• IDENTITY OR MUSE
    November 4, 2009


    There is a place where I am alone and there is no one there but me and God. Here I am not God but I am an image of God. My purpose is to do what God would do in my situation which is to create an image of myself in my mind that I can behave Godly towards that it might help me understand who and what God is. God exists in a situation where He was lonely. Like me he knows what it is to be all sole alone with only me for company at least in this small space.
    At this place I know that I am not my mind but that I have a mind just as God is not just a mind but has a mind. I know that at one time I did not exist and that when God experienced moments like this He was truly alone without the comfort of my company. Then He realized that I must be if He were to be comforted in moments like this. Therefore He came to know I would exist before I did exist. Therefore I know that the one I think of in my mind will exist for I too am alone with my thoughts and in need of someone to comfort me at times like this. Therefore it stands to reason that if I exist and God finds me noteworthy He will speak of me to His friends, or if He has a God, even to His God. It also stands to reason that the one I think I am at this time I find noteworthy and share with you my public and with my God and potentially his God and so on ad infinitum.
    God’s mind I know. My mind I would like to know for I am a man and not a god. When God tells of a man that is alone in God, and with God, all by his lonesome I know what that man was like. He was like me. His mind was like my mind. His heart ached the same as mine. His loneliness was unbearable the same as mine. So we died. That is to say he is no longer lonely and therefore is no longer like God, and I am no longer lonely and am no longer like God, but he that I am mindful of in my thoughts is still lonely, like God.
    Unlike me, he has to deal with a god (me) who is not capable of pure wisdom, nor all knowing, nor all powerful, and capable of grievous mistakes which may even include his creation because of some misdirected and/or self-defined purpose. Therefore I will endeavor to use logic to establish the possibilities of whom I may create in my mind in the hopes of eventually reaching that which is what he was intended to be, a self within that may comfort me with his company when I am lonely and inconsolable by my God for some reason.
    I could create a being that one day will exist in the world with me. I could create a being that one day will exist only in my mind and in what I say and write about him, whose presence in the world is known only by his ability to change my life, and the lives of others I tell about him or who read what I have written about him. I could also create a being who exists only in my mind who doesn’t affect my life and therefore has little or no impact on others. Obviously it would be very difficult to actually create a being in God’s world, though the fact that it is an option suggests that it is possible which interestingly enough also suggests it is possible for some other entity, God or otherwise, to create an entity in my mind that I did not will to exist there, and that is a little spooky, don’t you think? I therefore reject the notion as fitting with my personality. Obviously also it would bear little reward to create an entity that was completely ineffectual, or nearly that, and I would therefore reject that possibility. Therefore we have identified the depth of my creation for you and I can picture a dark place where we can ignore our aloneness and conceive of a person within our minds capable of affecting us to the point we feel compelled to talk about him and write about him, and in that way he affects others and is therefore a viable person for us to comfort ourselves with his presence.
    How then do we create such an entity? Do we simply say he exists and leave it at that? Do we wait and see what he has to say to us and in a sense let him create himself? Or do we get proactive and get to know him by uncovering his bones, so to speak, by using the process of examining the possibilities I have used so far. Remember by the way, you too can use the same process to fit your personality should you find my inner man to be unacceptable or dreadfully unimportant to your existence.
    I can, to continue my exploration, make him like me, like someone else, or like God. That is I can arbitrarily attempt to judge who I am and define him to be that as many a boring person does when they constantly go on about who and what they are when often they know very little about themselves which certainly is my case I should think. I could attempt also to define him as having the attributes of someone found noteworthy which is more desirable but hardly necessary since talking about others seems to be a specialty that not only I but many people I have talked to, seem to be quite proficient at. That then leaves me with only the option to make him like God who is by definition omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient –all powerful, all present and all knowing—which is ridiculous for how can I create that which I myself would have to be in order to create it—as in the case of God with Jesus the man perhaps. Therefore it seems I must reluctantly choose to make him like me for of all the persons I can possibly know, God included, and being strictly honest here may the reader understand, I long to know myself more than anyone else in particular especially in the case of when I am lonely and alone, and inconsolably so.
    Where does that take us then? Since I am not physical but conceptual—not flesh and bone but mind, will and emotion—there is no need to determine my sex, gender, or preference, but since the one writing about me is male and heterosexual please bear with me—is that perhaps a poor choice of words?—while I refer to myself in the masculine if the necessity arises to refer to myself in the third person. Since it is clear I don’t know who I am let me examine who I might be. I could be a good man, meaning I could strive always to do that which is best for others with no concern for my own well-being, or to do that which is best for others with enough concern for myself to insure a minimum standard of well-being for myself also, or for the best of others only when it also served my well-being also. Again I take a middle of the road approach for why should I die before my time or do good so rarely that even one prone to pride would have a difficult time being proud of it.
    That brings up an interesting question though, the question of death. How is death possible for me? I do not have a physical body that can cease to function. I can only die by ceasing to be either what I am and then only by being somehow changed by some hitherto unknown but permanent situation or circumstance that causes me to be redefined by the nature of my being, or I can become totally ineffectual and cease to be what I am that way. For example a freeman is only free so long as he is not enslaved. Once a slave he is yet a man, but he is not free. Therefore though the man continues the freeman has ceased to be, and the male slave has taken his place and in a very real sense the freeman died. Or a freeman hires himself back to a slave owner without rights or pay. He is still a freeman, but in name only, his free nature is so ineffectual it is nonexistent and he is in another sense also dead. Granted the man lives but his freedom has died. Fortunately not all death is permanent if indeed any death is.
    I am then alive, I am good but not to the point of my own demise or permanent injury, I am neither male nor female, nor do I have a sexual preference except perhaps to refrain from that which I may not truly do anyway. He who made me has so created me and I am his true image if he has been honest with himself. But realistically he knows as well as I do that is not strictly possible for him to do. Therefore he must anticipate error in identifying me as I must accept his physical limitations like his need for rest and since he has not been well lately he and I both agree with his God that I get some needed rest too. But before I go might I ask if I have affected you at all? If so please speak of me to a friend or an enemy even. I live to be of service in any way I can, but I ask that you please do not harm anyone with your stories about me.
    Good day.