“And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? What shall I say unto them? And God said unto MOses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” (Exodus 3:13-14). I AM translated into Latin would be EGO SUM. Both ego and sum have different meanings in English, but if we think about their English meanings, we can understand God a little better. The ego is a representation of the character and personality of an individual at a particular moment in time. And a sum is the total of the collection of things that have been added together. To have an ego sum would be to add up all of the different versions of a person’s psyche over a certain span of time. Have we ever considered that the reason that God is omniscient and omnipotent and omnipresent is because He is so fully existing in the present that He is the sum total of every single version of Himself all at once from moment to moment? Can we even imagine how it would be if we were simultaneously the happiest and bravest and most fearful and kindest and harshest and wisest and most foolish that we have ever been? What might we accomplish if we could possess the exuberance of pure bliss and the caution brought about by severe pain and the compassion that comes from bitter sorrow and the innocence of a sheltered youth and the cunning of a battle-hardened veteran and the strength of the victor and the humility of the loser and the passion of one who has fallen in love and the fury of one who has been betrayed? God has been everywhere and done everything and He can remember and feel and know with perfect clarity each and every experience with the freshness and surprised wonder of having done it for the very first time added together with the confidence and easy grace of having done it habitually a million times before. If eternal life is knowing God, then God Himself has eternal life because He knows and contains and holds onto and lives and IS each and every version of Himself from ages past and ages yet to come all at once right now. If we want to become more like our Father in Heaven, then we need to be an I AM like Him, an EGO SUM like HE IS. We can’t just practice scorched earth on our past selves. We need every version of us, the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, the righteous and the wicked, the strong and the weak, the joyful and the miserable, the humble and the proud, the fearful and the hopeful, the depressed and the hopeful, the selfish and the selfless, the adult and the child, and everything in between. When we sum together all of our strengths and weaknesses, our flaws and our perfections, the light and the dark, we will get closer and closer to the Great I AM.
