We like lists. From the Eight Pillars to the Ten Commandments to the Bill of Rights to Getting Things Done, it seems the human race can't find a list it doesn't like. There's even a list of Seven Deadly Vices! As if we need to count!
But that's the way the mind works best, by consolidating and enumerating things outside of ourselves. And of course, that's all we can consolidate and enumerate -- things outside ourselves -- everything interior is one "I." Which is probably why we have tended to define god as "One," because we experience god within where it cannot be counted.
But that paints a very one-dimensional picture of god. No matter how much we want to believe that we know just who, how and what god is, that's coming at best from a glimpse remembered and interpreted by a mind entangled with ego and material identification.
Messy.
The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things
Thus, constantly without desire, one observes its essence
Constantly with desire, one observes its manifestations
These two emerge together but differ in name
The unity is said to be the mystery
Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wondersTao Te Ching 1
The experience of the divine must not be mistaken for the actual divine. At most, they are expressions of the divine within and through us that are still colored by our perceptions, our beliefs, and our various conditioning contexts (culture, personal history, family etc.). The postmodern mind understands that perspective is mutable, so it constantly shifts perspective back towards itself. The ego is so enamored with itself it reflexively fits every experience into a world-view at which it is the center. You have to understand that this is a conditioning of culture; none of us are immune to it. Either we are interested in understanding and transcending it or not; but none of us is exempt.
So if we are looking for god and our mind finds the individual at the center of every divine experience we will arrive at a definition of god that reflects perfectly our own self image. And without some ability to objectively examine that reflection, we will only seek the felt experience of the divine as a pleasure-seeking activity. And we will judge our success in that endeavor by the quality of the experience. Which is the antithesis of the true mode of god-seeking.
Seeking God hurts; I don't just mean it's difficult, I mean it's the most deeply, existentially painful experience that you can experience because it demands that you look directly in the face of every aspect of yourself, however distasteful and unwholesome, because it demands that you take responsibility for your own moral development at a level far above any lists and creeds. It demands that moment to moment you engage awareness and the choosing faculty with courage and will to choose the divine path, irrespective of how you feel or how it makes you feel. Because ultimately we always know in every moment exactly what we are doing and exactly why we are doing it; we cannot hide impure motive nor feign ignorance in front of our self. We can only convince ourselves that, "It's okay because..."
Which we do all the time, and if you start to become aware of this you will find it the most distasteful of postmodern behaviors. Always finding some reason not to do what is deeply important. Until we get down off the pedestal of self-absorbtion, renounce the victim position and take responsibility without limitation for for every conditioned response, every unwholesome motive, even those things which we see as inflicted by external forces, we will only experience the limited god at the center of our self image, the limited god of lists.
And that may feel good, but it's not much of a god.
