-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Are We Separate From God?
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
Quiddity
UndertheInfluenceofGiants
Sunstone said:
I believe we are seperate, but we can be together. I believe we are seperate because the cosmos function that way. Things can come together and seperate. I believe our relationship with God works similarly.
To have it any other way goes against my deepest desire to be unique and free, while yearning for meaning and unity in a relationship with God. The reality around me, seems to support what I feel and think.
doppelganger
Through the Looking Glass
Since separation from anything is a matter of perspective and interpretation, it would depend on the frame of reference from which one asks. If I stand in a large crowd of people, a person looking down from a helicopter onto the crowd might not perceive that I am separate from the crowd. My friend who is standing next to me having a conversation with me probably would.
jacquie4000
Well-Known Member
Together yet seperate right now I can not put it into words for you.
Guitar's Cry
Disciple of Pan
There can be no way. "God" as a symbol cannot be seperate from the universe. It is undeniably an intricate part of the human culture and its conciousness. Even if it turns out to be nothing more than a symbol (but isn't that everything?), that symbol exists.
lilithu
The Devil's Advocate
Our minds perceive us to be separate from God. And to a certain extent, our minds make our own reality.Sunstone said:
"Mind precedes all things. They are mind-governed and mind-wrought."
- the Dhammapada
All that is is of God. But God is more than all there is. Yet God does not exist separate from what is.Sunstone said:
No reason why other than that's what makes sense to me.Sunstone said:
I'm a panentheist.
And a process theist.
There is no seperation, of course, we have been through this many times I believe, only the illusion that seperation creates: the differentiated "I" as an experiencer experiencing the Other "that": put "AM" in between the two words and there may be shed some light of truth.
The problem may be apparent thus: God made Man in His image but seemingly Man has returned the favour. Your projection of what God is cannot be God, anymore than my imaginary alter-ego is the whole of my-Self in Reality.
The rule of thumb, if one can be made, is that whatever about oneself that is changing and impermanent is not God but only a reflection of Him: all those emotions, thought-forms, sensations and ideations are not God in His completeness. What is constant about everything I percive is true to my-Self: that is, the immutable ME or Atman is that constituent of every soul which is one and the same with God on every level and sense. This is not easy to understand: for we are often so distracted and averse to cultivating the required intuitive and reasoning faculties which alert us to it, but in "moments of clarity", so to speak, we have direct connexion with it and I believe no man or woman lives without @ least once having this peace: a free gift and the most priceless and precious.
The problem may be apparent thus: God made Man in His image but seemingly Man has returned the favour. Your projection of what God is cannot be God, anymore than my imaginary alter-ego is the whole of my-Self in Reality.
The rule of thumb, if one can be made, is that whatever about oneself that is changing and impermanent is not God but only a reflection of Him: all those emotions, thought-forms, sensations and ideations are not God in His completeness. What is constant about everything I percive is true to my-Self: that is, the immutable ME or Atman is that constituent of every soul which is one and the same with God on every level and sense. This is not easy to understand: for we are often so distracted and averse to cultivating the required intuitive and reasoning faculties which alert us to it, but in "moments of clarity", so to speak, we have direct connexion with it and I believe no man or woman lives without @ least once having this peace: a free gift and the most priceless and precious.
God is here around us, yet being breathed from above into every quantum’s to animate atoms, as science currently is looking at quantum’s…. they have explained it as happy and sad, yet really it is the energy shined in directly above every quantum that then diminishes as it sinks to less vibration.
So basically above every quantum is God breathing life into this thing we call reality.
Else scientifically there is no explanation for quantum’s fields forming and stabilizing...we have sort of said so far that there was a big bang happened and then we got atoms, yet not many thought about smaller then that and how that became stable to begin with.
if God wasn't making a matrix for it to be coordinated, then it would be random chaos as it was before God began.
So basically God is here around you part of you, plus heaven is as the temple of God surrounds God in radiant light emanating from God’s presence.
So basically above every quantum is God breathing life into this thing we call reality.
Else scientifically there is no explanation for quantum’s fields forming and stabilizing...we have sort of said so far that there was a big bang happened and then we got atoms, yet not many thought about smaller then that and how that became stable to begin with.
if God wasn't making a matrix for it to be coordinated, then it would be random chaos as it was before God began.
So basically God is here around you part of you, plus heaven is as the temple of God surrounds God in radiant light emanating from God’s presence.
messianicmystic
Member
In the paraphrase of the Corpus Hermeticum that I mentioned in another thread, it says something like everything that exists is a thought the creator thinks. I would tend to agree with the sentiment that we are as much a figment of God's imagination as he is of ours. I'm reminded of what I believe is a saying of Chuang Tzu. He once dreamt he was a butterfly and said to his disciples the next morning, "Last night, I dreamt I was a butterfly, but how do I know I am a man who dreamt he was a butterfly and not a butterfly who is now dreaming he's a man." Perhaps both are true. Getting to the point, when we dream, there is an us in our dream among other people and/or things, but really everything in our dream is us. In a dream we create others, but when we are awake, others create us, whether these others are people or things like mirrors and light. We cannot experience me directly, we require others to show us me. I believe it is in this regard that we are both one with God and separate from him (or simply seemingly separate), just like others though seemingly separate are inseparable from me whether I'm dreaming or awake.
lilithu
The Devil's Advocate
And then there's the Hindu belief that the universe springs from Brahma's dreaming. (and is but one of a succession of universes dreamed into being).messianicmystic said:
I also like the idea that God talked the universe into being via the Logos.
In the beginning, God said, "Let there be light." And there was light. etc.
And we are made in the image of God because we too create via the word (ie - thought).
messianicmystic
Member
I would say I agree with all of those conceptions as well. By the way, who is the dancing shadow with the ipod in your avatar picture? That cracks me up.
xexon
Destroyer of Worlds
Sunstone said:
Your word orgami is fun.
You are separate from God because you think you are. A product of the mind. The human mind.
Everything else has some innate understanding of it's connectivity to something bigger. But not humans. Actually they do, but the mind has the "ability" to dwell on such things. It can talk itself out of something just as easily as it can talk itself into something. When it concerns God, all the more so. Because the mind itself cannot go beyond itself. It cannot know God beyond mental concepts, and it has a terrible time with this.
You, and the rest of the universe are inside a bubble of mental creation. Inside an ocean called God. Your bubble will pop someday, and you'll rejoin that from which you came.
I love popping bubbles. So either come closer or run. You have freewill to choose.
x
lilithu
The Devil's Advocate
Why that's Vajravarahi, a tantric deity/bodhisattva. She's a bit of a paradox. The Buddhist ideal is non-attachment, almost ascetic. It is believed that desire causes suffering. But Vajravarahi... well she relieves desire by fulfilling it.messianicmystic said:
So... technically... a Buddhist isn't supposed to desire a trendy ipod but....
I love the contradiction!!
Samsara is Nirvana!!
Doesn't she look like she's having a blast?