My Little Cosmos

In the Bible, it says that we are made in the image of God.  Unfortunately, we has mis-interpreted this and anthropomorphized God in our own image.  Classical depictions of God paint “him” in human form presiding in a heavenly realm, exhibiting human emotions like love and anger.  This is rather arrogant and demonstrative of human hubris.  Need proof?  All the way until 1543, we believed the earth was the center of the universe, mainly purported by religious authorities.  Even 100 years ago, we thought ours was the only galaxy.

Science has exposed our hubris in the outer cosmos, but it still hides in our inner cosmos.  We place ourselves at the center of our own universe and believe that everything revolves around us.  Think about it, in every situation, the first question you subconsciously ask is “how does this affect me?”  Our behavior is predominantly a reaction based on our subjective judgement of whether something is good or bad for us.  It’s the rare one who places others in the center of their universe.

If we take a moment to examine our psyche, we discover dozens of inner identities.  Our profession, our religious affiliation, our favorite sports teams or sporting activity, our membership in organizations, our politics, our cultural heritage, our self-image and fashion sense, our wealth or education level, marital or parenthood, our illness and trauma experiences; it goes on and on.  Some of these identities are very weighty, like our race or gender or life partner orientation.  Others are light, like the way we go about greeting people in general.  It’s like we create all these planets of identity around ourselves, each with its own gravity.  The heavier the identification with these, the more it pulls us in, and entraps us.  The gravitational pull of our identifications inhibits our freedom to experience our field of awareness unequivocally.  For example, an egotistical athlete will suffer tremendously after a debilitating injury because their self-identity is crushed.  But their equally talented teammate who has an expansive awareness of their Cosmic Self would simply bow to a similar injury and celebrate their life as it unfolds in new possibilities.

Mystical traditions have always said that we are a reflection of the universe.  Yogis say this is literally true in the inner workings of our energetic systems, which manifest from the subtle to the physical.  We may not have the awareness to perceive this, but at least metaphorically it does seem like we are mirrors of the cosmos.  Perhaps that is the true interpretation of that Bible verse.