Why oh why? -The Illusion
Manage episode 358245994 series 3170274
"It's many years since our children were babies or toddlers, but it seems so recent, and I can remember clearly watching them when they were asleep in their cot. I would just feel so contented and loving toward them as they breathed and maybe muttered in their sleep. They might now and then turn over perhaps with a little whimper or cry.
But very occasionally it might be clear that their sleep was quite disturbed, and one would know that probably they were having a dream and they were not very much enjoying it. Sometimes they would wake up and say “ there were monsters, Daddy. Horrible monsters.” and my wife and I would comfort them and tell them that everything was safe, that they were protected, loved, and then there was nothing at all to fear.
Never once did they say “please come inside that dream Daddy and chase those monsters away.”
We would all know that the figures were imaginary, fictitious creations and that the real home life that they were awakening to was one of peace and love and comfort.
Sometimes it can feel as though we could imagine How God might feel. If God were a person watching over us in that sort of way.
An analogy that works – for a bit.
Often in the Western tradition, God is spoken about as a father. A father who created the world in which we live, and who sometimes in some ways God can come down and either fix things (or not fix things !!) In the life that we are leading – in the World
And The question so often asked, and the subject of doubt and a thousand books, is WHY? If God exists, Why is there suffering, why is there evil?
But what if the life that we are leading Is an illusion like a dream? And God, if God were a person, would know that we were experiencing something but that it was actually non existent. Not that He didn't care or couldn't fix it, but that there was nothing real to fix. And that the truth is that all is well, all is perfect, all is in divine order, as we say in unity..."
In this episode Rev Ken Bradley explores the idea of illusion, thinking about Plato and Aristotle, Buddha as well as Unity concepts. As always the musing is followed by a reading from the Daily Word archives.
https://www.unityuk.org/what-is-daily-word.html
28 episodes