If everything arises from this Ground of Being, and we are a part of it, can we experience being a part of it? Can the experience of it become “living an abundant life”?
So, just for discussion purposes, lets suppose these premises:
- All humankind is not fallen, but are just as they were when they came into being.
- All humankind, as all of the physical universe, are a part of the ground of being (Infinity).
- The ground of being is the “Infinity” from which all things arise.
- The ground of being is the potentiality from which all physical things arise.
- An example of this potentiality is the human stemcell, its make up, and its mode of development and growth.
- Each human is “the original”…. i.e. Each human is connected to that which they arise from. There is no “secondary connection”, each is DIRECTLY CONNECTED.
- Each human experiences their life from their unique perspective and location on this “tree of life”.
- All humans have the ability to “see into” the ground of being, as we are each one of us “hooked into” the system of Infinity.
- Each human has sudden “insights” into the system they are a part of.
- Some humans practice and/or prepare themselves to lengthen the experience of the sudden “insights” into a way of life.
Based on these tentative premises:
Did humans like Moses, John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul, John Wesley, Augustine, Isaiah…. Buddha, and others, have an experience of the Ground of Being? Did the Ground of Being break through the “veil” between the limitations of their 5 senses and a wider experience? Did they experience… even for one moment, the “glory of the Ground of Being?
For a human, to experience the Ground of their Being in this way, would surely be a totally awe-stricken experience. And this is what seems to have been passed down in the stories, and in the after-events of their experience.
But, each of these humans were left to unravel the mystery of what they had seen, and it seems they all, to one extent or another, interpreted what they had seen, with the words and concepts they understood…. so.. from their cultural context.
For example, the Jewish culture, and perhaps all human cultures at that time and since, have held “morality” or “holiness” in a very high place.
So in the Jewish persons interpretation of the experience, the purity they experienced would translate into a morality of some sort….
If the awe stricken experience, like that of Isaiah is to tell us something, it is that Isaiah felt impure in the raw presence of Infinity. So he, like Moses, interpreted that Infinity characteristic primarily as “pure” “holy” and “sacred”. The Jewish interpretation of this became that this “God”, this divinity, was sacred…. and then they sensed that they were “not good enough” to be in its presence, and that sacrifices were necessary to be “pure enough” to be in its presence…. and the Jewish temple etc is all set up with this concept in mind……. (sound familiar? Chinese emperor, Aztecs, Israelites, Canaanites…. maybe all ancient cultures??)
But are these interpretations correct, or are they “the world of the 5 senses mind” saying “oh, I know what all that means!” and then carrying it to a wrong conclusion……???? (Instead of letting it form a basis for a living way of life, they defined it and cast it into dead rules and laws)
But, it seems all humans have the automatic response of falling down on their knees, with a sense of awe, in the presence of what they see as the divine.
All humans seem to interpret this Infinity.. this Purity, to be some sort of divinity….. so awesome, that they cannot imagine that they are “a part of it”!!!!!!
If the divine is the ground of being, and all things have arisen from that ground of being, then humans experiencing of that divine, has pretty much always brought them to their knees, in awe.
There seems to not need to be any teaching for this to happen…. it always seems to come out as “Remove your shoes and fall on your knees, for you are standing on hallowed ground”.
Some experience this as a “God” experience, and some experience this as an encounter with the “Ground of Being”… nameless, beyond body, beyond personage……
So, my question is: “Is this experiencing of the “Ground of Being” meant to be a life changing experience, which if we simply allow it to be, and don’t misinterpret it… can grow to become our ongoing experience of “abundant life”?
Reality is Dharma 