Perspectives of God

Perspectives of God:

Teachings of Traditional and Religious Schools of Thought

We know the destination of our journey here on Earth is the same for all. We are traveling our way back to Divinity, through our life experiences, lessons and the expansion of our consciousness. At their root, all the traditional schools of knowledge and also the various religions are merely branches of the same lineage stemming back to the beginnings of time. There are so many pathways, even within of the same system that one has to wonder why.

There are in this world, and in many others out there, various classes of beings, with different perspectives and perception, inclinations, and abilities; each of them blurred by the lens of duality.

A soul comes to Earth to learn a certain lesson, and while those lessons differ from each other in the ways of formatting and implementation, they all were designed to prepare the seeker for the path of self-mastery and illumination. The multitude of paths towards this is a symbolic reference that the spiritual journey is very personal and the lessons are unique to the individual and not transferable. We all need at different moments in our lives, to receive different messages and lessons, delivered in different stages and phases so that our learning process can be optimized.

Have said that, we would like to reiterate that no path is better than another, no one is superior or inferior; they are all just diverse and necessary for the type of lessons the soul will need during a life time and each stage of those lessons are necessary.

At the beginning of our journey home, we start to learn that there is “Good” and “Evil,” things that are pure and others that are not, good actions and bad actions, all linked to the laws of cause and effect. In this phase, all the philosophies and religions teach that one should strive towards the good ones and try to avoid the bad ones and that we should repent for our wrong deeds and shortcomings. They also teach that we need to pray to God, or the gods, which in this state are viewed as an outside entity. In this teaching, God is the recipient of our prayers, and He feels and expresses the majority of human feelings; He can be jealous, have rage and punishes, just for His own pleasure, His children. This is the anthropomorphic face of God.

The sanctity of the human being on this path is demonstrated through the renunciation of the pleasures of life, through celibacy or absence of sexual desires and worldly pleasures.

Traveling along this path, we begin to perceive that we also need to develop a deeper understanding of what faith is and, through this learning; we develop devotion to the Divine. Although the ways we may express our devotion or “rationalize” it is wide-ranging, we still perceiving the deity as something that lives outside ourselves. We are still under the perception of good and evil, purity and impurity.

On the next stop of our journey, we are directed to experiences that awaken and teach us Compassion for all.  On this path, the attachment to symbols is very important because they start representing the divinity to us; they can be ritual prayers, peregrination, litanies, candles, etc.

It is at this point where our relationship with the Divine becomes a little more efficient because we create alternative expressions and ways of connection with God. We may turn to images and repetitious prayers to enter a straight contact with the Energy of the Divine.  Nevertheless, the Divine is still presented here as an external Being.

Continuing the traveling along the path through the different perspectives and phases of the human realization of God, we see the seeker start to use his internal abilities.  We started to realize that we do have these abilities and in knowingly developing them, we are opening ourselves to new doors and perspectives to understand the infinitude of God’s mind.  On this path, we see the use of meditations, the mystical orders and internal practices, yoga, the powers of thoughts and spoken words. Entering this path, one may or may not continue to perceive God as an external entity, nevertheless the scope of possibilities is greatly enhanced.

We realize that even just trailing the beginning steps on the spiritual path, through the first school of knowledge exposed here, we will be prepared to receive the right teachings for the soul in this world to receive. This way we accept that all the schools of learning, being either spiritual, religious or even philosophical; have value and should be honored, because they are serving, on different levels, the higher purpose that unites us all.

All the ways to represent God to different souls in different levels should be respected; no religion is superior or inferior to another. They complement each other in life lessons, according to our needs.  Once we reach this realization, we open ourselves to a greater understanding of all the manifestations of All That Is, such as how can the perfect All That Is include imperfection or things in the way of perfection.

Neither shall they say, Lo here! Or, lo there! For, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
~ Luke 17:21

We start to understand at this stage of the journey that we are part of what we call God, that He is not something outside us, but within us.  This is the true meaning of the profound words in the Bible that speak that we were made in God’s image and likeness. We begin perceiving the little details and miracles that surround us every day with an entirely different and fresh perspective.

Our last stop on this transcendental pilgrimage back to Source comes when we internalize the realization that we can unite ourselves completely with God, through the acceptance and loving embrace of all His creatures and all levels of conscious manifestation.  We understand that the universe is a bounded to time synchronization fields which mean we are all interdependent, we are all connected, and we are all One.

Through all these paths, let us not forget that the learning of Compassion is one of the primary lessons of Earth school and human experience. One of the aspects of Compassion is to learn tolerance for beings that have not developed the same level of understanding as others may have. It is to understand their pains, knowing that everyone is primarily pursuing happiness and self-realization. Ultimately is to realize that everything has a purpose and that the Divine Mind knows it and sees us as equals before His throne.

When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father.
~ Gospel of Thomas 3