“There was a Self, timeless, without reflection, at peace.”

“Lord, I don’t understand what existed at the Beginning.  It sounds as if you are describing Your own birth as well as the birth of the universe.  What were You before the explosion of Creation?  A pregnant nothingness?”

A passable description.  There was a Self, timeless, without reflection, still and at peace, like calm waters, lucid, not nothing, but not something either.  The universe contains many things, not just somethings and nothings.

What kind of Nothingness can explode into Being?  Ah, I thought, maybe a Nothingness that is not just nothing, but is the Plenum of Potentiality for All Things.  Perhaps the possibility of all things cannot fail to spill over into some actuality.

I could not settle any of these questions in my own mind.  All I could do was to continue to ask questions.  “Lord, what was there before?  What motivates the act of creation?”

I received the following words and images which I recorded in my notes.

“A feeling of loneliness, of searching, reaching—not yet a Person.  Expanding into the great emptiness of Nothing, which is ‘infinitely empty’ far beyond (far more empty than) empty spaces.  ‘Who am I?  What am I?  Am I an I?  What is an I?’  A chaotic feeling of the infinite rushing at the edges.”

“Lord, why did eternity ‘shatter’ in this way?  Did the still, self-sufficient stuff explode?”

I received the sense:  “Brittle, crystalline, too perfect, static, isolated, removed, alone, bored, incomplete.  The eternal already had the potential to be a Person but could not do so without creating time.”

And I also got the feeling that God desperately wants to be understood.

 

I Did Not Feel Ineffable

Mysticism is often considered the highest level of religion, but for a long time, there were no mystics.

God was interacting with people in many ways, but not through mystical union.  Then the first mystic seers appeared.  In prayer, God explained,

Now people were coming to me—not in limited ways, praying and offering sacrifices and so forth—but in a kind of merger … they were entering into Me, and I was receiving them.  That was a new experience.

“So You responded?”

It is hard to explain.  It’s like suddenly finding that you are the natural home for these creatures … the bosom or womb or home or ocean that all return to.  That is no more important a part of My nature than others we have discussed, but it is important … 

And then another thing happened.  Much more than before, these sages began to ponder My nature and (to) try to articulate their understanding of it.

And two changes occurred as a result.  First, for the first time, I was an object, to be defined and analyzed.  It is like your first experience with a psychologist who has a lot of boxes to put you in (introverted, repressed, etc.).  As God, I had not pondered My own “nature.”  I had no need to “define” Myself, but the effort of others to do so had an impact … 

It came clearer that I was an object to others, a source of puzzlement, even mystery, to them.  In fact, they would say that My nature was ineffable, beyond all language, all logical categories.  They would describe Me in paradoxes—neither existent nor non-existent, and so forth.

And this has an impact.  I did not feel ineffable.  To be sure, I am hard to describe and human concepts are not adequate, but that is true of the physical universe as well.

“You say it has an impact?”

It creates a problem.  It puts a barrier between Me and My creatures.  How can they approach the ineffable?  And even that mystical aspect leads them to regard Me as a pea-soup they want to dive into.

It did leave Me with a problem:  how to break through the fog ….

“Then mystical union is not the goal?  The purpose is to live the life you’re given?  Is that right, Lord?”

Yes!