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When I first came to God, I had intuited that the self as I knew it was a monad. In other words, I was an island cut off by myself, without any real contact between my inner self and the outside world. Even people I loved, I could never get "in" them and they could never get "in" me. I would always be looking at them from the outside, and they would always be looking at me from the outside. Connecting with this realization was the realization of my fundamental and perhaps inescapable selfishness.
What is worse than being a monad is being a doomed monad. My mind was an island slowly sinking into the ocean, and indeed it could be suddenly swallowed up by that ocean at any instant. It was not simply that I would die, but that I would die without ever escaping the cage that I had discovered myself an occupant of. That I would never touch anything real outside my own mind. And that I would always remain inherently selfish, and this self-containment is itself death.
This was when John 12:23-26 and similar passages entered my head like a key and unlocked it:
"Jesus answered them, “The hour has now come for the Son of Man to receive great glory. I am telling you the truth: a grain of wheat remains no more than a single grain unless it is dropped into the ground and dies. If it does die, then it produces many grains. Those who love their own life will lose it; those who hate their own life in this world will keep it for life eternal. 26 Whoever wants to serve me must follow me, so that my servant will be with me where I am."
These passages just exploded into my head and enlightened me. I had always made fun of the passages on the back of bible tracts, "ask Jesus to come into your heart," but yeah, that is exactly what you have to do. You have to say with John the Baptist: "You must increase, and I must decrease."
You cannot be told or shown that you are a monad, that you are a doomed island unto yourself. You have to see it. It is an act of gnosis: which in my case took place at a moment of great philosophical desperation when i despaired at the futility of knowing anything and of ever escaping the doomed island I had discovered myself to be. It is an act of the Holy Spirit, that we cannot control.
It is a prison we can escape, however. The price of the key is everything. Nothing is as valuable as God, nothing can be held as valuable as God. God is the summum bonum, the greatest good. Jesus speaks of this when he talks about the man who discovers a great jewel buried in a field and goes and sells all he has in order to buy that field. And even at that, you come to realize that God wants you even more than you could ever want Him.
Jesus sort of accidentally but also sort of unavoidably sows theological confusion when he says both "the Father is greater than I" and also "I and the Father are one" and "if you have seen me, you have seen the Father." BOTH OF THESE THINGS ARE TRUE. Something that we find it hard to understand, because we are not built that way, is that the nature of heaven is unity of essence in love. Jesus is still Jesus, but he is UNITED perfectly with the Father. The Father is God, Jesus is the Son. But both are also the same in essence, in heart, in spirit. This is how heaven is the antidote to the monad of self, because the barriers between selves that exist here, our isolated islands, do not apply in heaven. All are united in love in heaven. Jesus can see me perfectly, in every way, more perfectly than I see myself. I one day will see him too as he really is, and shall worship God as He really is.
"God is Spirit, and only by the power of his Spirit can people worship him as he really is.”
~John 4:24
What is worse than being a monad is being a doomed monad. My mind was an island slowly sinking into the ocean, and indeed it could be suddenly swallowed up by that ocean at any instant. It was not simply that I would die, but that I would die without ever escaping the cage that I had discovered myself an occupant of. That I would never touch anything real outside my own mind. And that I would always remain inherently selfish, and this self-containment is itself death.
This was when John 12:23-26 and similar passages entered my head like a key and unlocked it:
"Jesus answered them, “The hour has now come for the Son of Man to receive great glory. I am telling you the truth: a grain of wheat remains no more than a single grain unless it is dropped into the ground and dies. If it does die, then it produces many grains. Those who love their own life will lose it; those who hate their own life in this world will keep it for life eternal. 26 Whoever wants to serve me must follow me, so that my servant will be with me where I am."
These passages just exploded into my head and enlightened me. I had always made fun of the passages on the back of bible tracts, "ask Jesus to come into your heart," but yeah, that is exactly what you have to do. You have to say with John the Baptist: "You must increase, and I must decrease."
You cannot be told or shown that you are a monad, that you are a doomed island unto yourself. You have to see it. It is an act of gnosis: which in my case took place at a moment of great philosophical desperation when i despaired at the futility of knowing anything and of ever escaping the doomed island I had discovered myself to be. It is an act of the Holy Spirit, that we cannot control.
It is a prison we can escape, however. The price of the key is everything. Nothing is as valuable as God, nothing can be held as valuable as God. God is the summum bonum, the greatest good. Jesus speaks of this when he talks about the man who discovers a great jewel buried in a field and goes and sells all he has in order to buy that field. And even at that, you come to realize that God wants you even more than you could ever want Him.
Jesus sort of accidentally but also sort of unavoidably sows theological confusion when he says both "the Father is greater than I" and also "I and the Father are one" and "if you have seen me, you have seen the Father." BOTH OF THESE THINGS ARE TRUE. Something that we find it hard to understand, because we are not built that way, is that the nature of heaven is unity of essence in love. Jesus is still Jesus, but he is UNITED perfectly with the Father. The Father is God, Jesus is the Son. But both are also the same in essence, in heart, in spirit. This is how heaven is the antidote to the monad of self, because the barriers between selves that exist here, our isolated islands, do not apply in heaven. All are united in love in heaven. Jesus can see me perfectly, in every way, more perfectly than I see myself. I one day will see him too as he really is, and shall worship God as He really is.
"God is Spirit, and only by the power of his Spirit can people worship him as he really is.”
~John 4:24
