Light Within, since you and I seem on the same wavelength here, in regards to “absolute power and infinite love vs (sitting) uneasily together,” I thought you’d like this except from chapter 5 of my book in progress, Getting to Know One’s Connected Self:
Reverse Levitation
A dream I had the night before last inspired a meaningful mythic story about the possible metaphysics involved in each of us having an individual spirit that interacts with us in the physical dimension where we live out our lives. Before I describe the dream, I need to share some background theological insights that came to me in the days and weeks before it. These insights helped form the dream’s theme.
Standard Christian theology paints a picture of an all-powerful supreme being who intentionally fashioned Creation and then allowed each of us to have free will so that our love for the Supreme Being is genuine instead of a mechanical response.
This story works until you explore the logical implications of an all-powerful Creator. If the Creator is all powerful, then all the suffering that unfortunately goes on in the otherwise beautiful masterpiece is allowed, sooner or later.
Some of the suffering can be bypassed if we choose wisely and don’t go down the dead-end streets of sin. Sin is when we choose to get stuck on any given part of reality that prevents us from being open to the wholeness to which the parts are connected.
But some of the suffering has nothing to do with our sin. Horrible things happen to very good people. Participating in life leaves us vulnerable to victimization. It’s just the way Creation is designed. If an all-powerful God designed it, then He allowed the suffering. The fact that we could choose God’s love or grace to offset, or even transcend, the suffering does not prevent its infliction upon us.
It’s understandable that God enjoys us choosing to love Him. What being would not prefer to be loved? But if our suffering is the price He makes us pay so that we can turn to Him out of love, then we are put into a position of being victims in order to provide the love that God desires. It seems like a sadistic video game that God likes to play. One that we can’t opt out of unless we choose to end our lives. Or it makes God look like he has Munchausen disorder that makes him dependent on making us sick so He can cure us. He’s a nurse that injects poison into us so He can care for us.
The logical conclusion is that an all-powerful God cannot be an all-loving God. Unfortunately, it points out a very inconvenient truth. At least it’s inconvenient if we feel we must depend on an all-powerful God. Those who are individually or collectively struggling to survive would crave power because their situation leaves them feeling powerless. If you are cold and naked, you understandably become obsessed with finding the power of acquiring and wearing warm clothes. You may be willing to kill (overpower) a bear in order to clothe yourself in the bear’s warm furry coat. So, it’s understandable how religion in the past, when everyone was struggling just to survive, would insist on an all-powerful God.
But as we collectively evolve past the basic needs on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we are freer to focus on something as beautiful and meaningful as love. Power and greatness become less important. Love and goodness become our main focus. We have enough power and mastery to afford a higher thing.
Turns out that power is a lower thing as compared to love. If we are honest, life, having the power to be alive, is not worth much without love and beauty. Beauty is but a different form of love. We love the beautiful arrangements life offers. Without any prospect of love and beauty, we had just as soon die. Fortunately, Creation has plenty of love and beauty in it. Suffering is but a part of the Picture.
Where does that leave us who are blessed to have a more evolved spiritual understanding than our forefathers and mothers? It leaves us with an opportunity to choose a loving God who is not all-powerful but who is nonetheless sufficiently powerful to help us fix a cosmic accident.
If the inevitable suffering we encounter on/in the physical plane is the result of an accident, we can no longer blame God for it. Instead, we can choose to do our part to help Ultimate Reality or God fix the problem. And it appears that God graced us with individual spirits so we could have the spiritual power to help God in the Grand Reclamation Project.
Now the stage is properly set for the telling of my dream.
I was levitating above people in a church or educational setting. I was sure that my levitation would be sufficient evidence that there is a spiritual dimension we could tap into. But they would not, or could not, acknowledge that I was, in fact, levitating, hovering slightly (only three or four feet) above.
It seems interesting that my feet were not way above the rest of the people in the dream. I was still in their zone of living, but slightly elevated. One would think that this close proximity would help the people understand. But even that was insufficient. Could they not see the anomaly, the miracle of sorts?
