I've taken a break from our discussion because I've been spending much time pondering the things we've touched upon. I'll see if I can't pick up some thoughts now from here with a little more focus.
God and the world, all creation whether spiritual or material, are irradicably different. God is wholly other than me, I am not divine and no part of me is divine, while God is wholly divine, cannot be parted, and if He could no part would be not divine.
As I've pointed out before, to be separate from God is a non-reality. The Infinite cannot have gaps or holes and still be considered infinite; Omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscience. God is not a block of swiss cheese, with us hanging out in the holes where the cheese does not exist. Apart from God, there is no existence.
Either we define God as a separate being, a "creature", which would be consistent with what you are suggesting, or we acknowledge the Allness of God and we have to grapple with why it is that while God is everywhere, which of course includes inside us as well, we do not sense or experience it that way. The latter has actual, accessible answers, while the former is a non-reality which denies the Absoluteness of God.
See I would call God the sourceless Form, He is the perfection of Form and Substance, the self-sustaining being that sources all being. He exists. God is a person, three actually, that have will and drive, that speak and act and direct.
Water takes form; the wave is the form the water takes. The divine substance takes form, that form is the Triune Godhead.
To me this is where things get really interesting. I would say God is non-being, out of which being arises. However, as the Trinity formulation points at, this form arising from God is not "other to God", but IS God manifesting. That is what John's Logos is portrayed as. Logos is the Manifestor of the Infinite, formless, unknowable God, being manifest in form. When you see form, that is Logos expressing the Infinite formless Source into being.
The "mediator" between being and non-being, between form and formlessness is what Logos is. Logos is the Agent of creation, as John clearly expresses in the prologue of his Gospel. But not as a created being, a "creature", but as God
expressing itself into, in, and through form. Logos is not other to God, nor is what is created through Logos "outside" Logos. There is never a point where creation separates out from Divinity, but instead creation
radiates the singular Divinity in all form.
Logos is that Form, that expresses, reveals, manifests, and radiates the Infinite Formless Divine Godhead. "The Logos was God", making the Divine Reality, reality. "The invisible things of him through creation are clearly seen and made known, even his eternal power and Godhead". Logos manifests the Formless, unknowable God, into knowable form. The Holy Spirit is that which flows from God, through Logos, into form. "Father, Son, Holy Spirit". There is no separation, anywhere, no swiss-cheese Divinity.
This is why I said by separation I meant ontological distinction from. The being that fills my form isn't the divine substance, it is the human substance quite separate from the divine.
Then what gives it its being? Itself? Are you the Source of your own existence? Did you create yourself?
My experience with God is in direct contradiction to this. We are not the wave to the divine water, we are the land the wave is directed at.
And this is where I really wanted to spend the bulk of our ongoing discussion. Where you see a contradiction, I see simply different perspectives of the Divine Reality. I see different realization of Truth in various states and stages of our individual forms.
I'm going to come back to my own initial Awakening experience when I was 18 and flesh out some more detail that might help communicate what I am seeing. While there were two different experiences a few days apart, and while the "content" of them were different, they were both, undeniably Absolute. I'm sure you understand that unmistakable nature of the Divine from your own experience. The reality of it, is beyond all question and doubt. I understand, recognize, and of course respect that.
The first of these was an experience of my own death. I faced entering into and through that door of my own perceived, or rather dreaded fear of my own non-existence. I was plunging fully aware into utter non-being, and then in an instantaneous "blink", I moved from utter blackness into Absolute Light. There was "nothing", in the sense of no form. No "thing" was present. It was just absolute utterly pure Light and Love and Stillness. Fear was a non-reality. I was "beholding" Infinity, and what seemed as a sliver of infinity which was an infinity in itself, of an infinite "infinities" beyond, each infinite in themselves, of the same Infinite that was all of these that was itself Infinite, forever and ever. There are no words that can approach expressing this.
This then manifest to my mind as "Mind" which "looked" at me, and held me with Absolute Infinite Power, with Absolute Grace. Again, no words will suffice. I then heard to my mind my name "spoken" in this indescribable warmth and love of absolute compassion and Grace, and my entire life from childhood on passed before my awareness, with this new realization that at no point was I ever outside of this which now held me in its Being and Presence, despite my not seeing of it, and living my life in fear and the sense of separation and aloneness.
All this was outside of time itself. Time had ceased at that instant I passed through the black "hole" into that Light. And in what seemed afterwards like perhaps only a few seconds had passed, I was "back" in this body and the life of my mind and person I was prior to this moment of "enlightenment", you could call that.
