the Divine Conspiracy

These are exerpts of 'The Divine Conspiracy' by Dallas Willard. I've been rereading this book over the last few weeks and have found some points quite profound.

THE HUMAN SPIRIT
The spirit and the space most familiar to each one of us are contained in our own personality. The necessary path of understanding lies in reflecting on our own makeup.
I am a spiritual being who currently has a physical body. I occupy my body and its environs by my consciousness of it and by my capacity to will and to act with and through it. I occupy my body and its proximate space, but I am not localizable in it or around it. You cannot find me or any of my thoughts, feelings, or character traits in any part of my body. Even I cannot. If you wish to find me, the last thing you should do is open my body to take a look -- or even examine it closely with a microscope or other physical instruments.
... To be sure, the brain is a relatively more important and interesting piece of flesh, but nothing of intellect, creativity, or character is to be found in it.
That very unity of experiences that constitutes a human self cannot be located at any point in or around this body through which we live, not even in the brain. Yet I am present as agent or causal influence with and about my body and its features and movements. In turn, what my body undergoes and provides influences my life as a personal being. And through my body, principally through my face and gestures, or "body language," but also verbally, I can make myself present to others.
The human face, and especially the eyes, are not just additional physical objects in space. We say that the eyes are the windows of the soul, and there is much truth to it. They and the face and hands are areas in space where the spiritual reality of the person becomes present to others. There the inmost being of the individual pours forth, though of course the person is no more literally identical with the his or her face or eyes than with lungs or toenails or brain.
Interestingly, "growing up" is largely a matter of learning to hide our spirit behind our face, eyes, and language so that we can evade and manage others to achieve what we want and avoid what we fear. By contrast, the child's face is a constant epiphany because it doesn't yet know how to do this. It cannot manage its face. This is also true of adults in moments of great feeling -- which is one reason why feeling is both greatly treasured and greatly feared.
Those who have attained considerable spiritual stature are frequently noted for their "childlikeness." What this really means is that they do not use their face and body to hide their spiritual reality. In their body they are genuinely present to those around them. That is a great spiritual attainment or gift.
Now, roughly speaking, God relates to space as we do to our body. He occupies and overflows it but cannot be localized in it. Every point in it is accessible to his consciousness and will, and his manifest presence can be focused in any location as he sees fit. In the incarnation he focused his reality in a special way in the body of Jesus. This was so that we might be "enlightened by the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor 4:6).
The traditional Christian understanding is that every physical object and every natural law is a manifestation of God's willing. This does not have to be taken in the sense that he is every second consciously choosing, for example, that this electron should be circling that neutron or that this pillar should be supporting that house. No doubt he could do that if he wished. But it is true in the same sense that the arrangement of the furniture in your apartment is a manifestation of your will. It is as you have provided for and want it to be, though you are not always thinking of that arrangement and "willing" it. It is also a continuing revelation of you to all who know you well.
(pg 75-76)
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then, this next passage gets me... how can this be if we believe the above? If only we'd have a view of God like the above -- how much would that change us?
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THE HUMAN QUANDRY
Of course that destiny flatly contradicts the usual human outlook, or what "everyone knows" to be the case. I take this to be a considerable point in its favor. Our "lives of quiet desperation," in the familiar words of Thoreau, are imposed by hopelessness. We find our world to be one where we hardly count at all, where what we do makes little difference, and where what we really love is unattainable, or certainly is not secure. We become frantic or despairing.
In his book 'The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley remarks, "Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul." They are relentlessly driven to seek, in H.G. Wells's phrase, "Doors in the Wall" that entombs them in life.
(pg 82)

If we could see past the pain and bordom if life, we may see that God is near. How profound.