I first posted this on Facebook, and several people said they really liked it, so I thought it would also be good to post here. You may follow me on Facebook for more daily thoughts and discussion.

I think many religious people, especially Christians, want God to be a personal God, someone in human form, who they could talk to, shake hands with, hug, relate to, who could relate to them, etc. There is a deep desire for God to be generally the same as we are, so that God could succor us, comfort us, answer our prayers, give us meaning.

The bad news is that I don’t think God is ultimately a being in human form. God’s essence transcends all such forms, humans included. The highest or deepest reality of God is beyond all form, matter, even spacetime, that’s why we say God is “eternal,” timeless, unconditional. It is fundamentally formless, because every form is impermanent and changing. God is unchanging.

The good news is that God is also That which incarnates its Self into each and every form, including humans. God is the ground of being itself, including all beings. God is like the ocean, and we are the waves. We are made up of God. God forms itself into every finite thing, temporarily, including spacetime.

How does the formless become all form? Perhaps the same way all massless entities become all things which have mass. What we call “mass” is not solidity, it is resistance to acceleration. It is a kind of illusion, a mirage in the desert. All things with form seem solid, substantial, self-existent, but they are like waves in the ocean, temporary forms, eddies in the stream, leaves on the tree, taking on the appearance of form, exerting a resistant force when you try to accelerate them (change their direction or speed). But it is all God at bottom, the ocean taking on form as each and every wave.

So is God personal? Well, it depends. While God is not ultimately a person or human, God incarnates as each and every person. Every person you’ve ever met, who has ever lived, was God in human form. Now, they might not know that (most don’t), but that’s what they ultimately are. They may act contrary to their own true nature. They are like a wave that doesn’t know it is made up of ocean. Would it make sense for one wave to attack another wave? No, that would be silly. It would just be the ocean attacking itself. But this is our human nature, our ignorance, our hate, our ego, and it is the veil. Our knowledge of our true deep Self is limited, and is thus a veil.

Occasionally that veil is pierced and we see clearly our true nature, that we are ocean, that we are in all things, that we are That which has become all things and beings, the Source, the Essence, the Ground, the Eternal, the One. We are God. We are not a temporary form, but That which has become ALL forms in all times and places. We are every human, every person, every being, every form. And this radically changes our identity in the world, transfiguring our life and behavior. It’s happened to many people, such as Jesus.

Yes, we each still act from a particular skin-bound body, with particular thoughts and abilities, but in our deepest nature we know what we are. Every person is another incarnation or manifestation of our Divine Self, our true Self, and so we Love them as our Self, as other aspects of our very same Being. Inasmuch as it is done unto the least of these, it is done unto Me. We are the wave that has recognized that it is ocean that makes up my waveform and every other waveform, and that ocean is what we really all are, and so it makes no sense to harm another. We Love our neighbor literally as our Self. And even when the waves crash on the shore, the ocean continues, continually reincarnating or resurrecting its Self into endless forms most beautiful.

So if you want to shake hands with God, hug God, relate to God, like a person, all we need to do is find the nearest person, and go do so. It’s that simple, and it is that beautiful. Really. And the wonder of it is, when we do so, we are also being God to them, comforting them even as we are comforted, mourning with them even as we mourn, loving them even as we are loved. It is God on both ends of the handshake or the hug. Sometimes we call these “angels,” emissaries from God, being God to others, being the ocean to the wave that is crashing.

As a famous poem reads, “Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” Yours. God has incarnated its Self as you and me today, the Word has become our flesh. We are the living Christ. It’s you and me, and even more so when we recognize it, and embody our true nature and identity. It is no “other,” but all others. It is our Self, our true Self, our eternal Self. Pinch yourself and you pinch the flesh of God. God has become us, here and now. Will we awaken to our Christ Self as Jesus did, as Paul did, and countless others did? Will Christ awake and arise, today? Christ already did or you wouldn’t be reading this. Do you know your Self, Christ?

I bow to the Christ in you. Yes, you!