Awareness and not as separate and apart from it and each
other.
As once the Divine Awareness had creatively dreamed
them, so now they began to creatively dream its manifold
forms, letting them freely emerge into the light from within
the dark depths of their own maternal souls. Thus
humankind gave birth to the gods as the gods had once
given birth to them. Some of these gods represented the
many faces, bodies and qualities of the Divine Awareness
as such. Others represented only the limiting ego-awareness
of human beings, their experience of themselves as souls
bound to and bounded by their own bodies. For releasing
them into freedom, Shiva had also allowed each
individualised soul or Jiva to freely fall into the bondage of
contracted awareness, forgetting its own source in the
Divine. As a result, the Jivas found themselves needing to
seek and re-find 'God' – the freedom of that unbounded,
pure and Divine Awareness which transcends body and
mind, transcends all limited identities and contents of
consciousness.
God as Shiva is the Divine Light of a pure awareness
that is inseparable from and yet quite distinct from all there
is to be conscious or aware OF – and can therefore simply
De-Light in it.
Yet if the Divine experiences itself as a self or Jiva who
has come to experience their self AS that very Awareness –