makes gravity work is more subtle than a combination of conveyor belts, knives and kettles, but there is a reliable operation going on there too.
Gravity is the bending of space-time. Wrap your head around that! Take a big sheet and get three friends. Each of you grabs a corner and pulls until the sheet is taught. The sheet represents the space/time dimension. Now, spin a bowling ball very,very fast and lower it in the center of the the space/time dimension. That dipping and frictional pulling caused by the ball is representative of gravity. The heavy weight and motion of the bowling ball (Earth) cause a phenomenon called gravity.
This is more complicated than the potato chip machine. That much we can say. Now to understand the spiritual machine we need to make the next jump up. There is an actual machine, or an ‘operation’ that functions beyond time, space and motion. Haha. You put in the raw materials and out comes the outcome. In the 1st example the outcome would be potato chips. In the 2nd example the outcome would be say a broken egg if you dropped it, or any outcome of gravity, there are too many to name. The 3rd type of machine, the spiritual machine’s output is complete awareness, total fulfillment. So what is the raw material that needs to be plugged into this machine?
Ahhh.
From the most coarse to the most ‘sublime’ our species has developed. Living as a clan, hunting, mating, creating shelter, then tools. Some time later comes planting, farming, domesticating animals. There weren’t people back then who dreamed of founding Microsoft, or being the next idol. Wealth accumulation was the next evolutionary (no, I’ll call it revelationary. Because more than something evolving, something is actually being revealed that was there all along, just not sensed) step. When money does not fill the need, the desire for power arrives on the scene. We all can see evidence of this in history, herstory and on T.V. every day.
Some people have another more ‘sublime’ desire for knowledge, music; painting; science; math, etc.
This is what we see if we look around us. In all societies. In your high school. On the island of Jamaica. In Nicaragua. There are those who want their simple needs met. There are some who desire greater wealth, there are those who vy for power and there are the men and women of knowledge; scientists, artists, writers, etc.
Some how, some way a feeling different from the other ones arises in some people. This feeling does not discriminate by class or race or physical origin. This is a feeling felt in the heart, there is a want of something else. It is not tangible because there is no food/house, dollar amount, fame or knowledge that can quench this thirst. This feeling, this very feeling, this feeling that is invisible, the feeling that is so elusive when trying to hold on to it…this is the raw material that you put into the spiritual machine.
The story of Atlas – that he lifted a calf everyday and as the calf grew incrementally, so did his strength until he could lift the world – is very fitting. Step by step, incrementally, sowing and nurturing that seed of a feeling. Growing it. That is where the raw material comes from.