That’s the story, at least the main part of it, as best as I recall. What was the dream showing me? You?
In the dream I was levitating. This seemed an exception to the rule. But what if, out of my bias of thinking we must walk on the ground, I got it backwards?
What if my Connected Self was doing what was normal to it, moving gently about in the astral plane like an angel with wings? What if the abnormal ones were the people, my Concrete Self included, who couldn’t levitate and who couldn’t even appreciate the possibility of it?
Soon after I woke from the dream, I imagined an interesting mythical account of Creation. God’s fingers and hands started getting heavy. Soon his fingers fell off, then his hands, then his arms, then his feet, then his legs. How would you feel if your body parts fell off of you? Wouldn’t you want them back so your being would once again be complete? In my little myth, God wants his parts back. But try as he might, he can’t accomplish this feat on his own. He needed the body parts, which had somehow retained some of his power, as satellites of his being, to help move back into place. He had to work through them. He could not fix the problem by merely working on them.
We are the fallen God parts. Our individual spirits, our Connected Selves, is the way God works through us, but can’t override the free will of the body parts. If we can manage to see the natural workings, the spiritual ways, of our individual spirit, then we can help move the parts back to God. But if we fail to acknowledge the special gifts of our own Connected Self, we will be limited to the ways of the physical plane of existence. Our Concrete Self will not know or understand our Connected Self. And by “our,” I may well mean “my.” That is, my Concrete Self was not understanding or appreciating my Connected Self. Presumably, the same applies to all of us. I am but one of God’s fallen body parts of many.
My made-up metaphysical story left out one thing. In order for the individual spirit to participate in the Grand Reclamation Project, it must accept the mission. Which includes the occasional dread of not being able to fly and the frequent frustration of its host’s refusal to acknowledge it and work with it. The Connected Self must endure the frustration of seeing and feeling the Concrete Self drop the ball that the Connected Self passed to it. Not once or twice, but over and over again!
As I indicated earlier in the book, I borrowed that whole spirit-accepting-the-assignment part of the story from New Age thought. But it works for me, so now it’s my own sub-story, and I’m sticking to it!
Improved edition of same excerpt. Meaning not changed, just improved writing. If you didn’t read first version yet, read this one instead. :
Reverse Levitation
A dream I had the night before last inspired a new meaningful myth. The story is about the possible metaphysics that led up to each of us having an individual spirit that interacts with us in the physical dimension.
Before I describe the dream, I need to share some background theological insights that came to me in the days and weeks before it. These insights helped form the dream’s theme.
Standard Christian theology paints a picture of an all-powerful supreme being who intentionally fashioned Creation and then allowed each of us to have free will so that our love for the Supreme Being is genuine instead of a mechanical response.
This story works until you explore the logical implications of an all-powerful Creator. If the Creator is all powerful, then the intense suffering that unfortunately goes on in the otherwise beautiful masterpiece is allowed, sooner or later.
Some of the suffering can be bypassed if we choose wisely and don’t go down the dead-end streets of sin. Sin is when we choose to get stuck on any given part of reality that prevents us from being open to the wholeness to which the parts are connected.
But a lot of the suffering has nothing to do with our sin. Horrible things happen to very good people. Participating in life leaves us vulnerable to victimization.
It’s just the way Creation is designed. If an all-powerful God designed it, then He allowed the suffering. The fact that we could choose God’s love or grace to offset, or even transcend, the suffering does not prevent its infliction upon us.
It’s understandable that God enjoys us choosing to love Him. What being would not prefer to be loved? But if our suffering is the price He makes us pay so that we can turn to Him out of love, then we are put into a position of being victims. Like it or not, we are placed into a difficult situation in which we just might provide the love that God desires.
It seems like a sadistic video game that God likes to play. One that we can’t opt out of unless we choose to end our lives. Or God appears to have Munchausen disorder that makes him dependent on making us sick so He can cure us. He’s a nurse that injects poison into us so He can care for us.
