Consider everything that makes you ‘you.’ Your thoughts, emotions, sensations, memories, desires, needs and more. These arise into consciousness and then disappear, perhaps to resurface another time. They can be triggered externally by others and internally within you. Memories can trigger thoughts. Thoughts can trigger memories. Desires can trigger thoughts. Needs can trigger desires. And so forth. Two profound questions come with this tiny piece of information:
Where do the above aspects of your ‘Self’ go when you are not conscious of them?
Who is the one who is ‘conscious’ of these aspects of the Self?
Christianity has created an excellent model for the Self. They call it ‘The Trinity’: The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The Father is your consciousness, the one high above who sees all, knows all, accepts all and loves all.
The Son is your inner depths, the place where all aspects of the Self remain when not in consciousness. That is, when they are not being observed by the Father.
And finally, the Holy Spirit is the energy which roams between the Father and the Son. It is the medium which carries your thoughts, emotions, sensations, memories, desires and needs to the One above.
Each of these three elements of the unitary Self contains infinite immensity.
The Father is your God Self, the one who has been through and seen all eternity.
The Son is the seed of everything you could be, your Jesus Self. It contains everything you have experienced, along with everything your ancestors experienced. The Son is the divine child, the fragile being within you containing the power of infinite past lifetimes, along with the power of the entire universe.
Yet you remain limited by your humanity. Everything about you which makes you human — your greed, your envy, your hunger, your weaknesses — these are all things that you must contend with in the manifested world. Yet you nonetheless possess within you power beyond conception. This is the tragedy of the human being. Like a wave in the Ocean, they contain God, yet they are not God.
And finally, the Holy Spirit is the energy which bridges the Father and the Son with each other and with the manifested world. It is like electricity powering the machine which carries messages and wisdom where they need to go.
You do not have to be a Christian to understand or accept this, you only need to have undertaken a spiritual practice. These parts of the unitary Self exist within all of us. The Trinity has immense pull in the Christian world precisely because people sense the truth of it. Within the Self, we possess God, along with His divine seed, as well as the power of the entire universe He created.
As a non-Christian or atheist, you may believe God to be a woman, gender-neutral, or simply an energetic force. Or something else entirely. That is up to you.
Greek Mythology also provides fascinating bridges between humanity and its ‘God’ Self in the form of the countless Gods and Goddesses within the Greek Pantheon, all of whom illustrate the human-God tragedy in its many manifestations. Yet the Trinity model remains an exceptionally pure framework for illustrating the Self.
