Monday 13 April 2015

Letter from your Heavenly Father (Part Two)

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My Dear Child,

Now you know that my creative purpose is to raise-up my children to a divine maturity, in hope that they will freely chose to become loving friends with me and with each other, perhaps I can now explain some of the features of your mortal life, and especially its difficulties and suffering?

You are an eternal being, whose original essence goes back to the beginning of everything. This eternal essence is the basis of your fundamental autonomy, your free will, your ability to choose.

Because not everything about you was made, therefore part of you is independent of everything in the universe - including being independent of myself. You can be a first cause, an unmoved mover. To this extent you are unique: different from everybody and everything that ever has been.

On top of this, you have become a child of myself and your Mother in Heaven - we took this primal essence and added to it. We made you like us, self-aware: a personage. You are now a child of God, and this is the basis of your relation to myself, and all other people (past, present and future). To this extent you are intrinsically part of a family.

So you are unique but you are not alone. You do not need to strive to be unique, and you do not need to strive to be part of a web of relationships - these are given facts; they are already a part of your situation and the situation of everybody else.

So, although you are a child, very immature, flawed, weak and so on - nonetheless you are divine, invincible, eternal... and are at present on a path to higher divinity.

You have the potential to become a god of the same kind as myself, that is an 'adult' god, and to choose to enter into a full and adult relationship with me and your Mother in Heaven. That this may happen is our deepest yearning, and we have done everything possible to make it possible.

When I say you have potential to become a god like me, I do not want you to think about this in terms of power, but instead in terms of relationships.

You might imagine becoming a real and loving friend to a King of England or the President of the USA - or an Emperor of the world - they might want you as a friend, and you might be part of their families, you might work with them in collaboration on creative projects... but that does not make you personally a King, President or Emperor. You may be best friends, you may both be Men; but the King remains King, and you remain his subject.

That is how I want you to think about becoming divine, becoming a god, and having an adult friendship with me. It is not a matter of power, but a matter of love.

However your path is long, and intrinsically difficult. You are an infant god - a god, yes - yet an infant. As divine you are great, as a child you are weak - lacking in knowledge and strength, defective in goodness...

There is much you need to learn - and your learning must be practical and experiential, not merely theoretical. This is why life is and must be hard and full of difficulties, why it is a matter of trial and error - mistaking and repenting and trying again.

(There is a sense in which life necessarily resembles warfare, and fighting can only be learned by situations which include actual combat. Soldiering cannot be learned just from lectures at military college, nor only by drills, exercises and simulations exclusively. Real combat experience is essential.)

Furthermore, you must consent to learning at every step, and must continue to choose to continue the process. In this regard, ultimately, you cannot be coerced into learning or specific choosing; although you can of course be influenced - for good or for ill.

So, this is the basic nature of your situation, this is where you find yourself. This - where you are now.

And this is the situation which you previously chose in its general features  - although, obviously, you did not choose every specific aspect of your life - and many of these specific aspects are the consequence of other peoples choices- which are equally as real as your own.

You are probably wondering why you have to be told this.

The reason you did not already know all this stuff, is partly the fact that you did already know it, but mortal life on earth is so different from your previous Heavenly life that Heavenly knowledge is inaccessible in a similar way (and for similar reasons) as your dream life is scanty and fragmentary. That is, you may recall a few fragments, but most dreams are apparently forgotten, or cannot be made sense of, essentially because sleeping consciousness is so very different from waking.

Likewise your earlier state of Heavenly consciousness was extremely different from your current state of mortal consciousness. So you need to be reminded, again and again. And indeed life is full of such reminders - but you may have chosen to ignore or reject the reminders up until now.

Life is also full of falsehoods and distractions, and paths leading in wrong directions, which you have often chosen.

You are a mixed creature, life is a mixed business, there is much to learn - thus development is a long processes. But I hope you will agree that life is also real, important, and has an inspiring aim.

You are unique and you are free, and you are also surrounded by family and friends and helpers - some alive, some dead, some advanced in divinity; and I haven't even yet mentioned Jesus Christ! So, no matter what your current situation may be, the odds of ultimate victory are heavily, indeed irresistibly, stacked in your favour - if that is what you choose.


From your loving Father in Heaven

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7 comments:

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Just after reading this, I turned to the Plato book I have been reading and (as the synchronicity fairies would have it) read this passage:

"Let me tell you then why the creator made this world of generation. He was good, and the good can never have any jealousy of anything. And being free from jealousy, he desired that all things should be as like himself as they could be. This is in the truest sense the origin of creation and of the world, and we shall do well in believing on the testimony of wise men" (Timaeus).

Bruce Charlton said...

@WmJas - Ha! But I'm not sure if it means the same as I do. "he desired that all things should be as like himself as they could be"

My understanding is that God wants us to be at the same 'level' as he is; but each a distinct individual. The quoted Plato passage may (?) be implying that the creator wants us to be identical with him, and to lose individuality and self-hood...?

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Well, I haven't finished the Timaeus yet, but so far I think the meaning of the quoted passage is that the Creator wanted his creation to have the same excellent qualities that he himself had, not that it should be identical with him. Continuing the quote:

"God desired that all things should be good and nothing bad, so far as this was attainable. Wherefore, also finding the whole visible sphere . . . moving in an irregular and disorderly fashion, out of disorder he brought order, considering that this was in every way better than the other. . . . and the creator, reflecting on the things which are by nature visible, found that no unintelligent creature taken as a whole could ever be fairer than the intelligent taken as a whole, and again that intelligence could not be present in anything which was devoid of a soul. For which reason, when he was framing the universe, he put intelligence in soul, and soul in body, that he might be the creator of a work which was by nature fairest and best."

Andrew said...

The beautiful simplicity of this is a struggle for me. Despite being an "outsider," the modern world has definitely influenced my viewpoint. The idea that nothing makes sense has, I think, influenced my attempt at understanding ultimate reality as something that can't make sense (to me, or to my limited intelligence). Yet that provides nothing for one to live by. That uncertainness is then just filled in by the world with distractions or demands. Here though is something though - where the purest joys of life are confirmed as what's most important.

Bruce Charlton said...

@WmJas - I suspect that the Greeks did not have a truly personal concept of God as creator, so probably could not have meant the same as the Hebrews.

Vader said...

The only disagreement I have with any of this is that I think the "essence" of which we were fashioned must have had self-awareness; "I am, therefore I think."

But I'm sure not sure of that, since the Pythagorean Theorem is also eternal, yet is not self-aware. (I assume.)

Bruce Charlton said...

@Vader - The addition of self-awareness is a guess at what it means to become a child of God. At present I can't think of anything more plausible or comprehensible.