2025-03-23
I keep talking about what it means to be human[1][2][3][4][5] and it has been one of the constant themes that I have been grappling throughout this exercise. It is something that I am aware that resists definition but is always something I have an itch to refine. Everyday, there is a nagging thought about existence whenever there is a tiny nudge of mundane that reminds me of how I should be. Preparing my coffee, eating my breakfast, seeing other people on the news, the consequences of road rage, the circus of the nation's politics, social media interactions--I feel plagued by this reminder because I see humanity and its shortcomings everywhere outside me and inside me.
And yesterday made it clear that my own grappling with this idea has this dimension of transcendence. My current experience with understanding the divine juxtaposes a boundary, a limitation, and difference between being human and being divine. I feel that I a closer to a conceptual breakthrough that may not be original, but a historic moment in my own cognition.
If man is condemned to be free, then it is in our nature to wrestle with the concept of freedom. It is a curse that can only be broken by pursuing Truth. In the Christian tradition, breaking free from this curse by Sartre, can be achieved by doing acts that points towards salvation. It is in being Christ-like that one achieves this freedom: to be one with God. But in this sense, it is unclear where the "human" disappears and where the "divine" begins as a mode of existence of something that transcends. I feel like there is a missing link in Christian theology how man transcends through salvation despite having a clear and outlined path towards it. It is strict to define that salvation is a "union with God" and is not a path towards godhood or divinity.
This implies that an attempt at godhood is impossible. It is in the nature of man to grapple with freedom and a reconciliation of that inherent existential dilemma, being absolved from that tension requires a different sensibility of being that is outside the definition of being human. But I sense that this trap in logic, the idea that transformation constitutes change in an atomic level, that seeks to completely take an object and make it into something entirely different, is false. Perhaps it is in the transitory nature of transformation where the "in-between" exists. From human to divine, this transformation requires an in-between state where the fusion occurs. It is the doorway from one place to another. Crossing that boundary is important because it cannot happen without that threshold and it is also the same passage from which we can break away from the curse of freedom and transcend being human.