There are stories, legends, mythologies, folklore, traditions, histories, scriptures, and texts from all around the world which tell us of humans who have reached the stature of the gods. They have, in essence, become "a god." Some recognizable examples are people such as Jesus, Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha), and Muhammad. The process that these went through has been called theosis, deification, divinization, realization, awakening, and enlightenment. What does it mean to become or be "a god"?
An addition to the BHT, known as "The Lord's Prayer." (The painting above is "In the Wilderness" (2003), by Ron DiCianni.)
How should we regard the Godhead, or the Trinity as many Christians call it, taking into consideration biological evolution, particularly human evolution, and other modern science?
An addition to the BHT, which is the Apostle Paul's sermon at the Areopagus, or high court at Mars Hill, about the nature of God.
An addition to the BHT, about the problems with religious authorities.
A kind reader reached out to me and asked me to elaborate how my writings about the nature of God work with Joseph Smith's First Vision, since it seems that his vision was meant to "clear up the confusion" surrounding the nature of God, the prevailing idea that God "was not made with body, parts or passions." Wasn't "the point" of his vision to "define for the world who/what God was"?
The only God that we can find and perceive and know directly as such, I believe, is the one that can be found in the very center and heart of our own Self and Being and Consciousness. That is where God is. That is where God lives. That is God, in humanity.
I shared this account in my introductory paper about mysticism, but I think it should be shared as a stand-alone post as well. This is because it is so stunningly similar in many respects to Joseph Smith's accounts of the First Vision.
There is a curious detail in Joseph Smith's earliest accounts of his First Vision that may teach us more about this encounter with Deity, and the differences between the accounts. It is when God greets Joseph.