I'm feeling a little out of it tonight. My brain is racing all over the place, trying to put things into words that I really have no right to put into words. But this is about using the creative process to understand divinity, so it qualifies as part of Project Protagonist, doesn't it?
So what I'm wondering is, are the ideas of the divinity of the world around us and the idea of a greater reality inherently contradictory?
On one level, sure, of course they are, but I'm a big fan of the quote about the opposite of a great truth also being true. A reflection in the water can be beautiful even if the water is troubled, or even be made more beautiful by the pattern of ripples.
There is a kind of perfection in imperfection. The first draft of a story is imperfect, and yet it is the most raw, most honest form of creation.
The act of editing, polishing, and correcting is moving close to that divine perfection that casts the shadows, and is important too, but that doesn't mean the shadows are any less a part of the beauty of existence. It's easy to simplify the gnostic idea of the imperfect photocopy-of-a-copy of creation, the Demiurge pressing Sophia's work up to the copier to make his own zine called The World, but I don't see this world as a trap just because it is imperfect.
We learn through our rough drafts, and that learning process is just as real as the higher truth in the final draft.