Are We Just Apes with Theology—Or Angels with Amnesia?

Reclaiming the Radiant Human Vocation Beyond Survival and Cynicism

Somewhere between the mirror and the microscope, we lost the plot.

We became brilliant analysts of the human condition. We learned to diagnose our dysfunctions, optimize our behaviors, and argue theology until we were blue in the soul. But in the process, we forgot the most urgent thing of all:

That we are not here merely to survive.

We are here to transfigure.

To participate in something luminous and generative. To take raw existence—love, grief, confusion, beauty—and spin it into radiance.

And yet, here we are in the twenty-first century, scrolling and hoarding and posturing, like apex predators who learned a few sacred words and now think they’ve found their purpose.

We haven’t.

We’ve just become apes with theology.

Or maybe, more truthfully, angels with amnesia.

---

The Dangerous Lie of “Just Surviving”

It’s become fashionable to embrace survival as the highest form of wisdom. Get through the day. Secure the bag. Protect your peace. Build your brand. Survive the algorithm.

But survival isn’t wisdom. It’s primal instinct. It’s what lizards do.

You were not created to hoard safety or stack identity badges. You were created to become a mirror for the divine. Not as flattery. As function.

The Sufi master Kabir Helminski says that human presence is concentrated spiritual energy sufficient to produce will. Not just willpower. But the generative force that can transmute reality. Not escape it. Not conquer it. But illuminate it from within.

That’s the gig.

We are not here to dominate the earth like clever animals. We are here to divinize it.

---

Jesus Didn’t Come to Start a Religion

He came to start a fire.

Cynthia Bourgeault calls Jesus a “presence activator.” Someone who awakened the true self in those he encountered. Not through lectures. Through being. Through radical, incandescent presence.

That’s what made hearts burn. That’s what made lives turn upside down. He wasn’t giving out behavior charts. He was lighting souls on fire.

And yet, what did we do with this? We institutionalized the flame. We dissected it. Turned it into dogma. Then buried it under centuries of moralism and hierarchy and arguments over metaphysics.

Now we have doctrines. But the world is still starving for presence.

---

You Are a Temple of Technologies Forgotten

The early mystics understood this.

They didn’t follow Jesus because they were scared of hell. They followed because something in them remembered. Not just remembered him, but remembered themselves—who they truly were, before the world taught them to shrink, to perform, to forget.

The Gospel stories are full of these recognition moments:

“Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road?”
“Rabbi, where do you dwell?”
“Come and see.”
“Rabboni,” cries Mary Magdalene, in the garden of the impossible.

Each encounter is a mirror. A rupture. A re-membering of the divine template embedded in the human soul.

You have that template too.

It’s not accessed by effort. It’s awakened by presence. And presence isn’t a buzzword for mindfulness. It’s a cosmic interface, the meeting point between your sensory world and the world of spirit. It’s what allows you to act, speak, and live from your highest energy—not from fear, but from flame.

---

The Real Forgotten Vocation

The truth is, you’re not a sinner trying to behave. You’re not a self-help project. You’re not your trauma story or your productivity score.

You’re a being of divine origin sent here to generate divine qualities in form.

This is not poetry. This is physics. Soul physics.

What does that look like?

• Turning grief into compassion.

• Turning rage into truth-telling without hate.

• Turning despair into unkillable devotion.

• Turning ordinary moments into sacraments.

You are an alchemist of the invisible. A spiritual transformer. You take in the chaos of the world—and return love. Not as martyrdom, but as function. As sacred obligation.

You are here to midwife the virtues of God into visible form:
Compassion. Generosity. Radiance. Courage. Stillness. Joy.
They do not exist in this world unless someone embodies them.

That someone is you.

---

Cynicism Is the Enemy of Presence

The cultural air we breathe is thick with cynicism. It’s become a kind of badge. A way of showing you're too smart to be duped by wonder, too informed to have hope, too self-aware to be vulnerable.

But cynicism is cheap. It costs nothing and protects nothing.

Presence, on the other hand, is costly. It asks you to shed illusions. To weep at beauty. To listen deeply. To choose dignity over reaction. To show up even when your ego would rather perform.

And in that presence—when you finally sit still enough to be here—the divine template stirs.

You remember.

You feel the echo of something ancient. Something the mystics knew. Something the animals don’t and the algorithms can’t. A whisper that says:

You were made for more than this.

Not more achievement. More presence.
Not more answers. More aliveness.

---

A Final Invitation: Become What You Forgot

So which is it?

Are we just apes who learned theology?

Or are we angels who agreed to forget who we are… for a little while?

What if this whole journey—your pain, your longing, your fire—isn’t about becoming someone else… but about remembering?

What if your soul is not a project but a prism?

What if you don’t need more enlightenment—but more presence?

Because presence will do what theology never could:

It will wake you up.
It will burn the fog.
It will let you finally remember—

Who you are. Why you’re here. And what it means to be human.

---

If this post unhinged your halo, poured some Presence in your posture, or made your inner heretic weep with joy—share it, toss a coin to your scribal renegade, or subscribe for more molten reflections from the margins.

Fuel the Jesus Wisdom Rebellion.