Your physical body is composed of many members or component parts. If we were sitting together and I were to reach out and touch you, it would make no difference were I to touch your shoulder, hand, foot, or hair. In each instance it would be fair to say I am touching your body, regardless of the particular aspect of your body that I touched. There is just one you, but there are many parts of you.

Likewise, we have just one God, but there are many parts to the Body of God. Wherever you touch God’s Body you touch God. Notice the word “touch.” Touch implies feeling. When we say “I was touched by your gesture,” we recognize that there is a feeling connection. Similarly, when you touch a hot stove, there is perception, feeling. The point is that touch implies feeling. This is why wherever you perceive the Body of God through your heart or feeling nature, you touch God. Wherever you touch God’s Body you touch God.

“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” (Matthew 5:8)

What is the heart? The heart is the emotional, or feeling nature; or perhaps better put, the feeling realm. It penetrates the three planes of man’s being: physical, mental, and spiritual expression. The feeling nature is present in all three planes of being. Without the feeling nature, you have no ability to love. Love is that cohesive substance which holds all of the things of God together.

When the feeling nature, which interpenetrates the three planes of being, is filled with that which is of God in a pure state, you feel and touch God. When you touch and feel that which is of God, you see God. For many, the idea of God is something external to them, something beyond them with which they strive to relate. So, God is beyond us, but God is also within us.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him…” (Genesis 1:27)

You are a human being. This is an abbreviated way to say that you are a Being in human form. You are not “only human” as so many like to claim in an effort to rationalize their shortcomings (e.g. “Give me a break, I’m only human!”). No, you are a human being. The human part of you—your body, mind and capacity for spiritual expression—is the means by which and through which the Being you are (i.e. your otherwise invisible spirit) expresses in the material world. To assume that you are only human is to miss the point of life entirely.

This process is called incarnation. To “incarnate” is to take flesh, or be made flesh. Incarnation in this sense is the process by which the Being that you are is made flesh in and through the human capacities that you have. You are designed to let invisible heaven take visible form in earth. You are the means by which the invisible is made visible.

“In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)

God always creates the invisible, the “heaven,” first. God is not just one Being somewhere, but God is one Being because all of the parts of God are perfectly coordinated. All of the members or parts of God—the many individualized Beings that compose God—are perfectly cohesive. Just as you have one physical body that is composed of many parts, the Body of God is one. The Being that you are is an individualized aspect of God. Thus, you are an aspect of God. You are a creator.

“I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.” (Psalm 82:6)

There is an individualized aspect of God within you, within your body. The core of you is divine. For a variety of reasons that I shall perhaps expand upon in a later post, to suggest this is to risk accusations of blasphemy, despite it being scripturally referenced in both the Old and New Testaments. “Ye are gods.” Jesus himself emphasized this point when the Jews sought to stone him for what they perceived to be blasphemy:

³¹ Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.

³² Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?

³³ The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.

³⁴ Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?

³⁵ If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;

³⁶ Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?

³⁷ If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.

³⁸ But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.

John 10:31-38

Revealing the Word of God on earth in thought, word and deed is what we were created to do. To deny this is to deny that we were created in the image and likeness of God, as was so plainly described in the Book of Genesis. To fail to do this is to fail to live up to Jesus’ central request during his unnecessarily truncated ministry on earth. He simply said, “follow me.”

Jesus demonstrated over and over again in both words and actions the means by which the human part of us could come to know the Being part of us or put otherwise, the means by which we could come to know our true divine identity while living and serving on earth. And he said, “follow me.” He clarified by saying: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do…” (John 14:12) He graciously demonstrated how it was done in essence and asked lovingly that we expand it out in our living.

The Being you are is an individualized aspect of God. This is true as well of every other human being on earth, whether they are good, bad or indifferent. They are Beings in human form, all of them. Human beings. The individual who is allowing that which is of God to express through himself reveals it by his words and actions. The individual who is unresponsive to God and who is generally unresponsive to everything else, is of the indifferent sort. The individual who is is evil is not responding to God at all but to that which is beneath him.

With so much evidence of evil, wrongdoing, and suffering in the world, it’s hard to think of everyone as being an individualized aspect of God in human form. Surely the world would be a better place were this to be true? Surely there wouldn’t be characters such as Hitler, Stalin, or any of the other great focalizations of what has been called “pure evil” were it true that each one—including the most despicable and ignoble—had an individualized aspect of God within? Is not God omnipotent?

God is indeed omnipotent, as all power comes from God. All power is God’s power. “But evil is a powerful force,” you say, “and we must strive against it lest we be overcome!” Evil is powerful, but all power comes from God. So it follows that evil comes from God, but it is not evil when it is released from God. As mentioned above, the power of God released through the individual is made evil by the individual who is not centered in God. All power originates in God, whether it manifests as goodness, badness or indifference.

The idea there is an evil power in opposition to God, challenging against God’s rule of the universe is utterly false. All power, whether it manifests as evil or otherwise, comes from God, and if it manifests as evil power it is because human beings have turned it out of the channels of God’s design (aka God’s will) and into the channels of their own selfish, self-centered design. If power manifests as evil—and it regrettably often does—it is because human beings have turned it out of the patterns of God’s design into the patterns of their own design.

The world we have today stands as its own indictment. We see what is created when each individual pursues what is right in his or her own eyes, when the pursuit of objective truth is abandoned for the elaboration of personal truths (i.e. “your truth” and “my truth”), and when human beings try to accomplish what they think they want according to their concepts of good and evil. They spend their lives eating of the fruit of the forbidden tree, trying to make God’s power accomplish something that is contrary to God’s will. It’s no wonder people feel so futile and impotent, despite their hard labor fighting the “good” fight.

You may have noticed something of this pattern in your life. If you have, there is a way out. A path was cleared for you, but you must be willing to let go of the beliefs and fears that have bound you to the state of identity that says, “I’m only human.”

You are WAY more than that. Ye are gods.

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash