Insubstantial or larger than life? Or just having my head in the clouds?

As I was walking near the largest bridge here in Mandal, I reflected on the fact that I was as shallow as a picture, as hollow as an outline, and as insubstantial as an image projected on a canvas. Evidently I forgot to reflect on just how temporary I am, but I guess that kind of follows. ^_^

No, I was not tempted to jump off the bridge (it is anyway not high enough for instant death, although I am sure I would have drowned pretty soon). Rather, the reason for the somewhat extreme imagery was that I compared myself to the heavenly things that exceed my highest aspiration. By comparison, I am a very flimsy thing in whatever aspect of me you may study.

It is said that God does not exist, and in a literal sense I tend to agree, at least for a particular aspect of God. To exist literally means something like “stand out” (ex = out, as most exes may painfully know). God certainly doesn’t stand out. Rather, God is what everything else stands out from. If you watch a movie projected on a white wall, the pictures seem the only reality; they are colorful, ever moving, a variety of shapes and activity. In our mind, they are all there is to what we see before us. But in reality, the only substantial and lasting thing in front of us is the wall, which we do not see, and without which we would not see the images either.

(Only by withdrawing to some degree could God possibly allow the world to exist. A candle cannot burn in the heart of the sun, and the difference here is far greater than that. If God were to be fully present, there would be no room for anything else.)

Even the grandest things of this world are in this way flat and insubstantial, flickering briefly in time, compared to the Eternal. And not God alone, but even the created things of High Heaven – the Thrones, Powers, Dominions and various spiritual creations known and unknown – far exceed anything down here. Believe it or not. ^_^ I just say how I see it at this time. And mainly in a purely thinking way, for it is not as if I have been up there and peeked, to the best of my memory.

And yet there is this flickering little image of God still in man, though some may not know it and some may deny it, and some of us may greatly exaggerate our likeness. But there is this flickering outline of something greater even than the powers of Heaven, albeit only in potential. A potential which now, given my record so far and my limited lifespan, will surely remain mostly (at best) potential. The audacity of hope goes only so far – but it goes some distance.

From across the river, I saw the rows and clusters of homes stretching along the other side. Wishing to bless them all, each home and everyone inside them, I was quite aware that the blessing of my heart was very little worth. Even with a single soul, when met face to face, my heart’s blessing is insubstantial and likely to go unnoticed. Only for my simulated little computer people may my benevolence have any drastic effect, those who live in a small, simple 2-dimensional world far less real than ours. How much less then are the multi-dimensional realms of Heaven, far more real and permanent than the shifting sands of timebound Earth, bound to notice the coming and going of my heart’s unsteady thoughts.

And yet… I aspire to this, to be known in a higher realm, more durable and more real than this one. To taste of the crumbs of immortality, not merely out of a fear of death, but in order to gain the merest little substance, that I may be able to actually do something useful as seen from a much higher place. We may excel in our earthly work (though I currently don’t, unfortunately) but without guidance from Above our work lacks direction. It becomes one of innumerable chaotic movements that cancel each other out on a grander scale. One builds, another tears down. The work of a lifetime may fall to the fires of an hour. What is popular in one generation is reviled by the next. Unless we aspire to something beyond time, we don’t aspire much at all. So it seems to me.

I come home, and later in the evening come across a formerly unread statement by Fridthof Schuon: “If a man seeks to realize that which in fact immensely transcends him, he must  a priori conform to this end or model, for otherwise he will fail either simply by collapsing of else by being broken”. I had to go back and read it over and over.
… that which in fact immensely transcends him…
Yes. It does. I am messing with things that are of a completely different order. And I may fail utterly in the end. But without this aspiration, everything is and remains hollow, just flickering images that are gone when the lights go out. I do not simply accept that as my life, all else untried. I may lose my courage and my patience, but I would rather not do so before even starting.

There are those who think we can go from nothing to something through effort, lift ourselves by our own buddhastraps as Robert Godwin puts it. As a Christian (even if a sucky one) I think we can only move upward through the power of grace. That is not to say that this happens without our consent in details, or that it happens through magic or ritual in an outward way. The new life can only grow at the expense of the old, and accepting this in practice may well be called an “effort”. It certainly can be called suffering, by the original human personality which experiences restriction and the prospect of annihilation, absolute destruction. Of course, if the New Man ever gets the upper hand and gets to write this journal on his own, the concept of suffering is likely to be very different.