Youtube: Are We There Yet?
Audio: Are We There Yet?
If you’ve had children, you’ve probably had the experience of setting out on a car trip with the child hanging on the seat asking every few minutes, “Are we there yet?” To our children’s dismay, I learned to answer truthfully, “Yes, we’re here.”
Though there was sufficient time in any of our given car trips for a lengthy philosophical debate, I didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news by saying, we will never be there, we can only be here. I assumed life would provide that lesson soon enough. This assumption was probably a miscalculation, however. There are plenty of sectors who believe the day will come when their special interests finally reach the promised land of there.
In one of my talks, I mentioned that the process of evolution is not one that is working toward some idealized goal, some perfect expression of any given species. The driving force of evolution is adaptation to the present environment. In this sense, the whole of nature exists in a perpetual state of completion. The biological component of life adapts to the environment in a way that allows for continued expression of life. When the environment changes, the biological interface changes. Life itself remains the same.
Science does not invent the laws that allow them to send a robot to Mars. Science discovers the laws. The spacecraft and controlling software they design is adapted to the preexisting laws that govern our planet, conditions beyond our planet, and conditions on Mars where the craft is sent.
Think of your spiritual essence, your soul as that body of laws that is already complete. Nothing at the spiritual level needs to change. Only the way we think about ourselves needs to change. Paul warned of the problems of conforming to the ever-changing landscape of the world. To find our true anchor, we must take our eye off that ever-adapting material interface and ground our understanding in the changeless reality that is the soul. There’s no there to reach. There is only here, and we’re in it.
J Douglas Bottorff 
for the sake of clarity (not disputing just curious) help me to understand how this unchanging essence experiences change and yet remains unchanged
Think of water that can take many forms or be mixed with many things, yet it remains unchanged. Thanks for your comment. Doug
As simple as it is profound. I have saved this, and may re-blog it (with all credits), on my personal philosophy blog. What you have said here is so clear that I don’t see how anyone could fail to understand, and say, “Of course!”
This is great to hear. Glad you found it helpful.