Perception is a funny thing. You can tell a lot about someone by how they present themselves. How they view their own life experience.
Christians see themselves as Jedi... Or maybe a .modern day Templar. We all have our fantasies.
An edgy Satanist may just be running from the real tender feelings deep down that make up the early life trauma. Hell, I have been through so many, myself that I lost track of exactly when the all disappeared and I was just... Here.
Of course a new identity always forms itself. Doesn't it? Please step into the quantum queue, new guy. You'll get a chance for proper examination in time.
But sadly most people never get there. Even atheists, who are more open to the "I don't knows" and "Interesting, but let's examine this with some skepticism", moments... Are often the culmination of concepts and ideas regurgitated from meeting another person, from being in the world and having experiences. But we are not merely the product of our experiences.
You don't even have to go that deep to see it. Just ask, who is thinking your thoughts? What is the mechanism behind your "consciousness"? The thing wearing the experience of you like a thin membrane.
That is the real "God". It is everything. It is the thing from which all things spring forth... But what is it? According to the Hermetics, The Hindus and The Buddhists... We cannot truly know. The Hermetics call it The All, Hinduism calls it Brahman, Christians call it "God", and project their most primitive, insecure and petty qualities upon it. And instead of the cosmos and cosmic oneness it's... Butthurt, jealous sky daddy with the temperament of a cosmic toddler.
My favorite, since it's all symbolism anyway, is the Lovecraftian idea... That higher forces may be oblivious to our existence. Not out of malevolence, but because we are but ants to those forces. Not in a hopeless way, it in an aw inspiring way. Here you are, a pinprick of a little awareness, manifest as "Human" or "Kyle", or "Michelle"... You are still, in essence are a piece of that cosmic thing. Whatever it is behind our literal veil of possible perception. (There is an entire fucking CIA unclassified document about it. They reached a wall they could not see or get past and concluded it to be the source of everything, that wall... Is what their current state of consciousness is capable of grasping. There is likely so much more and much bigger things behind the veil. But you were right up against the membrane, weren't you, Dr Russell Targ? 😉
I saw your TED Talk, by the way. I very much enjoyed it.
I have been to that wall in my own travels. For me it manifested as things beyond deities that don't like to be discussed. Not at length, anyway.
What astonishes me is those I stances when humanity gets the closest to God it's ever been... It gets scared and withdraws back to draconian projection of its own insecure human traits. One of my favorite, absolutely close to the truth about the afterlife most people will experience is akin to The Neverending Story. Not that you'll run into a giant turtle or a luck dragon, persee, but that the experience you have will be a reflection of life. And that often manifests as ones subconscious idea of Heaven or Hell or the Fields of Elysium, if you will... Rather than the conscious view. Either way you will not only be given the opportunity to review your life, but will be given a chance to experience other possible timelines and outcomes that could have been. This is given to you as a massive, multidimensional experience, that you are ultimately in control of, but your higher self, or "The version of you that is God" will be accompanying you. In whatever form that takes.
For most people this seems to manifest as something of an egrandized experience akin to high fantasy. You may take the reigns of your destiny as it suits you from there. In whatever form that may take for you, but that is the beauty of it. It can be any kind of experience you out genuine, faith or belief into, this world is a collective version of that same thing, that's why you can't just declare that you can fly and jump out of a window and expect it to happen. Not until the life review anyway, when it's basically debug mode and you can do whatever you want. But here and now withing the consensus reality, and the Kybalion actually covers this in the section about the "half wise", the rules of that reality do apply to you. Gravity is still a thing while you are in the material experience.
Magick... Or witchcraft, or prayer or maybe for you it's masturbation, idk, but communication with the divine is essential to being able to do anything "Supernatural" within the material realm. Not without getting everyone else creating the world via things like observation, belief, interaction and such... To agree to it all at once. Or... Alternatively, do it in a pocket reality, and away from prying eyes. (This is why true power is hidden in subconscious or subconsensus... Ha.
It is possible, because enough people are at least unsure, and even some atheists have ideas on this. But doing anything within that is difficult, because yes... The laws of consensus reality absolutely do matter. Ha. Get it? Matter? 🥁😃
But... Sadly, most people never get there. Never far from just past what they think they know. Most people, can I think, acknowledge that we know next to a grain of sand next to what there may be to possibly know. And yet still... How can you know you weren't created five minutes ago, complete with memories and nostalgia?