That started the ball rolling and I struggled to understand this from where I was at and the abrupt and stunning change of reality that had befallen me. This then led to my 2nd experience, or what one would rather better understand as "part 2" of the same Awakening. The first part could be understood as the experience of death. The 2nd part, ironically a few days later, that of resurrection from death.
In that experience, I was not "outside time" or outside the body. On the contrary I was walking outside, but inside my head, separate from the world, trying to figure out this grand Mystery that I had encountered, lost in thought, not present in my body, which at the time was my normal waking state. What unfolded again happened without warning, and that exact same Absolute Love, and Light, Being, Life, Grace, Power, Compassion, now became seen by my waking eyes in everything that exists. Every blade of grass, every molecule of air, the light from the sun, the breeze, every object all radiated that Divine Reality that I had found myself awakened to a mere few days earlier in passing through that door of my own death.
But absent in this was that singular focused "Mind" that "saw" me, It was Spirit, and there are no words to describe this, other than Light, Life, and Love (which you'll see as my "religion" I list on my profile, for good reason). This then suddenly welled up from the most unimaginable depth of my own being, far out of any possible thought I could ever have had, and can gushing forth in a torrent of Absolute JOY. That Love, Light, and Life, which radiated from "God" and is God which I had encountered days early, now poured forth through me like a fountain, radiating every molecule of my body and mind with that same Radiance which was in everything else in the world. There was this Living exchange of that Light, Life, and Love that is both One, and Many. Form, and Formless. God and the world. Spirit and creation. There was the Timeless, within the context of time. Formlessness in Form. Spirit in Creation. The Unmanifest in the manifest.
That experience was literally, resurrection from death into Life. Now, while my mind was a bit "surprised" it didn't mirror the first experience of God, since that was Absolute, it became clear that it was not a "contradiction" to the first, but a different realization of the Absolute, which was just as Absolute as the former, even though how it manifest was both radically different, yet in reality, absolutely the same Divine Essence. In technical terms, which I touched on before, the 1st part was a "Casual" level experience, which took on the form of a "Deity mysticism" experience.
The 2nd part, most definitely included that, but "transcended" it in how the Divine was experienced by me into what technically can be understood as a true "nondual" experience. That "face of the Divine" which manifest to me previously, was not an active part of it as it was, but the "face behind the face", that Infinite God behind "God", that Formeless Causal Spirit, was now bursting forth, radiating the Infinite Formless, Causal Divine into all form. That.... was Logos. That Radiance of God, and Spirit flowed through all, to all, from all. That, is vibrant, "living color" (a good description), was that Trinity. The Infinite Wellspring of Life (the Father), manifesting, radiating the Divine Reality in and through form (the Son or Logos), and the binding flow of "living waters (an absolutely apt description) between creation and Source, is Spirit; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One God, in three "substances" of the one Divine substance.
The Trinity at its heart is a mystical realization, and very confused by most anyone who have not experienced this, mistaking the "persons" as "people", or some other such anthropomorphism as a mental description of the Divine reality. It is all one Divine Reality, as Source, Manifestation, and Union. Father, Son, Spirit. That is one way to talk about it. The Divine Reality embraces all of us, without exception.
I'm going to pause here to focus my thoughts again as the key to me in our conversation is that it seems you have taken your experience as the single way the experience of the Absolute is, as the only reality it can be because it was Absolute to you. The first, to me as well as the second was the same Absolute, but rather than me seeing a "contradiction", I came to realize, since the nature of both was that exact and only one absolute Reality, and they were experienced differently, that they are simply different perceptions and experiences. I don't sense that you understand this, and see "off meat" as you put it, when you hear someone speak of God outside your translation of your personal experience of the Absolute. I'd like to focus here if we could.
Do you see that my description of "part two" of my own "death and resurrection" experience is a "contradiction" to the first one, or to yours? Was the first God, and the second something else that wasn't God? Does the human experience of the Divine have to fit within theological constructs, or should theological constructs be rather products of experiences of the many depths of the Divine? Is God one "thing" or can be known in many ways, from nature mysticism, to deity mysticism, to casual mysticism, to nondual mysticism? Is your experience, or my experience, the limits and absolute measure of the Truth of God? Can your experience of the Divine, allow for "surprises"?
Hmm... that's an interesting thought I'm going to chew on for awhile.
