During this week's reading and lecture I was intrigued by the paradox: human/divine.
As with all paradox, it seems that the understanding is that we are both, and the more gracefully and skillfully that we learn to recognize both and apply both in our lives, the happier and more rich our lives will be.

History shows us such things as the Holocaust, the two world wars, the A-bomb, the Inquisition, the burning of tens of thousands of people at the stake, and the decimation of the Native North American population by warfare and disease.  Most people would look to all of this and see nothing of the divine in it.  I wonder, however, if the capacity to do such harm and destruction is actual the use of a divine power that has been channeled in a negative way.  If there is the propensity for such darkness in the human race, then it's opposite (light and goodness) must surely be there as well to enable this darkness to even exist.  In other words, there must be tremendous goodness in us all if we can create such destruction.  That balance must exist.  I see these events as a misuse of our own divine power, and in this sense an ignorance of our own divinity, thus our humanness.  It is similar to using one of the twelve powers.  We can either use them in a destructive, ego-based, human way, or in a divine way that produces expansion and more life.  It is the same power, but the manner in which it is used is entirely different.

I think their is also an argument that so much of life is mundane and that the mundane is not divine, therefore life and human beings, who spend so much of their time eating, going to the bathroom, sitting in traffic, and sleeping, are also not divine.  To balance this view there must be an awareness in us that the divine is also present within the mundane.  When that awareness dawns on us, we can see the divine at Taco Bell, or in the shopping mall.  A smile, or a simple gesture can be divine, if one is at the same moment aware and deeply open to the divinity within themselves.  When we open to this truth, divine energy will be transmitting through that smile!

I have practiced bringing the Presence of Spirit into my daily life so as to see the Divine Presence in all of these things for the last twelve years.  It is an extraordinary experience to be fully present to the physical experience of eating a hamburger, or walking through a shopping wall, while at the same time seeing divine light within and around the hamburger and knowing that God is eating God.  Likewise, it is an incredible experience to walk across a college campus with one's heart so open that one connects with the hearts of all the individuals around them, sending out an energy like a tractor beam that creates a palpable physical sensation in one's heart as it connects with others.  These are ordinary, mundane life experiences that (due to the acceptance that we are both human and divine at the same time) have been allowed to merge with divine ones.  The two are existing simultaneously and have unified.  What an incredible way to live!

In this manner we are immersed in the world, in the college campus, at the hamburger joint, or around the dinner table, and at the same time immersed in the Divine.

Certainly human being have used divine energy in destructive ways (we do it frequently).  However, I feel that the divine is always present in every atom of our bodies and every particle of creation.  It simply takes an opening of our hearts, an opening of our consciousness, and a willingness, a courageousness, and a calmness of mind to observe it and bring it into our daily lives.  We are always human and always divine.  We clearly do human things, and in moments of deep meditation, or in moments of incredible expressions of art, intelligence and energetic expression, we clearly express the divine.
I think the key is merging the two, balancing the two, and then bringing them both into each moment.