Nothing But God

The spiritual center, the visionary insight of the Abrahamic traditions is the doctrine of monotheism—the core teaching concerning the oneness and unity of God. In the abstract this may seem inconsequential or even prosaic, but it is far from either. To declare that God is One is not about singularity per sé. It is, instead, the profound understanding that there is nothing but God, there is only God. As Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz says, “It doesn’t really matter so much whether He (God) is one or two or three or more. The true unity of the Divine lies in the fact that there is nothing else. There is no other force or reality or significance besides Him.” When we break through into this knowing, this way of perceiving, that all reality is of and from this One Reality, then we can join in the adventure, the play of discovering God everywhere, and yet confined to no one thing, still less to the sum of all things. This revelation is the sudden recognition that God was, all the while being over-looked, and now we see that the divine Existence both transcends and pervades everything, even myself.