I have posted on various aspects of spirituality, but I want to say something more integrated and general. This is prompted by a very powerful personal experience last night, which is so fresh with me that I can not talk about it in abstracted, verbal terms.
In the Christian world, we divide the spiritual into various pieces, and give them names. There is God the father, the creator. There is God the son, Jesus, fully human and fully divine, and there is God the Holy Spirit, the emanation of God following Jesus' resurrection. In addition, there are angels, the messengers of God, whose nature has never been clear, at least to me. Angels have been given elaborate ranks by some authors, the 'principalities and powers' referred to in some older prayers. There is the spiritual antithesis of God, Satan. Satan's nature has differed over the centuries, but in Christian construction, Satan is a representation of evil, and in direct, although apparently fruitless, confrontation with God. Finally, there is a spiritual presence within each person, their soul.
This construction has never sat well with me, for reasons I have described in pieces here and elsewhere. What then do I believe about the world of the spiritual? First, I believe it is real, and more important than the physical reality all around us. Indeed, the 'reality' of reality can be heavily questioned. What we call reality is only a perception, and subject to the limitations of our senses.
Like unified field theory, I believe God is one, and only one. Physicists have sought one explanation uniting equations describing electromagnetics, solid body physics, and particle physics (so far not found). I feel that way about the description of the spiritual. There is only one spirit world, and that world is God, from whom and by whom the world was created as a physical manifestation of spiritual energy.
We use human terms to describe the various manifestations of God for lack of any better terms. God is everywhere, and available to all at any time. When God intervenes on Earth (and I believe this happens in myriad ways we call coincidence, deja vu or miracles), we call these interventions a result of angels. But God is everywhere. The angels are emanations of God, not separate animi. In ancient times, these emanations were referred to as separate gods, and spiritual presences in rivers, trees and the like.
God's spiritual presence has burned brightly in some people, and none more strongly than Jesus. I see no reason to deny the humanity of Jesus, while revering him as a very full manifestation of the mercy of God in a form and terms readily understandable to humans. The Holy Spirit is the presence of God sent to us internally, rather than acting outside of us.
What of Satan? The construction of an evil opponent to God is neither necessary nor theologically sound. For me, God is all-knowing, all-good and all-powerful. Therefore what we call evil must of necessity, like all things, not be in opposition to the will and power of God, but part of that power.
Jesus presents a human and merciful face of God, a transformer, as I have written here earlier. But encounters with God are otherwise described universally as terrifying, the glory and majesty of God being more than humans can understand or bear. The fear engendered is easy to see as evil, but that does not mean that God is evil, or that there is an evil counterpart.
Making the fleshly desires of Man evil is a priori wrong, since we were created by God as we are. We did not fall. We are sadly capable of using almost anything given to us in creation for destruction, and that includes the appetites of our bodies. There are some agonies and problems that we do not understand, but to place them outside the purview of God again seems sacrilegious to me. I did not understand the bad things that happened to me, I only know that I understood when I got my transplant, and that every single thing I had ever experienced had prepared me for the experience, and that I blessed even some of the sad and terrible things I had experienced and seen.
We see the world through the remarkable limits of our own senses and experience. What is a curse to us may be a blessing to the world and others. Whatever it is, like Job, I do not believe it is right to curse God, or create other spiritual entities, in order to explain what happens to us.
God created an immense universe, and many creatures. Even our suffering is part of the goodness of the one God and Lord.
Pardon me for my pedantic and preachy tone. My experience was very profound.
Ted
In the Christian world, we divide the spiritual into various pieces, and give them names. There is God the father, the creator. There is God the son, Jesus, fully human and fully divine, and there is God the Holy Spirit, the emanation of God following Jesus' resurrection. In addition, there are angels, the messengers of God, whose nature has never been clear, at least to me. Angels have been given elaborate ranks by some authors, the 'principalities and powers' referred to in some older prayers. There is the spiritual antithesis of God, Satan. Satan's nature has differed over the centuries, but in Christian construction, Satan is a representation of evil, and in direct, although apparently fruitless, confrontation with God. Finally, there is a spiritual presence within each person, their soul.
This construction has never sat well with me, for reasons I have described in pieces here and elsewhere. What then do I believe about the world of the spiritual? First, I believe it is real, and more important than the physical reality all around us. Indeed, the 'reality' of reality can be heavily questioned. What we call reality is only a perception, and subject to the limitations of our senses.
Like unified field theory, I believe God is one, and only one. Physicists have sought one explanation uniting equations describing electromagnetics, solid body physics, and particle physics (so far not found). I feel that way about the description of the spiritual. There is only one spirit world, and that world is God, from whom and by whom the world was created as a physical manifestation of spiritual energy.
We use human terms to describe the various manifestations of God for lack of any better terms. God is everywhere, and available to all at any time. When God intervenes on Earth (and I believe this happens in myriad ways we call coincidence, deja vu or miracles), we call these interventions a result of angels. But God is everywhere. The angels are emanations of God, not separate animi. In ancient times, these emanations were referred to as separate gods, and spiritual presences in rivers, trees and the like.
God's spiritual presence has burned brightly in some people, and none more strongly than Jesus. I see no reason to deny the humanity of Jesus, while revering him as a very full manifestation of the mercy of God in a form and terms readily understandable to humans. The Holy Spirit is the presence of God sent to us internally, rather than acting outside of us.
What of Satan? The construction of an evil opponent to God is neither necessary nor theologically sound. For me, God is all-knowing, all-good and all-powerful. Therefore what we call evil must of necessity, like all things, not be in opposition to the will and power of God, but part of that power.
Jesus presents a human and merciful face of God, a transformer, as I have written here earlier. But encounters with God are otherwise described universally as terrifying, the glory and majesty of God being more than humans can understand or bear. The fear engendered is easy to see as evil, but that does not mean that God is evil, or that there is an evil counterpart.
Making the fleshly desires of Man evil is a priori wrong, since we were created by God as we are. We did not fall. We are sadly capable of using almost anything given to us in creation for destruction, and that includes the appetites of our bodies. There are some agonies and problems that we do not understand, but to place them outside the purview of God again seems sacrilegious to me. I did not understand the bad things that happened to me, I only know that I understood when I got my transplant, and that every single thing I had ever experienced had prepared me for the experience, and that I blessed even some of the sad and terrible things I had experienced and seen.
We see the world through the remarkable limits of our own senses and experience. What is a curse to us may be a blessing to the world and others. Whatever it is, like Job, I do not believe it is right to curse God, or create other spiritual entities, in order to explain what happens to us.
God created an immense universe, and many creatures. Even our suffering is part of the goodness of the one God and Lord.
Pardon me for my pedantic and preachy tone. My experience was very profound.
Ted
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