The Second Face of G-d

As I feel that my previous post was both very long and at the same time not explicit enough, I would like to continue discussing the same topic- G-d as the Heavenly father or the Great Other. G-d in second face, so familiar to us from the pages of the TANACH. As you saw, many feel today that this outdated image doesn't belong to our sophisticated world. In my previous post, I introduced you to both sides of the argument- first, we sampled one of the presentations of "G-d is not a person" theory, and then we sampled some fascinating ideas from the Integrated theory- claiming that we require all three perspectives of G-d, corresponding to our three faces (I, THOU and IT). Then we specifically emphasised the importance of the second face perspective- G-d as the Great Other is the most essential vision for our society!
I'm convinced, this argument (made by Andrew Cohen in his Enlighten Next Magazine) deserves to be explained and elucidated, as it goes SO MUCH AGAINST THE CURRENT OF POST MODERNIST EGOCENTRIC THINKING!
And here's what I found very important in this article
  The Postmodern Predicament
Cohen: I think this applies particularly to our generation and our generation’s children who have grown up in the Western world in the last half-century. For many years I have been saying that the postmodern narcissistic separate self-sense is the most fundamental obstacle to higher development. Many people thought that I basically didn’t get it, that this was an outmoded way of looking at things. But you only really discover what an enormous problem the narcissistic self-contraction is in relationship to how profound your interest is in transcending it. If you have no interest in transcending it, it doesn’t seem to be a big problem. But if you authentically want to try to get on the other side of it, you discover that it’s actually quite significant.
This is a delicate subject because the postmodern variation of the ego is, on one hand, a great gift of the evolutionary process, but on the other hand, it’s a significant obstacle. In a positive sense, our ego, our capacity for individuality, is what makes it possible to become an integrally informed, evolutionarily enlightened human being. The more profound our individuation, the more powerfully Spirit can shine through us. So being profoundly individuated is not a bad thing. It’s a gift of evolution, a gift of God, if you want to put it in theological terms. It’s just that our narcissistic identification with the separate self, outside of any higher context, creates a big problem. The ego begins to see itself as the center of the universe, and the whole process inverts upon itself. Everything turns upside down.
Wilber:   Philosophers are finally realizing that postmodernism as a philosophy has come to a dead end. For a couple of decades, you and I and others who have been working mightily to undercut this postmodern stance have often been accused of being out of touch, attacked for not really understanding it. In fact, I rather fully understand it. I’ve written books on it! And the fact is, there is a downside to it, and most people don’t get that downside. The downside is that if nobody can say what is truth, then nobody can correct my egoic disposition. There is simply nothing that’s going to let me grow, that’s going to help me get over myself, that’s going to point to a higher, truer, or more valuable stance than whatever I just happen to hold by whim. And this has been a problem in philosophy, in sociology, and in spirituality. Our educational system was redone according to this kind of relativistic “nobody can tell me what to do, because I’m perfect the way I am” mentality. And tests now show that the generation graduating from college is the most narcissistic generation ever tested.

Cohen: I know. So we’re at a very interesting point in the evolution of culture. On one hand, Spirit has the capacity to shine through us in ways that may be unprecedented because of how highly integrated and sophisticated our individuated self-sense has become. But the big problem is that our awareness has gotten stuck on and overidentified with this separate self and lost in its own separate world of extreme narcissism. The reason this is so tragic is that it makes it impossible for us to participate in life in the deepest and most profound way. To make a cultural revolution happen—which is something I’m passionately interested in and you are obviously deeply committed to as well—awareness has to be liberated from narcissistic self-fixation so it can overflow and discover who it really is as the Ground of Being and as the evolutionary impulse. So we can all begin to participate in the life process in ways that will completely change the leading edge of culture.
And now comes this very important point of studying G-d in the second face- G-d the Great Other!
Ken Wilber claims the following- as we got stuck in our quite primitive understanding of this idea, this in turn does not allow our spiritual progress!
To quote him verbatim-
So we don’t learn about this dimension of Spirit in our educational system, and we drastically missed the chance to have our larger cultural backgrounds of religion and education give us a head start on ego-transcendence. Even with the influx of Eastern traditions, people were attracted to third-person and first-person expressions of Spirit. They didn’t go for second person because they didn’t want to fundamentally submit. And they didn’t know how; they didn’t have role models for it.
 CONCLUSION-
1). Second Face of G-d is essential in our spiritual growth- we need to learn how to submit our ego to Him
2). Current mode of thinking does not see how this is relevant- primiraly because we don't have an adequate presentation of this Second Face in our post modernist context
3). We URGENTLY need to work in this direction!
I would add the following- HERE WE HAVE UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO REDISCOVER OUR JUDAIC WISDOM AND TO REVEAL IT TO THE WORLD IN THE MOST PRACTICAL SENSE!
As we all know, Judeo-Christian tradition strongly emphasises G-d as the Heavenly Father. This image is not particularly known in the East- HENCE, IT'S OUR UNIQUE MISSION TO BRING CONTEMPORARY UNDERSTANDING OF THIS MOST IMPORTANT CONCEPT - to ourselves and to the world!