Many of us ask ourselves this question at different times right throughout our entire lives.
Is God within us, or without us?
Is God actually existing separately outside of us somewhere else? Are we really completely separated from God in any way?
The answer might be surprising to you, because it is neither.
God fundamentally if he exists is everything combined into a oneness of himself.
Nothing can ever exist outside of this oneness, but can anything else, and that could be called separate, really ever exist within this same oneness?
This is the real question that we need to explore further here.
Does God exist inside of me, or outside of me?
If God is inside of me, what would that leave me to be?
If God is outside of me, how could I ever then contact God at all?
Love exists in the oneness of its expression throughout all of creation. This love remains oneness, but it can express itself individually in infinite ways. It is the same with God. God lives in you, because you are a part of God. This means that you are not outside of God, and he is not outside of you.
Nothing is outside of you, and nothing is outside of God.
All is only ever the oneness of God.
Where then does our idea of separation come from? Why do we think that there is an inner and an outer?
It arises simply from our thinking. Thoughts arise from the oneness for us to experience as our own, but when we try to own them as our own, we then cut ourselves off from recognising the love of God that is in each thought, and within each experience.
Love lives not separately, but it is mistakenly separated out by creation as not being totally within itself. The truth is that creation is not being created, but that God is allowing itself to think that it is so, at least only in the beginning stages of the growth of consciousness in each created part of himself.
Nothing has been created. Everything remains oneness. God is all. Everything takes place within God, as God.
This means that the soul remains a part of God. It is not separately created. It is the coverings of our soul that are created from nothing that then become the illusionary accepted separateness. These coverings include the physicalness of its outer body, its emotions and its thoughts. It is these that are then used to see from an outer perspective, but really they just give an inner viewing from soul now ''outwardly'' for it to be able to see more of the overall oneness that is God.
All life is about God.
God creates inside himself so that he can recognise his own life blood which is his love flowing around his body or body parts which could be said to be us or soul. Oneness is complete, but it is expanding by the oneness seeing itself in ever new ways from within itself in such a way that it seems to be looking outward. It never is though. It is only inwardly connecting to an inner thrusting of its own love being made more awarely in ever new ways.
Inner and outer are more only mere descriptions of the way that we feel we are seeing things. If we could only see the one true reality, all our sense of inner or outer separateness would then immediately disappear for us.
Growing too used to your position is disruptive to your inner and outer growth, because all growth relies on change and new experiences. You grow from all events, but the faster growth is from accepting the change, and a slower learning will take place when you are resisting the changes always coming to you from love. Everything that happens to you has been brought to you from love in order for you to learn something new about love.
The only way that we stop growing is when we see ourselves as separate from God. This creates a blockage for the flow of his love. Love then dams up outside of the part of God that we are. We feel this inner and outer pressure, and so it reinforces again our idea of us being separated from God.
The feeling of separation is only our own creation. It is the illusion caused by us creating a blockage inside of us. This blockage then acts sort of unconsciously independently to restrict us from allowing the full conscious uninterrupted flowing of God's complete love through us.
Eventually love will get through to us and we will immediately then feel again the connection to its oneness flowing freely through God as us.
How can we ever even begin to comprehend what is really going on here? Why do we feel separated from God? If we look inwardly or outwardly all we should ever find is God, but how do we do this?
Love in a sense is not God, until God loves.
This means that God was inertly alive until he allowed each part of himself to become actively alive through conscious awareness being sparked in each part of himself from its previously unconscious state. This only happened as God himself moved from the scattered un-focussing of his own consciousness, and which can be described as unconsciousness to now focussing it onto each part of himself.
As soon as God found that he could do this, his love then flowed through him consciously for the first time, and was now also able to reach all of his parts consciously, and to be eventually known to them all even as they also now grew separately conscious, but remaining uniformly still connected in oneness to God.
What does it mean that the inner reflects the outer then, if the inner is in fact the same as the outer, as I am saying here?
The oneness shines on itself in such unique ways that it gives itself resonating areas of differential separateness. These areas depend on the flowing of love. All is uniform within the oneness, except for an area that is blocking love in some way. This blockage is what is reflected back onto the rest of the whole, and this can be seen as it reciprocates or replicates itself around the location of the blockage in such a way that the blockage will eventually always self heal itself.
This takes place as it moves from its own unconscious blocking of love to a greater conscious allowing of love to flow through itself now unimpeded in all ways.
Each soul or part of God has been given a sort of on/off switch of consciousness that operates in them from love.
This is what gives the idea of an inner and outer state, and of the idea of separateness existing, but it is in fact the only way that consciousness can ever exist. Consciousness never exists as a whole within the oneness, but only comes into existence from the isolation of itself from the unconsciousness pool, and from the re-connecting then to other pockets of consciousness also being similarly formed.
A group, or cosmic, or God consciousness is then also formed for God. By becoming conscious of ourselves, it is we that give added consciousness back to God.
The real inner and outer then can be seen to be only descriptions of the consciousness and unconsciousness of God. The oneness of love allows both states to blend together again into oneness, and God grows from his creation even as his creation grows also from within him.
God is then within us. We cannot exist but for God being in us. At the same time God appears to be outside of us, only because consciousness only exists from being condensed out from God's unconsciousness pool from God allowing his love now to be known consciously from within his own parts.
How did the process start, and what sparked God off so to speak?
God at some time or another convoluted his own unconsciousness, and an isolated area of consciousness was then formed in him. He realised that he could only grow his consciousness further by allowing greater self recognition of himself. He did this by allowing all others parts of his unconsciousness to be able to do likewise to what he had done spontaneously.
God created souls from himself as vehicles of his love, and as vessels of his consciousness. From that day forwards, love has lived consciously in all parts of God, and God grows even as he expands in his own self recognition through us being us within God.