Physicality

The ABBA Tradition honors the physical world around us, and sees physicality as a mirror, metaphor, and map of the three higher worlds.

Physicality

The first and most obvious of the four worlds in which we live is the physical world. This is the sensible reality which we experience around us with our physical senses. It is the world of the physicist and the physician, words which are rooted in the Greek word phusis. The World of Physicality is our everyday world, the reality of nature, the ordinary, material, external World where we live day in and day out. It is a reality we usually take for granted. But what is Physicality? What does it mean to be physical? Physical comes from the Greek word phusis which is also the root of our English word ‘physics.’ We know today that physics deals with matter and energy and, indeed, that matter and energy are inter-related by Einstein’s equation E=mc2. Physicality is the world in which energy is converted into matter, where energy matters. So, physicality is the world of matter and energy. It is the four-dimensioned world of space and time. But it is more.

More importantly for us, the physical world is the world where possibilities become actualities, where things happen, where things come to be, where things “matter.” For us, it is the World in which we can actually do things, where we can act. So, it is the World of Action. And actions have consequences in the physical world. When we do things in the physical world, what we do, once done, is done once and for all. Because physical acts, once done, cannot be “undone,” physicality is the reality in which Actions Actually Matter.