In my soul, God not only gives birth to me as His son, He gives birth to me as Himself,
and Himself as me…Our truest I is God.
Meister Eckhart

I am the fiery life of the essence of God.
Hildegard of Bingen

Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me; I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to that person.
Jesus

Our external, superficial self is not eternal, not spiritual. Far from it. This self is doomed to disappear as completely as smoke from a chimney…So it is with one who has vanished into God by pure contemplation. God alone is left. He is the “I” who acts there. He is the one Who loves and knows and rejoices.
Thomas Merton

I believe these statements. I take them very seriously. And I have collected scores of similar testaments to our divinity from mystics across time and religious tradition. As a result, I think we have the wrong understanding of God.

For eons, humans have viewed God as a huge, external, and all-knowing human-like figure who rewards some, punishes others, and ignores many, and whose actions in the world often seem mysterious and inexplicable. This is the projection model of God: we humans unconsciously created the figure of God in our own image and projected this image “out there.” Worse, this belief assigns the responsibility for change onto a fictional character to whom we keep praying, hoping that this “God” will someday hear us, or do what we ask, or show us why things are the way they are, or something.

But the mystics have been telling us from the beginning that the universe is conscious and alive, everywhere saturated with the divine Presence, and that individual human consciousness is part of that Presence. In other words, we are already imbued with God’s consciousness. How could it be otherwise? As Eckhart says, “Everything that is in God is God.” So, as a teaspoon of salt can say, “I am salt,” and the cup of sugar can say, “I am sugar,” I can say, “I am God.” It doesn’t mean I am all of God or you’re not, but it does mean that in my essence I am what God is and I know that now.

What’s the moral here? We are what God is. We are the answer to our prayers. We are the love we have been searching for. When we get out of the way, when we quiet the chattering mind, the consciousness that remains, and the love that flows through it, is God, and in this consciousness the world shines sacred once again as Eden. Our work as individuals is to learn how to experience divine consciousness within ourselves. Our work as Sacred Activists is to bring this consciousness into the world.

John C. Robinson is a clinical psychologist with a second doctorate in ministry (studying with Matthew Fox), an ordained interfaith minister, the author of nine books and numerous articles on the psychology, spirituality and mysticism of the New Aging, and a frequent speaker at Conscious Aging Conferences across the country. His latest book, The Divine Human: The Final Transformation of Sacred Aging, presents a new model of God. You can learn more about John’s work at www.johnrobinson.org.