A Response to a piece at Transition Quaker: https://transitionquaker.blogspot.com/2017/02/stories-and-values.ht...

It happens that people's meaning, purpose, and identity, are in relation to outward things like occupation, family, country, political and religious ideology and affiliation, etc. Their experience of presence or consciousness is connected to their being reflected through these outward things or mirrors.

However, it also happens that it is discovered to some people a meaning, purpose, and identity, that is come out of and is coming out of, a way of being that is connected to and sustained by relations to outward things.

In this different way, presence sustains as the outward things peal away. Presence departs from the outward things and is come upon or into (or folds in upon itself) becoming the very substance of meaning, purpose, and identity, itself in itself.

This indwelling immanent Presence is not guided or informed by, or sustained in relation to, outwardly reflected intellectual constructs like "exclusivity" or "inclusivity." Political and religious ideologies, prescriptions, doctrines, faiths and practices, are literally come out of. That is, human experience and presence exits the outwardly given things ... the Temples of reflected being. Immanent Presence is discovered unto men and women.

This experience of sustained remaining itself in itself that is discovered in the conscious and conscience of men and women, I am also come into. My meaning, purpose, and identity is discovered (and is being discovered) and sustained in immanent Presence itself in itself; as it has drawn out of outward forms and into my conscious and conscience as the throne of identity.

Herein, outward values like equality, social justice, simplicity, etc. do not inform or guide me in matters of conscience and relationships. In the like manner, I am come out of identity with the outward images, narratives, and characters, of the bible or any religious text. It is discovered to me, through the direct and un mirrored experience of Presence itself drawing out of outwardly reflected images and taking up habitation in my conscious and conscience, the offering up of "symbolic resources" no longer serve the purpose of "illuminating (my) human experience." Being identified with immanent Presence itself in the conscious and conscience renders the offering of outward images on the alter of reflected being, of no substantial value. Immanent Presence itself is sufficient in itself to illuminate, sustain, guide, and inform.