by Bob Trowbridge

Created on: February 28, 2009

On a physical level, we live because we were born. On a physical level, we will all die at some time. On a metaphysical or spiritual level, we live because we were given life. For all beings and consciousnesses, in every form and every dimension, life is not a choice.

So there are two questions. Why do we live as physical beings? Why do we live as spiritual beings? It is very likely that the answer to those two questions is the same.

From a spiritual or religious point of view, the question is: Why did God or the divine create us? If we know what purpose God had in mind, we will know why we exist. If we know God's purpose, we will be able to divine our own purpose for being, for living.

Many see God as a being who is complete in himself/herself/itself. Why would such a being need to create other beings? For what purpose did the creator create? My own guess, informed by the wisdom of past teachers, is that God created life in order to experience companionship. God created living beings in order to love and relate to beings outside of itself.

You and I can create fantasy experiences and relate to characters within our fantasy. It is never as satisfying as relating to other human beings who can respond to us in ways that will surprise us, something our fantasy characters cannot do.

I believe that God needed that same kind of experience. God needed to create beings and place them outside of itself in order to relate to them as something other than itself. This is also why we were given free will. If we were just puppets of God, there would be no real relationship. A true relationship can exist only when each individual can choose to relate or not relate.

In order for God to relate to us, we had to have the ability to say "No" to God, to reject God's love and companionship. On another level, of course, we cannot really separate ourselves from God because the creation and the creator are ultimately one.

Furthermore, we live in order for God to continue to learn, grow, experience, and create. The divine is an unfinished God. God is not perfected but continues to grow, change, experience and create. The creation, including physical beings, is the agent of God's continued learning and experiencing. God learns through us.

So the goal of both physical and non-physical beings is really the same as God's goals for itself. We are alive, physical and non-physical, so that we might love, learn, experience, create, and grow. We are here to discover who we really are. We are here to learn that we are cells in the body of God. We are here to open ourselves to the wonders of the fullness of being.

We are enlightened beings trying to recall our initial state of grace. Our great religious leaders come to remind us of who we are, to act as models for our own great unfolding.

Just as I believe that God's unfolding is never-ending, so I believe that our own unfolding has no end. Long after we are no longer physical, we will continue to explore and expand into greater and greater versions of our potential selves. We live in order to explore life. What we will find, over eons of exploration, is more life, more love, and more divinity.

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