panentheology - Tumblr blog

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Thanks anarchospirituality, for condensing my 2012 new atheist thoughts about God and my 2024 dionysian-panentheistic thoughts about God into an easy-to-digest doge meme with silly little guys in it

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"We are all sleeping avatars of God with amnesia."

- Phillip K. Dick

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“The essence of divinity is found in every single thing—nothing but It exists. Since It causes every thing to be, no thing can live by anything else. It enlivens them. Ein Sof exists in each existent. Do not say, ‘this is a stone and not God.’ God forbid! Rather, all existence is God, and the stone is a thing pervaded by divinity.”

— Moshe Cordovero on Jewish panentheism, 16th century Kabbalist. via R’ Danya Ruttenberg.

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good news everyone! God is trans! 🏳️‍⚧️

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“The existence of [Ultimate Being] can neither be proven nor disproven, because proof and disproof are exercises in logos, the human attempt to master reality through language, and [Ultimate Being] surpasses logos.”

Joel Kovel

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This can include reincarnation, Heaven/Hell, the Summerlands, ghostly wanderings, bodily revival on a renewed earth in a future eschaton, reunion with an oceanic consciousness, something approximating The Egg story, you actually being one of trillions of manifestations of God and waking up from the dream that is life, etc. The "you" is still there and experiencing something, whether that "you" be in the shape of an individual soul or a larger consciousness.

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“We are always in a state of being in the womb of the Divine, a place of utter interdependence and compassion (since the word compassion derives from both the Hebrew and Arabic words for womb). We leave the womb of our literal mothers to enter the world and prepare for the fray that awaits us, but when it comes to the womb of God…we do not leave. We swim in it our whole lives long.”

— https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/2020/12/09/julian-of-norwich-on-advent/

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“Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.”

Alan Watts

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Original

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wish people would do away with calling sikhi a monotheistic religion bc it really is based on a misunderstanding/oversimplification of sikh belief, especially when words like 'pantheism' and 'panentheism' exist and convey the base ontological concept in a more whole truth. too much focus on taking 'one god' at face value and not the fact that sikhs consider the entire universe including every human soul to be Of god, contained within this singularity, all physical forms are manifestations of god, when we die we simply merge back with god.

if u imagine god as one large, infinite mass containing everything. some parts of those things separate into other things but they are still god. being a person is like that, billions of pieces of god separating and putting on masks where we pretend not to be god for a while, and death is the removal of those masks and a return to that whole. some sikhs argue that god = universe, others that the universe is contained within and made of god, but regardless neither is what monotheism is.

it's directly inspired by advaita vedanta (a school of hindu thought) and there are similarities with aspects of kabbalah and the sufi tradition as well as some buddhist philosophies. but it is very much Not monotheistic in a fundamental sense, idk why saying that sikhi is monotheistic caught on, literally every sikh scholar & anyone who is educated even a little bit on sikh theology i've ever met/read agrees that it's not a monotheistic religion like this isn't even a controversial statement really but people who don't know anything beyond "sikhs believe in one god" are really dedicated to calling it monotheistic

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Being Is A Relational Spectrum

Each of us is an aggregate of approximately 37.2 trillion cells that has taken approximately 13.82 billion years to come into existence.

We evolved from a brilliant eruption of energy into an expanding cosmic void. We are manifestations of this energy’s complexity, expressions of the infinite configured minutely in microcosmic array.

We are the energy and matter of the universe: we have been and will be trillions of things. And yet, always, we are that which we were and will be: all that is.

You are the conscious universe made flesh in a dream of self. We are the living, dreaming universe, and participate in its creation; our agency, and our perceptions, combine with chaos, and pattern, to form the golden knot which binds us, one to another, and all to totality.

Being is a relational spectrum and a closed whole: there are no individuals, only aggregates bonded by essential life processes within greater and more complex aggregates that emerge and disappear within a torus of void and energy: spiraling entwined in constant transubstantiation, all things come to be and pass away in accord with the rhythm of the One.

There are endless worlds and countless dreams within the spiraling whole, all singular in source and name, each of them flowers blooming in the dark limbs of Eternity, all of us seeds sewn in the glittering garden of the Night.

©️ JM Tiffany

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As creator, then, God is always at the heart of each thing, maintaining it in being. On the level of scientific inquiry, we discern certain processes or sequences of cause and effect. On the level of spiritual vision, which does not contradict science but looks beyond it, we discern everywhere the creative energies of God, upholding all that is, forming the innermost essence of all things. But, while present everywhere in the world, God is not to be identified with the world. As Christians we affirm not pantheism but "panentheism." God is in all things yet also beyond and above all things. He is both "greater than the great" and "smaller than the small" . . . "everywhere and nowhere, he is everything and nothing." . . . God is at the core. God is other than the core. God is within the core, and all through the core, and beyond the core, closer to the core than the core.

Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

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Once my friend told me that he felt Christian imposter syndrome sometimes because he had never had a big, life altering encounter with God. But we encounter God everywhere. It's in the way you let me sit on your couch and ramble about a breakup when we barely knew each other. It's in sunshine. Laughter. The faces of my friends who have never set foot in a church. It's in all the people who have shown me grace and mercy when I wholly didn't deserve it. It's the ache you've been trying to explain. It's the way that birds just know when to push their babies out of the nest. The way that I have found myself back in church even though no one would blame me if I hadn't. The way that we, creatures from a miniscule part of the universe, not only wanted to, but taught ourselves how to look into deep space. The sound of water flowing along a creek. It's the rhythm of the ocean, beating since before our species existed. You can go your whole life without having a big, come-to-jesus, altar call moment when you were "saved," and that's ok. Your faith doesn't have to run on adrenaline highs and intensity. God's in the still small voice. All the little miracles around you.

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“You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.”

— Alan Watts (via quietlotus)