“Everything is a manifestation, not just an effect, of Me.”

I found a very fine collection of cave paintings and other prehistoric art in Journey Through the Ice Age, by Paul G. Bahn and Jean Vertut.  There is a breathtaking simplicity and grace to many of the paintings.

“Lord, these cave paintings also have an aura of holiness.”

That is right.  My first approach is to give humans the sense that nature is special, sacred, that there is something more than trees and clumps of grass, that there is also a spiritual presence.

“Lord, were the cave-paintings inspired by You as a way of expressing how You saw animals?”

These questions about whether I caused something or the person did are not as valid as you think.  I often think through people.  Your thoughts are often My thoughts.  Remember that, in a sense, everything is a manifestation, not just an effect, of Me.

In spite of my own experiences, I was still disturbed by the idea of God being present in or entering people and things.  “Lord, Your spirit entered the cave artists?”

Well, if you want to put it that way.  But it is not like possession or automatic writing.  At times, individuals are “filled” with Me, “in-spired.”  What they do at those times is therefore also something I am doing.

“So these inspired individuals saw animals the way You do?”

They saw them as they are.  They saw their souls, their moving spirits, like looking into the eyes of your beloved.  These animals have beautiful souls.

 

 

“For the first time, humans mirror Me, look at me eyeball to eyeball.”

God and Humans

I wondered how God interacted with these first humans.  “Did You communicate with them verbally?”

In a sense.  Early on, they do not have what can properly be called a language. 

They have sounds and gestures (and) live in a very short time-horizon—no signifiers for things distant in time or space.  I communicate in grunts and such like, in their inner ears, to give them a sense of awe and My presence.  Of course, their consciousness is still very undifferentiated.

This is not a criticism or insult.  They are quite wonderful creatures. 

Some respond in a very spiritual way.  They catch the drift and are in awe, and feel the splendor of creation and My divine presence.

“Do you give them commands?”

Yes.  Some “grunts” are warnings not to do something.  They live on the edge of subsistence and can be very cruel. 

Life is brutal and they are often brutal.  They die young.  But that does not keep them from responding spiritually.

“What does this mean for You, for Your life?”

For Me, it means the first spark of real interpersonal interaction, not just vague spiritual rapport. 

From very early, humans—protohumans—have a sense of something more, something higher.  (Their sense of) the divine is not just fear and wish-fulfillment, though there is plenty of that.  There is a real sense of relating to Me as a Person, not just as the vague spirituality of nature.

It is hard to convey in retrospect but, at this point, I do not quite know I have a personality, an individual personhood. 

Events pass through my consciousness.  I have a sense of My intelligence pervading the world, of fulfilling a universal telos.  I feel a spiritual rapport with life.  But none of that constitutes a sense of personhood, of an I standing opposite a You.  The protohumans gave Me that, or I developed it or became aware of it in relation to them.

For the first time, human beings mirror Me, look at Me eyeball to eyeball.