The Creed

flickr photo by Eric Perrone

These statements form the bedrock of my personal philosophy. They make sense of my world. If they are proven untrue, then at the very least they must be replaced with something truer! 

• I am a manifestation of eternal spirit.
• Spirit only exists in physically manifested forms.
• Spirit expresses itself through innumerable acts of will.
• Spirit defies entropy.
• Spirit and matter are co-eternal and eternally commingled; separate yet inseparable.
• Infinite spirit manifests through finite consciousness.
• Infinite spirit knows itself through individuated experience.
• Spirit can neither be created, nor destroyed.
• Spirit is simple, uniform, majestic.
• I am an essential illusion.

Cause and Purpose in the World

I imagine myself standing alone before a room full of people, asking: Anyone who believes they have absolutely no purpose in life, raise your hand. How many would seriously do so? My guess is very few.

Intuitively most of us sense a purpose to our lives and would feel lost without that underlying influence. Most of us believe we are the result of some kind of purposeful unfolding rather than the latest state produced by an incomprehensible chain of soulless reactions or causes.

That sense of purpose lies at the heart of the first statement in my personal creed: I believe I am a manifestation of divine spirit.

Although I can only affirm that for myself, I also believe everyone else manifests the divine.

It is important for me to qualify that statement right away. I am not a foot soldier in the army of the Old Testament God. Rather, I am an expression of Intelligent Desire, the influence of divine spirit unfolding in the universe. God does not command; god wishes to know and express himself through the cycles of becoming, and I am a tiny instance of that eternal, wondrous process.

I believe!