A Conversation With God
“This too shall pass.”
“How do you know?”
“Because everything changes.”
“But when?”
“I don't know.”
“What do you mean you don't know? Aren't you omniscient?”
“Well, yes and no. It's kind of complicated.”
“What's complicated? The fact that you don't know everything?”
“Well, of course I know everything, I'm God, but I don't know everything right this moment because I'm talking to you. I told you, it's complicated.”
“Are you trying to say that talking to me makes you stupid?”
“Hmmm... perhaps.”
“Perhaps?! That's a cop out.”
“No. It's not a cop out. You are just too limited.”
“I'm limited?”
“Of course. You are limited, and therefor any attempt to communicate with you is limiting. So, if I am talking to you, I am limited. Do I need to tell you again?”
“It's complicated.”
“Exactly.”
“Fine. But even if you are limited, can't you peek around the corner, see what's going to happen next?”
“I can certainly see what's going to happen next. Everything is going to happen next. All at once. But you will only experience some thing, not every thing. I cannot tell you which precise thing you will experience.”
“So, maybe I spend the rest of my life like this. You can't tell me for certain.”
“Maybe you will die with your next breath. Anything can happen.”
“Wait! That's not fair. You said that this will pass.”
“And so it would. You would not be like this any more, and you and your pain would pass away.”
“That's not very optimistic.”
“Oh, in the grand scheme of things, there is neither optimism nor pessimism. Just being.”
“So, now you are telling me that there is no reason to be optimistic and I should just give up?”
“That's not what I said at all. For you, there is optimism and pessimism, belief and skepticism, hope and despair, love and hate, war, peace, noise, silence, dreams, reality, days and nights... For you there is a whole spectrum of experience and reactions to experience. In the grand scheme of things there is no optimism, but you are not the grand scheme of things. Are you really so self-absorbed that you don't understand that? You are a tiny spec within the grand scheme of things.”
“Now you tell me that I'm insignificant. Great.”
“There is nothing in all the universe that is insignificant. How important is an electron? Every single one has a part to play.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. All mighty God sees everything and sets everything in motion. You guide every electron through its path in the universe, right?”
“Well, yes and no. You really are so limited in your imagination, you know? I don't have to stand over the universe like it's a model train set. It's not like that.”
“So then explain it to me.”
“The model train set is me.”
“So, you are nothing but the sum of the whole universe?”
“No. I'm more than that. I'm the sum of all the multiverse, all ideas, all being and even, sometimes, the not being. But the model train set is me.”
“A part of you, you mean.”
“Yes, you could say it like that, but it's a bit more-”
“Complicated. You keep saying that.”
“What can I say? You are limited!”
“If you created me, then I'm only limited because you made me this way.”
“Good point. But, then, how would you be able to experience anything if you were experiencing everything? It just can't be done. Without your limitations, I have no way to experience the world in precisely your way.”
“Can I experience the world without these limitations?”
“Sure, for a brief moment. But remember, if you knock down the walls of your house you'll be able to see outside, but you will also be at the mercy of the elements. You wouldn't want to stay like that for too long, or leave the walls down too often.
“Some people devote their whole lives to finding the doors to see outside their limitations. Others take big hammers to their limitations so they can see what is beyond them. No one is able to come back from an experience beyond the ordinary and explain it to anyone else. You cannot bring the outdoors inside your house.”
“Oh, but I can! I can have potted plants and pets. I could live in a house with a dirt floor.”
“But you cannot bring the clouds inside or the sun. You cannot put the horizon on your shelf. A painting of a sunrise over the ocean is not an actual sunrise over a real ocean. You can bring reminders of the outside into your home. You can make it more like the outside. But you cannot bring the outside in, no matter how hard you try.”
“So, why do I need the house?”
“So that you can live there.”
“But if I were greater, if I had fewer limitations, there would be no danger for me outside.”
“Yes, I told you already. If you didn't have limitations, you wouldn't be able to experience the specifics of life. You'd see a bigger picture, but never this picture.
“Imagine that electron again. Can you picture what its existence is like?”
“Kind of.”
“Nope. You are wrong. You have a faulty conception of the electron, because it is bound by your knowledge of your own level of being. You can't experience electronness because you are much too big.”
“In other words, being too big, too expansive, is just as limiting as being limited.”
“Exactly. Now you are getting somewhere.”
“But this doesn't solve my problem at hand.”
“And that problem is?”
“That I'm in pain, and I don't like it. I don't want this any more.”
“Did you want it before?”
“No! Of course not!!”
“OK, just checking.”
“What's your point?”
“You didn't want it before, you don't want it now, and yet, there you are, in pain.”
“Right. You still haven't gotten to the point.”
“You are experiencing something that I could not experience without you. And when the pain passes, you will experience something else entirely that I also could not experience with out you. I couldn't even experience the not wanting without the presence of the pain in the first place. You see?”
“Yeah, I see! This is a bunch of New Age poppycock!”
“Yes. It probably is. But if it is, it's your own New Age poppycock.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“Who are you talking to?”
“You!”
“And I am you. And, more than that, I have limited myself to communicate with you in the only way that I can. Obviously, you are talking to yourself.”
“This whole thing is just a figment of my imagination?”
“Are you sure that anything you experience is anything other than that?”
“Yes. I mean, maybe.
Of course, I'm not the only human! I had parents! I came from somewhere. Therefor, not everything is my imagination.”
“If you say so.”
