"Then he [God] throws you into self-mortification. so that you continue to strive and, for a while, to pride yourself upon your efforts, thinking that you are advancing or achieving something; but afterwards you fall into despair and feel no joy."  I think this is one way in which most of the American people have failed so miserably.  Our whole culture is flooded with the idea of self love.  Not self love as in being comfortable with ones self but a superficial self love that is derived from television and magazines, people are told (not suggested to) what to wear, how skinny they should be, how they should act, what is "cool", how much money they should make, how relationships should go, ect...  We are told that we only amount to what we can gain as opposed to what is true,this truth being what we can give.  Those who strive for fame and fortune have no joy when they achieve what they strived for, they only seem to want more money and more fame.  The more they get the less joy and satisfaction they have.  So why do so many people strive for these things?  Is it because they are stupid and can't see that pattern of increased wealth and decreased joy?  Is it because they know no other way?  These questions can only be answered by those living this life, but what I can say is I hope everyone would just stop and think, in order to realize what is truly important in live.  Then we can fight back at the social modeling of the mass media.       

Johannes

I think what she is writing about in the beginning of these passages is comparing God to an artist in a way.  Be gazing ate a beautiful painting one can grasp something about the painter.  This is because the painter can not create what is not in him/her.  Therefor the painting is in a way a slight  reflection of the painter, only with a painter few snapshots of this reflection can be seen because a person can only paint so many things.  Whereas God in creating all of the universe and everything on this planet gives us innumerable, constantly changing works of art.  Think about the millions upon millions of symbiotic relationships throughout nature.  This being only one small example of the pure awe inspiring mind blowing intricacies of God and His nature.  From these works of art that is nature we can catch a glimpse of the reflection of God as who He is.

Franz Kafka

He was a profound thinker.  I do not agree with a lot of what he says and some of it is down right confusing.  I don't see how it was impatience that got Adam and Eve expelled from paradise.  What were they impatient about?  They were already immortal as the bible would say, they had almost everything they wanted,  what got them kicked out was they wanted the one thing they could not have.  Fruit from the garden of good and evil.  I do partially agree that the reason they don't return is due to indolence.  All it takes it effort to find God.  If one does that they will most likely find him.  I like the line " beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached."  When someone finds the truth there is no going back.  Even if that person turn from the truth they still know it.  They will never be able to get rid of the knowledge of what is true.  He seems to have some aspect of Chinese religion in his philosophy.  Notably where he states " Idleness is the beginning of all vices, the crown of all virtue."  It is the same as do not doing.

Albert Einstein

I had no idea that Albert Einstein was a thinker in this realm of thought.  If one of the most intelligent men to have ever lived, ponders God or the mystical as he calls it, shows how rudimentary this concept is to human thought.  " he to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead."  WOW! I could not say it better myself.  This is also trying to answer the question of life and death, the origin of existence.  Science is a way of understanding our world, hopefully not to disprove that God exists but to prove that he does.  Einstein goes about explaining that the reason that we can not understand God is because we have such small amount of intelligence.  Coming from one of the most intelligent men ever this is amazingly profound.  We are only an optical illusion of what we really are seems to suggest that we have souls or something that is the true us which we can attain.  I am impressed with the ideas of this man and plan to do some research on the subject.  

Hermetic Writings

 I don't agree with some of what he says.  Especially "if you don't make yourself equal to God, you can't perceive God."  I don't think that there is any way humans can even come close to perceiving like God.  He thinks to understand God we have to perceive ourselves as God.  I don't think we have to power to be like God in almost any way.  I completely agree that "wanting to know God is the road to God".  If a person does not want to know God there is almost no way that they will find God.  I don't think God is all things but a reflexion of Him can be seen in all that since He created all things.  That is one of the beautiful things about God.  He gave us the incalculable beauty that is nature in all its intricacies.  We can defiantly see aspects of God by what is created but not God Himself. 

Plato

The quest that Socrates was on was a quest for true beauty.  This beauty was not God as many religions see God but it was the unfading, unchanging, unbound beauty.  It can not be obtained easily.  It has to be sought after vigorously.  It is "eternal oneness".  These ideas fit in cosily with Taoism.  The beauty seems allot like the tao in that it is not a being but a force or energy that is.  This beauty would also fit in with Confucianism because the way in which Socrates was told to find it.  One of the "rungs of the ladder" was pursuit of wisdom, which is a strong focus of some of Confucius's teachings.  It seems that many religions are searching for the same thing but have different ways of explaining what it is.  Some call it God some the Tao and other The Eternal Beauty. 

Rumi

A part of this passage on page 104 seems to say that God does not care what name you call him, what way in which you praise him, or even what religion you belong to.  It is all that you seek after him with all that you are and praise him.  "What is poison to one is honey to someone else."  The author states that there are many ways to God.  The tongue need not be corralled by a person filled with love because he will have noting to say but that which is rooted in love.  What is on the inside of a person is what makes them loving or beautiful.  it is better to be filled with the inner beauty that can only come from God, than to be God-less and beauty-less but have all the vanity you desire.

Muhammad

I like these passages from Muhammad.  The views about God are very similar to many other religions that we have studied so far.  "whoever knows himself knows God" depicts the common idea that God is inside of everyone and the knowledge of oneself is the key to knowing who God truly is.  That is to know the all powerful and wise entity that is God.  It is interesting the usage of the word "we" referring" to God.  not knowing much about Islam, I was wondering what others think about it?  Is it referring to the trinity of Christianity?