"Leap free of everything that is physical, and grow as vast as that immesurable vastness; step beyond all time and become eternal; then you will perceive God."
This writing brings home the argument I discussed in my previous blog--does God create anew, or is God merely rearranging matter as God sees fit? Now I see the error of my thought, even if God is just moving a bit from 'Pile A' to 'Pile B', God still created both piles, is in both piles, and just is both piles. In fact, I am a part of God, as are you, which means that we should have known this all along!
I hate being wrong. Of some 40,000 books, articles and papers that comprise the Hermetic Writings, the one selection Mitchell chooses is the one that spurs me to realize that I don't know everything. Bah.
If I had a Dirk Dastardly mustache, I would be twirling it between my thumb and forefinger about now...
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What really intrigues me about this particular snippet is the very first line, that "If you don't make yourself equal to God, you can't perceive God." I spoke of my mantra in an earlier post, but have since discarded it for a different repetitive meditation. It has resurfaced.
How does one make themself like God? "Recognize that you too are immortal and that you can embrace all things in your mind..." I like this, I really do. We have come full circle, back to Buddhism and the Dao. This is the bridge. We begin to realize that nothing is inconceivable (a word that makes no sense whatsoever--once something is conceived it is conceivable so nothing is, in effect, inconceivable--but I digress), that everything is knowable, and in learning this we realize that none of this matters--we eventually return to the immortal state from whence we came.
If we are a part of God, and thus God, and even more, a bit of everything else, why is this concept so hard to comprehend? It turns out that God can indeed create a rock so heavy that even God can't lift it--but only because God believes he can't. In truth, the rock is but a pebble.
At this point the Buddhist laughs, the Christian prays, the athiest nods his head, and the agnostic goes back to work and picks up his check on Friday.
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4 comments:
I have to admit that you were right when you said "the Buddhist laughs, the Christian prays, the atheist nods his head." I had just finished reading the part about the rock (and hadn't gotten to the last paragraph yet) and i actually nodded. I find it so interesting how people's beliefs dictate their actions.
It is a hard concept to grasp! Maybe it's one of those things we will find out when we aren't looking for it. It's like my sock analogy. God is the sock, and I will find that missing sock the next day when I just want to wear my flip flops.
Hi Woody,
I found a cool irony in your post. You wrote: "We begin to realize that nothing is inconceivable".
And that's literally true. "Nothing" *is* inconceivable. Have you ever tried to imagine what things were like before the big bang? Inconceivable!
I never considered that God was simply moving tings form Pile A to Pile B. It's a simple comment, but it really moved me, because it forces one to consider how things are created at all. Is it vast connection of all things that can never truly be undone, such as taking a glass of water from one end of the ocean and moving it to the other?
And, it reminds me of one of my favorite anecdotes. In the beginning, there was nothing. This then blew up, creating everything. God was there, somehow, and was untouched by the blast. One week later, Earth.
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