I will be using the word God in this post. Don't get nervous. By God I mean the Atman, the cosmic consciousness, Infinity, etc., not an old white man with a beard and a big brain.
People ask, if God made the world, why did he/she/it/we make it with such imperfections? These people are understanding God as separate from themselves. Dawkins wrote a book called 'The God Delusion.' There is a God delusion, but not the one that Dawkins writes about. The real God delusion is that there is anything else but God. Everything else, the entire physical universe and everything that separates us, physically, emotionally, and spiritually from God is a delusion, or rather, an illusion. And it is that very illusion, that is God's creation, that allows people to live exciting, creative, adventurous lives within it.
God is within us and without us. What we observe is only one part of God. So is the observer. Should this world that we observe be perfect? The Garden of Eden is a retirement home. There is literally a retirement home by that name on Stillwell Avenue in Brooklyn. In a "perfect' world, in a Garden of Eden, there is nothing to do; everything is already perfect and there are people (staff) there to return it to perfection when it is not. But perfection is a very dull affair, indeed. There is nothing that could be improved upon, nothing to accomplish. Therefore, no drama, no excitement, no passion, nothing to live for.
Yes, there are imperfections in the observable world and those are in perfect balance with humans that are born with powerful but unobservable passions to rectify those imperfections. We have exciting lives fighting for justice in a world where injustice exists. We struggle to create beauty in a world where ugliness exists. We fight to unfold and disseminate knowledge in a world where ignorance exists. We labor mightily and inspirationally to bring health to a world where physical suffering exists. And if these innate, divine passions are not enough to solve all the world's problems, there are also humans born with a passion to inspire others to greater passion. And what they accomplish, these passionate people, is never enough, and that is perfect, because there are future generations of people bursting into life at every single moment, and these people are hoping to lead passionate lives, themselves; something that they could not do being born into a world where everything was already perfect, i.e. a retirement home.
And don't think I am talking about an elite few brilliant and passionate politicians, artists and scientists. I am also talking about the billions of people who struggle to make this world, or the world of their families, or the world of their neighbors, a little better. Creating a family is hard work. If it wasn't, if your children were already perfect, if you had hired help to change their diapers, you had enough narcotics to sleep through the birth of your child, without suffering, born into enough money to support your child without working, etc., etc., then you would still struggle to find a way to make your child even happier and more secure in that context. But if your child were perfectly happy and perfectly secure already, with no input from you, then you didn't really have the experience of parenting, which has to do with the efforts we make to improve the lives of our children and the deep, abiding satisfaction that we get and love that we feel, after making that investment, in seeing them turn out, not perfect, but fine, loving, people, ready and passionate to make their contribution to a world that still needs it.
This is the game of life. If the world ever achieved perfection, it would end. When, and if, that should ever happen, then we would return to the cosmic consciousness where the only thing left to do would be to create a new universe which, by necessity, would have to include the imperfections needed to make it a truly exciting, challenging place for humans to live in.
What of those victims who do suffer and do not, themselves, have the where with all to improve their situation? You have to think bigger and wider. They are there to offer you an opportunity to do something for them. They are there to teach you to deepen your compassion They are there for parents to broaden and deepen their understanding of love. And they are there to learn something about this experience themselves, which is that it still can be transcended by love, that you still have innumerable blessings beyond the few that you are lacking. You can think and, miraculously, your brain throws up to your consciousnes, from somewhere hidden among a hundred billion neurons, the very things you want to think about the moment you want to think about them. Now that is miraculous, whatever else your body can or cannot do. Every movement you make, even if your movements are limited, are made possible because of millions of neurons linking to millions of other neurons in a precise path that sparks the contraction and release of billions of muscle molecules that are instantly responsive to your moment to moment desire to move. Whatever you can do with and within your body, is miraculous and you have never lost the capacity to love. And if you are alive, in whatever condition, you have not lost that most cherished of abilities, the ability to experience.
And of course consciousnes is not generated. Consciousness is. So these lives that we lead are not our only shot. We are here to learn something and we will get many more shots as we learn how to overcome challenges, how to find the love within the challenge, and how to discard the passions that lead us to further isolation and selfishness, and keep or develop those which lead us to greater love and connection.
The understanding of a transcendent God does not lead us to passivity. We too are God's creations and we have a passion within us that God has placed there and a world around us that is the perfect external environment within which to lead our passionate lives.
The Comment Lamp is lit. Please let me know what you think.
2 comments:
You are on it. We see lots of people say that they "are not religious but spiritual." If they understand what you have written, they will say that they "are not religious but rather connect intentionally with the original and expressive Consciousness."
Sorry, but for me spiritual is too fuzzy a designation. If I am going to give myself to something or someone I need to be able to relate to them. This is something I learned well before getting married. Implies worship of something that might resemble Casper the Friendly Ghost. No, I am not suggesting and anthropomorphized understanding of God save for the Son who became a man for a stretch of thirty some years to give us a visual representation of what God is like. Matt, might I presume you possess an orthodox understanding of the general flow and thrust of the Biblical narrative? If so, come the millennial age, the thousand year reign of Christ on Earth (we live on a planet whose name means dirt), what might prove interesting about that period of time? I have finished the rewrite of Dante's inferno, entitled Skinwalker: Abandon Hope and must now consider the opposite of the Inferno. I'm considering writing about one phrase from the hymn Amazing Grace: When we've been there ten thousand years/ bright, shining as the sun. The next writing task will examine that line from the point of view of folks who have been there 10,000 years. But a story can only thrive amid conflict. What kind of conflict can happen in a place of perfection? This concept may fall apart at the outset. Thanks for your thoughts.
Post a Comment