Essentially, once you have ecountered enough spiritual speculation about the nature of God, you are confronted with two main streams of thought.
Either God is perceived as a perfect, immaculate, throne bound being of unmitigated power, or, the view that is mostly held by mystics, who have fallen in love with the Divine, and who believe that Our God, Our Father, Our Beloved Mother, is not static, and is instead, through the evolution of the creation, the forms (people, places, things) flowing out of the flaming Akashic realm, are evolving in the same manner as their source is evolving.
Jacob Bohme, a spiritual mystic, believed that God is evolving through us, and these heretical ideas almost almost brought the end for him on the fiery pyre.
AI says, “In his writings, the 17th-century German mystic Jakob Böhme proposed that God evolves, transitioning from a state of unmanifest, primordial darkness (a mere potential) into self-awareness and light. Böhme argued that God uses creation and humanity to reveal, experience, and know Himself.”
Key Concepts in Böhme’s Philosophy
- The Ungrund (Unfathomable Ground): Böhme posited that prior to creation, God existed as the Ungrund—an eternal, will-less abyss. Before the beginning, God was essentially an unformed longing to know Himself.
- The Evolution of Consciousness: To move from potential to actuality, God required an opposite. Böhme wrote that light can only be known through darkness. God divided Himself into positive and negative, light and wrath, in order to iterate and increase in complexity as He collected information about Himself.
- Humanity’s Divine Role: According to Böhme, God created the universe and man in His image specifically for this evolutionary journey. Humanity’s conscious participation, spiritual choices, and search for the divine are the very mechanisms through which God achieves self-realization and wholeness
“Meister Eckhart did not address biological evolution, but he had a radical view of a dynamic, unfolding God. He rejected a static God and famously prayed, “God, rid me of God,” suggesting our concepts of the divine must constantly evolve…”
His philosophy relies on three primary distinctions:
- The Ineffable Godhead: Eckhart posited that the ultimate divine reality—the Godhead—is a formless, groundless, and unchanging emptiness. It is completely beyond our limited reason, human descriptions (like “good” or “wise”), and concepts of time.
- The Evolving “God”: “God” (as distinct from the Godhead) is God in action, continuously birthing Himself into creation. Eckhart viewed the divine as active speech, and many modern scholars interpret this as a living, expanding divinity that co-evolves with human consciousness and the unfolding universe.
- The Divine Spark: Eckhart taught that there is an uncreated spark in the human soul (scintilla animae) that is one with God. When we empty ourselves of ego, God is “born” inside us, and subject and object merge into one.
Because he viewed divinity as an active “becoming,” Eckhart scholars often note that his thought is very compatible with modern evolutionary spirituality.
So Basically, both Bohme and Eckhardt see God as the Universal Ground of All Being, or Brahman and as an individuated being or Brahma.
These are ideas that I would never have understood growing up in Protestantism, where God is perfect and the Human is a worm in league with Lucifer.
Well, here is an interesting question, especially since this heretic believes that God in His|Her mercy, allows us to create a God formed from our own hearts and minds. Since in this world, God is a negation, to our Human minds, being blank and unborn, until we form Her or Him, and carefully imbue our God with the attributed that we seek to find in our own personal God.
Yet, maybe you should let go, end the struggle and submit to the God that loves you beyond reason and which is evolving within you, as you also evolve within Brahman. Is this not a healthier, more loving, more interactive, Godhood for which are hearts are longing joyfully worship?
Then why don’t you. Why don’t you place this God on the altar of your heart, and together within the heat of transforming fire, you and God as conjoined beings, evolving into the magnificent beings that can only be formed in a crucible or a within a quest.
So I received a really beautiful book, “Meister Eckhart’s Book of Secrets…Meditations on Letting Go and Finding True Freedom” by Burrows/Sweeney. The link is below. The authors have rendered Eckhart’s dense philosophy into the lightness of poetry, where the mystic’s concepts shine with new brightness.
