beauty

Thought #17 (An Interpretation of God)

     In Exodus 3:14, when Moses stands before God at the burning bush and asks him of his name, he responds with “ehyeh ašer ehyeh”; translation: “I am that I am”. The primal name for the God of Abraham to Jews and Christians is Yahweh – derived from “ehyeh”: I Am. If you consider the Bible as metaphorical poetry like I do, there is a very profound message in this passage when you look beyond the surface. In my interpretation, Moses is not speaking to God as a supernatural entity external to himself, but rather as a projection of himself, and when he requests God’s name – the essence of what he is – his response is simply, “I am”.    

     Human beings worship Gods because they represent a projected ideal form of themselves, and they live their lives toiling to be like these Gods in every way possible. When Moses confronts the God within himself – his stirring zeal for knowledge represented by the burning bush before him – he wants to know what the essence of his ideal humanity is: What is my ‘God’? And his God tells him, “I am”. Simply, “I am”. Moses would then use this self-revelation to attain within himself the courage to liberate his enslaved people, the Israelites, from their oppressors, the Egyptians. 

     If you are, and you admit to being, than you are God. God is you. Simply existing – being the author of your own thoughts and reality – is what God is, because all that you perceive is created within your own mind, and ‘God’, after all, is the creator of everything. There is no need to assume anything beyond that – anything superstitious or beyond reason – because that in itself is the most mesmerizing conclusion you can ever entertain about the nature of reality. When you come to that epiphany, there is nothing stopping you from mastering your own mind and your own thoughts. You are. I am. Yahweh. 

     (Perhaps this is why most Jews and Christians do not dare utter his name: they don’t want his real truth professed.)

YHWH