I'd rather be a rising ape than a fallen angel.
Very nicely put, Terry, but I contend that you (we) are both of these.
As I wrote in my evolution post:
We start out with hologram-like subtle bodies, naturally soul conscious, and devolve into body conscious corporeal creatures. It is only at the half way point in the cycle that we take our physical "skins" - these physical bodies will have evolved, much as science indicates, becoming more complex as they become more material and less spiritual. There is always a balance of spirit and matter in everything - it is like Yin/Yang - over time the balance moves to more matter less spirit, until a tipping point (now!) when the balance starts moving back towards spirit.
So, we are
fallen angels- over time we have devolved from spiritual beings incarnating in perfect subtle angelic bodies, into earthbound material-obsessed lost souls. This is documented in Genesis and elsewhere.
We are also
rising apes, or to be more precise, we inhabit human bodies which have evolved, as science maintains, from more primitive lifeforms. Our bodies, which started off as hologram-like bodies of light, similar to the bodies we inhabit in our dreams, have devolved (in spiritual terms) into dense animalistic bodies of skin, flesh and bone.
We are still spiritual beings, and as such we are inherently perfect and pure, but we have identified more and more with the human bodies we incarnate in, so that we have now lost sight of our true nature, and most of us now mistakenly believe that we are the bodies we inhabit.
Get ready for the next step in the cycle, as we become rising angels and our bodies and world become less dense and more subtle!