Spirit and the material - spirit comes first

We live in a materialist world, in which only the material (that which is 'perceived' i.e. detected by the senses or the instruments of science) is acknowledged as real. 

That which is regarded as real but is not perceptible tends to be called 'the spirit', or the spiritual realm. 

However, this is misleading, because it tends to divide the world into the material and the spiritual - as if there were two separate kinds of thing. 

Yet the reality is that the world is one-kind-of-thing - which is the spirit; spirit was primary and the material developed from spirit.

In other words: the material is a subtype of the spiritual. 

I tend to think of the material by analogy, as something like condensed or concentrated spirit; or as spiritual with a boundary - spirit which has (from within) bounded-itself. 

So, originally, everything was spirit; and although there were different beings, these beings were not physically separated and there was relationship, flow, between them. This meant that there was a primal state of universal connection and communication between beings. 

(But bearing in mind that these terms 'connection' and 'communication' can be misleading because they are already presupposing separation by assuming that beings need to be-connected or to-communicate - yet in a world of only-spirit this just-is, just happens; and indeed cannot be stopped.)

  

Materialism is essentially the world as it is when structured by modern consciousness - and modern consciousness has cut-itself-off from all awareness of communication and connection with spirit. 

This cutting-off is such that there is no spontaneous awareness of the spiritual - modern consciousness spontaneously confines-itself (and is confined) within the body, within the senses and memory of perceptions. 

Yet - since the world is primarily spirit - the potential remains to resume communication and connection with that of creation which is not perceived - in other words, modern Man does not spontaneously perceive the spirit beyond the material, but can choose to do so.

The reason why modern Man lost the spontaneous connection with the spiritual is that this makes him free in his thinking; free from the thinking of other beings, and free from the effects of spontaneous awareness of the divine. 

This freedom from being-affected-by the spiritual world moved Man a step closer towards himself being a God - and this separation-step is part of our divine destiny - but actually-is a step closer to God only if the choice is made to re-connect and again communicate with the spiritual. 

Otherwise, if modern Man simply relies on spontaneity - he will have lost contact with God, and lost awareness of the whole of reality that lies beyond perception and scientific instruments.  

So, that is our situation. We all of us move-through a spiritual world which surrounds us and from-which we (our-selves) condensed and separated; spontaneously this world is imperceptible to us; but the spiritual may become accessible to us by our active choice.