Ruth: Interesting. I think this is something we might only be able to speculate about. Who or what are ‘divine beings’?
Jewelsofthought: Beings that serve the Divine.
Ruth: What qualifies as serving the divine? How do/can we know this? And What is the divine?
Jewelsofthought: Are you really asking that question? You no longer believe in something greater or more encompassing than the human experience? Have you become a non-believer, an atheist?
Ruth: No, I believe in something but I don’t know what is. So i am still wondering even if I don’t always ask.
Jewelsofthought: What are you wondering exactly?
Ruth: About the above questions. And whether there’s a way for us to know the answers to them or if they’ll always be mysteries to us.
Jewelsofthought: Our very existence is a mystery that is by definition greater than us, and will always remain so. How much of what lies behind the mystery that we can comprehend is the exciting part of it. A better question might be whether it is possible to comprehend part of the incomprehensible through what is comprehensible.
However that may be, what is obvious is that there is an existence that contains or encompasses all of existence, and transcends it all. Just like all numbers are contained in infinity, which itself is not a number.
Ruth: Thanks. That makes sense. What do you mean by ‘divine beings’? If we are created by ‘the divine’ would that not make us divine too?
Jewelsofthought: In that case all of creation is Divine, and all beings are essentially Divine. How do we then express our Divine nature? What of us is non-Divine then? It is that part of us that doubts or denies the Divine in and around us. That denies the ineffable Oneness of Creation and the Creator.
Ruth: My thoughts exactly. No more duality. Everything has divine essence. But I see your point about awareness and ability to choose.
Jewelsofthought: Remember, you do not (perhaps cannot) have to know WHAT it is. You just have to know that It IS.
You shall know today (4:39)
The foundation of all foundations, and the pillar of all wisdom, is to know that there is a First Existence, who brings all existences into being; that all existences of heaven and earth, and between them, derive existence only from the truth of Its existence.
(Mishneh Torah, Laws of the Fundamentals of Torah 1:1)
That is the paradoxical and Divine essence of our existence... the freedom (and burden) of choice. Do not forget that the human experience is ordained, and inevitable, but the spiritual experience is optional.😂
A pagan belief is not to associate the Creator G!d with our world or the objects and manifestations thereof, but to believe and relate to (any of) them as actual god(s). It is possible for a person (or persons) to achieve incredible things and have great influence upon us, but that is not sufficient to make them a god, though they could be thought of as G!D's hand having been laid upon them. What the consequences of having multiple gods ruling over the world around them might mean to them will be culturally based (and biased) and dependent on their beliefs.
There is only One Creator, G!d, even though, precisely because He is One, It seems to be made up of parts. However, each part, and part of parts, can only be It. That we are part of Creation means that we are it (in it, of it).
So we will say things like: "I am having an experience of separateness", which is what the mystics say. I say, that is what I am - an experience of separateness. Thus i am Creation itself, being that Creation itself is an event of separation - within, of course, an Infinite Oneness.
This separation is by being finite in an Infinity. It is a magical - we might today say, inexplicable, and rather mysterious process of the finite part of an infinity. I like to say that it takes an infinite amount of effort to produce any finite. It would be a process of the infinite restriction (of Itself) by an infinite amount to become finite. And it manifests this process endlessly as a part of Itself.
Yet infinity is a concept, an idea, that can only be born from a finite part that realised that it is finite. Only through realizing finiteness (finity) can you begin to perceive infinity. With that awareness comes the deep realization that we are separate from the Infinite that surrounds us. That is the darkness of our despair.
This is now the place of choice. The place of transformation. The existential fork in the road. Which way will you turn? It is not a place of up or down, in or out, but one of whether you choose to make your God finite or infinite. Your cosmology based on an infinite idea, or a finite one. Your choice.
G-d is the exclusive source of life; hence life, by definition, is connection with G-d. A “life” of disconnection from G-d is pseudo-life — a life devoid of all but its most superficial illusory shell.
(The Chassidic Masters)