There is a nice symmetry in life: The infinite wants to experience itself as finite, and the finite wants to experience itself as infinite.
Spirit wants to experience itself as all the things it isn’t: finite, separate, vulnerable and so on.
And humans want to experience themselves as what they (think they) are not: infinite, one, invulnerable and so on.
The divine has gone to great lengths to set up and evolve into a universe where parts of itself take itself as a separate being that is born and will die. And some humans go to great lengths to escape just that, whether it’s through ordinary human activities (to forget, feel alive) or spiritual practices.
And this symmetry is all part of lila, the play of the divine, Spirit expressing, exploring, and experiencing itself in a myriad of ways.
Note: We cannot really say that Spirit or the divine “wants” to experience itself as finite. I am just using that word for the sake of symmetry. A want sounds too much like human wants and it’s not like that. I imagine it’s more of a pull, a movement, to explore itself in as many ways as possible, including temporarily as finite. On the other hand, any human experience is the divine’s experience so the divine does (locally) want, feel, think, long, suffer and so on through and as humans and other beings.
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Initial notes…..
- The infinite wanting to experience itself as finite, and the finite wanting to experience itself as infinite
- Spirit wanting to experience itself as all the things it isn’t: finite, separate, vulnerable etc.
- humans wanting to experience themselves as what they (think they) are not: infinite, invulnerable, oneness etc.
- all part of lila, the play of the divine, Spirit exploring, expressing, and experiencing itself in myriads of ways
- …..