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What was here before anything was created? Prior to the famous words, "Let there be light", there existed a void; a vacuum; a nothingness. The light that was created with that "Day 1" statement was not the physical manifestation of light that we are familiar with - sunlight. That was created on the third day. This first-day light was an expansion of consciousness. A more concise word would be enlightenment. Darkness was all there was in the formless void. It could be argued that the void could not even be called space, for space is a "something" between two other somethings. Without the existence of other somethings as a reference, one cannot even describe space. Remove all the somethings, leaving only one endless nothing to "occupy" the universe, who is to say the nothing isn't something? The moment consciousness recognizes that nothing exists, the nothing becomes a something. Therefore, the only nothing that is truly nothing, is the absence of consciousness.
All that is needed in order for something to come out of nothing, is to declare that it is. Isn't that what occurred in the biblical Genesis? "Let there be..." not only created the world, it still creates everything. There was not just one beginning. All things must have a beginning - a chocolate cake, for example. Does it begin with eggs and butter? No, it must begin with the declaration, "Let there be a chocolate cake." Only then can the cake begin to take form.
All that was before anything was created was God. That doesn't tell us much. What is God? He said Himself His name is, "I am that I am". That identity does not need to include any created thing. The only necessary attribute is consciousness itself. I realized that "nothing" is an inaccurate expression for invisible, boundless consciousness. I created a new word that substitutes for Consciousness, Nothing and God. The word: ISNESS.
If Isness preceded all creation, then we must give this "uncreation" preeminence. Why then do we tend to favor created things over uncreated things? Ask anybody what they would prefer: to have something...or to have nothing? We have difficulty even imagining a value that would be placed on nothing. We have identified with created things all our lives and so assume that they have more value than an uncreated thing. Sorry, not true.
God was here before any thing was created, but He was not here before consciousness. God has always been conscious of Himself. In the Judeo/Christian bible He is given the name Jaweh or Jehovah as a label for God's relationship to man. The Hebrew breakdown of the name indicates a self-sustaining life. This is another way of saying, "I am that I am". According to Psalms 83:18..."That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth." ...God alone is self-sustaining and eternal. Everything else is sustained by Him. Anything that was created can be uncreated. The only way to have eternal life, is to be included in the being of Jehovah God. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away, (Mat 24:35). The Word of God is one with the Self-sustained One. The Word of God is that which issues forth from Him. It is much more than just words. Jesus was called The Word made flesh. or Spirit in form. He was an issue from God, in other terms, a Son. I am a word from God. You are a word from God. Children are the same kind of issue as words. One comes from the loins, the other from the mouth...but all issues are an expression of the one from which they came.
Exodus 6:3
And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them.
To be known by one name or another is to be recognized by a particular trait. The patriarchs knew the Creator Almighty. A powerful being separate and apart from mortal man. They never recognized Him as the Self-existing, eternal I Am, the God that is not separate from man.
Isaiah 26:4
Trust ye in the LORD for ever: for in the LORD JEHOVAH is everlasting strength:
Isaiah tells us that this aspect of God is available to us if we see ourselves in Jehovah. In the Self-existing One we have everlasting strength, or life. That is where we are anyway, but if we live in a delusion of being apart from Jehovah, we suffer the consequences of our own beliefs. Let there be death, Let there be poverty, Let there be sickness, are affirmations that produce issues after their own kind. When we know Jehovah as the All in all, we must realize that separation from Him is only possible as a fantasy. Religion fears union with God. It believes you must put yourself below God as an exercise in humility. Just the opposite is true. To maintain that you are apart from God, is to make God less than the All in all, which humiliates Him. This is not to say that I am God or you are God, it is professing that God is me and God is you.
We may not be able to change what we are by what we do. But what we do will change according to what we think we are. Are you part of creation, or are you a creator? What do you think? If you perceive yourself as a creature, then your lifestyle will reflect that perception. You will act on the belief that a creator outside of yourself is controlling what you are. If you see yourself as creator, then that aspect of your being takes control and you become the product of your own vision. Knowing you have creative potential, a nominal amount of wisdom will lead you to speak life into your world and lift it up out of poverty. All the lack that we see is a result of poverty of mind. Our creator is not like a human king amidst golden splendor, sitting above us who live as peasants. We are created in the image and likeness of Creative Principle (I Am). That makes us more than a creature. Indeed, we have the very essence of the Creator within us. The first commandments given to man by his maker were not the Ten given to Moses. They were the Five given to Adam...Be fruitful, multiply, replenish, subdue and have dominion... Man decided to ignore the Five and wear the yoke of the Ten Thou Shalt Nots. If we would have focused on the Five Thou Shalts, we could have run free in limitless creative potential. The Five Commandments are creation in action.
