Allegory of the Cave and God

Indiana is now in his sixth month. Within this time I have been able to reflect on a couple different thoughts.

First, I have thought a lot of Plato’s The Cave recently.
Allegory of the Cave
The basic idea in this allegory is that people are only seeing shadows of what is truly happening in the world. I feel that I had only seen shadows of children until I finally had my own. I didn’t have a particular feeling of them one way or another. But having one of my own that I can now interact with, love and understand a bit better, I realize their greatness. My feeling of young children today is that they are Nothing. They aren’t pure, innocent or any other adjective people put on them. They are Nothing… in the Buddhist sense of the word. Purity and innocence are just what people use to describe this state. Being pure and innocent suggests the idea that they somehow willed this. They did nothing of the sort. They simply are. They simply are… Nothing. It is in this Nothingness where all of the greatness resides.

My view of God is opposite of a standard Judeo-Christian sense of God. We are taught in Western thinking that God is all-powerful, omnipotent, sometimes merciful sometimes angry. I feel that God is none of that. In fact, I feel that God is more similar to a faint light: weak, fragile, easily extinguishable. My feeling is that we probably threw God out of the Garden of Eden rather than the other way around. But the brilliance of this God comes from the point that God is within all of us. The light of God is the connecting force that binds all of life. It is unending love. We all have it within us, we all had it once in our lives. It’s I Corinthians 13:1-13: I Corinthians 13:1-13

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.

This is God. We call it purity, innocence… love. But really a better definition of it is “Nothing”. It is everything that is not of this world. It has no emotion tied to external events or thoughts. It has no symbol to represent it. It is Nothing which is everything that is important.

It is this God Nothing that now lives in my house. It won’t be here for long. I’m guessing a year or maybe 2 and then it will slowly leave. But this is the greatness of young children. Right now, Indiana is the face of God. When I am holding him I am closer than I ever have been to God. It is his Nothing purity and innocence that makes his current existence so holy.

At this time in my life, with my own personal Cave, I have been unchained and have turned my head. I am looking directly at God. What makes this even more special is that I’m lucky enough to know it.