At the Heart of Everything
I
“Too often we look on the surface
of things, and when we do we fail
to see that each one mirrors some
measure of the Immeasurable good
that is in God and is God, and until
we begin to see this we remain
restless and unsatisfied.
II
But when we do we begin to glimpse
Something of the image in which God
create all that was and is and will be
then we taste the solitude of the heart
of everything and everyone– that is,
God– and knows that in this unity no
one creature is better than another.
it did not happen by some act of will.
You cannot.
It did not take place by force of intellect.
Don’t strain yourself.
Every veil was removed for God to be in you,
in the nakedness of your soul.”
A Great Light
“There was a very great light,”
the scripture says, for when
Wisdom comes into the mind,
when the soul finally comes to rest
From its passions and concerns,
there also comes a quiet silence
as the soul rests from spinning,
with new understanding.”
To Be Satifised with Hell
“If you were so present in God
that you will and God’s were the same,
you wouldn’t so much mind
sickness over health
or pain over happiness.
You would even be satisfied with Hell,
if that was where you and God
were going together.”
Did You Ever Wonder
Did you ever wonder
what the greatest gift is
that God has ever done?
It is this: mercy.
If you wonder
what this means,
practice mercy
and your questions
will fade. Live into mercy,
and you will become
what you love,
for love unites us
in our loving,
not in our being.
So give yourself
To love, and love
yourself in giving.
The rest will follow
of its own.”
Seek God in Nothing
If someone tells you that God is here or there,
pay them no heed. And if they tell you that God is
this or that, ignore them. For you will only find
God when you remove every something and
seek him in nothing, and you will only see
him when you become blind and remove every
something from him. If you do this, you will
finally have only God, and God will have only you.
This is what matters; the rest will take care of itself.”
If You Want to Reach the Highest Wisdom
“If you want to reach the highest wisdom,
refuse everything you know, abandon all
you aspire to be, and seek the darkness of
the lowest place of all. Become nothing,
and there God will pour out the whole
of himself, who is All, and with his strength,
and you will see in the light you long for.
Becoming Peace
I
“What is the heart of lasting peace in our lives
and for our world? Simply this: the realization
that what God accomplishes in the only-begotten
God does in each of us as well, so that we
might become his beloved one.
II
To what end? So that we might learn to love
ourselves, and as we do this, as we learn to love
ourselves for who we truly are, we cannot
but love everyone else in the same manner.
This is the source of wisdom whose end is
the peace we are meant to become, which
is beyond our understanding but not beyond
what we long to know in our experience.”
Enclosed
“To find God
is to go nowhere.
Angels suddenly
appear in your path;
never mind them.
To find God
is to go where
we are alone
with the One,
enclosed.”
Four Kinds of Ecstasy
A first comes with intention,
when we reject the world’s pleasures for God.
This is love.
A second ecstasy comes with imaginative vision,
when we see, apart from our senses, God around us.
This is spirit.
A third ecstasy happens beyond sense and imagination,
when we see God in the mind, by infused and holy grace.
The, there is the fourth ecstasy,
when the mind’s eye can truly see God.
Of this I will say no more.
Learn to Become God’s Joy
“Some truths are as remarkable as they are simple,
and this is one such truth: God’s nature is to give
and give and give, without measure, and God does
this at all times__ but especially when we are down
and out, lost and lonely; God asks only that we take
what comes in this gift, which is nothing less than
God’s very self, and when we refuse to doe this
we deny who we are and, finally, kill God.
So open yourself to this gift and ready yourself
for this truth and so learn to become God’s joy.”
The Truth is All that Matters
“This truth is all that matters, but it’s hid
deep in darkness, a mystery so great
and sublime that no words can hold it.
So empty yourself of what you thought
you knew about it, and trust the silence
at the beginning and end of thinking.
This is where God wants to find you,
the pearl of such great price that you
must forget what you know and sell
all you have to acquire it. Once you do,
it is all you need. Nothing else matters.”
That’s it, that’s enough for today.