Instead, we took the Ten Thou Shalt Nots and made a corral out of them. The Creative Principle would never make ten rules in order to establish proper behavior. He did it only as a response to the arrogance of man who said, "We will do whatever God commands us." The rules were given to man because man asked for rules. Their purpose was to prove to man that he could not keep commandments simply through fear of the consequences. A command can only be adhered to out of love for the commander. If you hate the commander, you will hate the command. With absolute love, no command needs to be given.
Carrying out the Five Thou Shalts would increase creativity in the universe. The Creator experiences joy in the act of creation. As co-creators, we raise the level of universal joy with every small act of fruitfulness, just as a drop of rain raises the level of the ocean. You may be discouraged by the apparent insignificance of your particular drop in the ocean, but consider the possibility of joining with all of creation in an outpouring of fruitfulness. The effect would then be like a rainstorm that significantly raises the level of rivers, which in turn replenish the ocean. When we do this deliberately, we are flowing with the world around us. The Five Commandments are: Be fruitful (produce rain), multiply (take part in a rainstorm), replenish (flow into the evaporating waters), subdue and have dominion (wear down the mountains).
That's all very poetic, but what is a raindrop suppose to do? Setting the universe free of stress begins with freeing yourself. To produce tranquillity without, you must practice contentment within. When you are a raindrop, be content with it. When you are a river, be content with that. When you are pulled into the sea, remain content. When you are a vapor, rise in contentment back to the clouds. The water remains constant regardless of the form. You cannot imagine the variety of forms water takes in countless rivers, lakes, and seas just on one planet. In the whole universe there is an infinite variety, and it continuously changes shape. But everywhere throughout space and time, wherever two atoms of oxygen combine with one of hydrogen, it creates the same water molecule!
Let's apply that to spiritual truth. To say that I am a forty year old human writing a book about nothing while incarcerated on planet earth would be inaccurate. That just happens to be one of the forms I am assuming at the moment. That's not me. Most humans go as far as to identify with their ancestral family. They feel that father, grandmother, etc., are alive in them. Some even venture out to include all of mankind past as part of who they are. But why stop there? Is there anything in this whole universe that can be excluded from effecting who we are? If I should look beyond my human form to the energy that animates it, then I am as much stardust as I am flesh and bone. And what heavenly process produced the sunlight that produced our bodies? Looking beyond the stars for some invisible force that expands both galaxies and rose blossoms, I am knocking on the door of my true father, that I might ask Him . . . "Who am I?".
As constant as the water molecule, the spirit of life is the same everywhere. Confusion, darkness and delusion can pervert life in one's imagination, but not in reality. Life is constant, eternal and pure. We cannot adulterate it by what we think about it. Our erroneous concepts of temporary life, separated lives, or other lives, does not alter the one Life. Believing that ice cannot be water because of its appearance, indicates ignorance of the properties of water. How much more mysterious are the unlikely forms Life finds itself in, and how much more difficult to accept?
Clearly, form has been the greatest obstacle between our perception and the reality of Life that lies behind it. We were taught that the form we find ourselves occupying is us. That's as misleading as believing we are the cars we drive. A body, including the brain, is the vehicle we travel in. Even our accumulation of memories that we call Justin or Amy, is part of the same chassis. Just being aware of a Self beyond all form, sends a love call out to the Spirit. She replies as faithfully as an echo. If we begin to ignore our flesh, it will annoy us until we give it the attention its used to. But after hearing Spirit's voice, we want to spend all our attention on her.
The flesh is about to go to war in the midst of your new relationship with the spirit. The intellect with its great ego, and the physical man with his sensitivity to pleasure and pain, have been in charge for a long time. But rest assured that the flesh will give up eventually, as expressed in the story of the brothers Jacob and Esau, the older will serve the younger. Esau, representing our physical man is the firstborn. Jacob, symbolic of our newly found spiritual identity, will rule our natural self. Read this marvelous account in Genesis starting in chapter 25, verse 21 and finishing in chapter 33. The happy ending is the reuniting of the two men in harmony, as is the destiny of our natural and spiritual experiences.
Powerful influences that keep the flesh strong are the spirit of competition, personal achievement, and accumulation of things. The foundational principle of all these ambitions is the concept of separate lives. A belief in one universal Life, destroys all we've ever fought for. If there is only one Life, then it doesn't matter which vehicle achieves things. It doesn't even matter which vehicle terminates its existence and which one carries on. If there's one Life, then there is only one real person living it (God?), and we are all observers of creation within that Being.