Proximity and Consciousness

It seems to me that we are often plagued by this feeling of being far from God.

I'm wondering whether this distance between us and God is simply an illusion. Actually, delusion would be the better word.

God gives us a choice whether to believe in Him or not, and, to preserve this choice, He creates a world which apparently runs without Him, in which His actions are apparently invisible, yet produce startling effects. The existence of the Church populated by sinners is one of the most miraculous things going! The choice is that of Faith which we can adhere to or reject. As I posted below, Science seems to suggest that we have free-won't rather than free will, and this simply demonstrates the presence of temptation that is part of our make-up.

I am convinced that while our mind may indeed be the product of chemical and electrical activity in the brain, our awareness of simply being points to an unobservable existence of ourselves and ourselves as an image of God. But humans tend to reduce ourselves so terribly. If we possess this image of God then how do we really deface this image? Surely it's indelible.

I am inclined to believe that sin isn't so much a defacing of the image of God that we possess (and perhaps we possess it as a single humanity) and rather more a deliberate blinding of ourselves as vessels of God. The final and most awful sin is that we blind ourselves eternally to God. What is Hell but bearing God's image but being eternally unaware of possessing it, searching aimlessly for that which is so close, but never, ever finding it.

I am often told that we are like leaky pots into which the Spirit is poured, but it seeps out again. This doesn't ring true to me. The sacrament of Confirmation is indelible, and for the Holy Spirit to leak out goes against the notion of a God who is always with us until the end of the age.

It seems that it is sin that turns us away from the truth of our spiritual identity. We become more aware of ourselves only as a biological organism which just operates according to the thoughts and feelings that may bubble up in our brain. We lose that sense that we are not all these labels of teacher, student, gas-fitter, fat, bald, straight, gay, homophobe, physicist, learned, stupid, effeminate, coward, happy, sad, man woman or even human being. We are not labels because that is not where our identities lie. These labels we have to give up if we really want to find ourselves.

In sin we become less aware of being aware of who we are, because we are less aware of God, the source of our being and the sole reason we continue to be. We may be clay vessels of the Holy Spirit, but that Spirit will not leave us, indeed He will always strive to convince us of His presence within us, but never coerce us into making a choice which doesn't come from this heart of our very being. Somehow these little clay pots have to turn around and make ourselves aware of the oil that we possess already within us by being still and knowing that God is, and that in Him we live and move and have our being.

...at least as far as I am aware.