godliness

In my last blog, "Monkey Mind and the Life before Mind,"  I briefly mentioned our "godliness." I thought I should expound on this idea.

My fundamental belief is that humans contain an innate longing to imprint our existence onto worldly objects. In other words, to extend beyond the physical, through creation. The desire is part of our humaness. It is enveloped into our multiplying cells that continue to divide and divide and divide until we are a complete and self sustaining being.

Each human being is an artist, crafting a life through the connections that occur within ourselves and by the actions that transpire as a result of those connections (I recommend reading "The Craftsman" by Richard Sennett). This is part of our biology. My belief is that what we know as God, exists in that biology.

Consider the great work of Michaelangelo, "Creation of Adam" masterfully painted on the ceiling of the Cystine Chapel. The general belief is that the painting depicts God creating Man. However, I believe that what is actually being depicted is Man creating God. Through Man's desire to extend the psyche beyond his physical body and to make sense of the unknown, the notion of a God was created.

Being creative is an act of pushing the boundaries of our human experience into space. Expanding the mind outside of the body. This is our true godliness.

Resources
Monkey Mind And Life before Mind > http://gustavreyes.com/blog.html
http://www.rome.info/michelangelo/sistine-chapel/creation-of-adam/
The Craftsman by Richard Sennett

The Craftsman names a basic human impulse: the desire to do a job well for its own sake. Although the word may suggest a way of life that waned with the advent of industrial society, Sennett argues that the craftsman’s realm is far broader than skilled manual labor; the computer programmer, the doctor, the parent, and the citizen need to learn the values of good craftsmanship today.

The Craftsman leads Richard Sennett across time and space, from ancient Roman brickmakers to Renaissance goldsmiths to the printing presses of Enlightenment Paris and the factories of industrial London. History has drawn fault lines dividing practice and theory, technique and expression, craftsman and artist, maker and user; modern society suffers from the historical inheritance. But the past life of craft and craftsmen also suggests ways of using tools, organizing work, and thinking about materials that remain alternative, viable proposals about how to conduct life with skill.

New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008; London: Allen Lane/Penguin Press, 2008; Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 2008; Milan: Feltrinelli, 2008; Paris: Albin Michel, 2009;Barcelona: Anagrama, 2009