The logical conclusion is that an all-powerful God cannot be an all-loving God. Unfortunately, it points out a very inconvenient truth. At least it’s inconvenient if we feel we must depend on an all-powerful God. Those who are individually or collectively struggling to survive would crave power because their situation leaves them feeling powerless. If you are cold and naked, you understandably become obsessed with finding the power to acquire and wear warm clothes. You may be willing to kill a bear (overpower it) in order to clothe yourself in its warm furry coat. So, it’s understandable how religion in the past, when everyone was struggling just to survive, would insist on an all-powerful God.
But as we collectively evolve past the basic needs on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we are freer to focus on something as beautiful and meaningful as love. Power and greatness become less important. Love and goodness become our main foci. We have enough power and mastery to afford a higher thing.
Turns out that power is a lower thing as compared to love. If we are honest, life, having the power to be alive, is not worth much without love and beauty. Beauty is but a different form of love. We love the beautiful arrangements life offers. Without any prospect of love and beauty, we had just as soon die.
Fortunately, Creation has plenty of love and beauty in it. Suffering is but a part of the Picture.
Where does that leave those of us who are blessed to have a more evolved spiritual understanding than our forefathers and mothers? It leaves us with an opportunity to choose a loving God who is not all-powerful but who is nonetheless sufficiently powerful to help us fix a cosmic accident.
If the inevitable suffering we encounter in the physical plane is the result of an accident, we can no longer blame God for it. Instead, we can choose to do our part to help Ultimate Reality or God fix the problem. And it appears that God graced us with individual spirits so we could have the spiritual power to help God in the Grand Reclamation Project.
Now the stage is properly set for the telling of my dream.
I was levitating above people in a church or educational setting. I was sure that my levitation would be sufficient evidence that there is a spiritual dimension we could tap into. But they would not, or could not, acknowledge that I was, in fact, levitating, hovering slightly (only three or four feet) above.
It seems interesting that my feet were not way above the rest of the people in the dream. I was still in their zone of living, but slightly elevated. One would think that this close proximity would help the people understand. But even that was insufficient. Could they not see the anomaly, the miracle of sorts?
That’s the story, at least the main part of it, as best as I recall. What was the dream showing me? You?
In the dream I was levitating. This seemed an exception to the rule. But what if, out of my bias of thinking we must walk on the ground, I got it backwards?
What if my Connected Self was doing what was normal to it, moving gently about in the astral plane like an angel with wings? What if the abnormal ones were the people, my Concrete Self included, who couldn’t levitate and who couldn’t even appreciate the possibility of it?
Soon after I woke from the dream, I imagined an interesting mythical account of Creation. God’s fingers and hands started getting heavy. Soon his fingers fell off, then his hands, then his arms, then his feet, then his legs. How would you feel if your body parts fell off you? Wouldn’t you want them back so your being would once again be complete? In my little myth, God wants his parts back. But try as he might, he can’t accomplish this feat on his own. He needs the body parts, which have somehow retained some of his power (as satellites of his being) to help get themselves back into place. He had to work through them. He cannot fix the problem by merely working on them.
We are the fallen God parts. Our individual spirits, our Connected Selves, is the way God works through us, but can’t override the free will of the body parts. If we can manage to see the natural workings, the spiritual ways, of our individual spirit, then we can help move the parts back to God. But if we fail to acknowledge the special gifts of our own Connected Self, we will be limited to the ways of the physical plane of existence. Our Concrete Self will not know or understand our Connected Self. And by “our,” I may well mean “my.” That is, my Concrete Self was not understanding or appreciating myConnected Self. Presumably, the same applies to all of us. I am but one of God’s fallen body parts of many.
My made-up metaphysical story left out one thing. For the individual spirit to participate in the Grand Reclamation Project, it must accept the mission. Which includes the occasional dread of not being able to fly and the frequent frustration of its host’s refusal to acknowledge it and work with it. The Connected Self must endure the frustration of seeing and feeling the Concrete Self drop the ball that the Connected Self passed to it. Not once or twice, but over and over again!
As I indicated earlier in the book, I borrowed that whole spirit-accepting-the-assignment part of the story from New Age thought. But it works for me, so now it’s my own sub-story, and I’m sticking to it!
