People of R&S: What are your thoughts on (my particular brand of) pantheism?
I asked this question about a year ago, but my understanding of pantheism has evolved significantly since then, so I wanted to ask again, with a different explanation of pantheism, and see if I get a different response. As follows is an overview of my worldview. I apologize if it's lengthy, but it's really hard to properly represent an idea like this in a few words, as you will see if you'd rather just skip to the TL;DR.
I will use the metaphor of a pond, which represents the universe. There is a ripple in this pond, which has the uncanny ability to perpetuate itself. This ripple represents life. The further along the ripple you look, the better and better it gets at perpetuating itself (due to evolution). Past a certain point, the ripple has gained self-awareness, but it thinks it is a bunch of tiny separate bits of energy, not a ripple. This represents what I call the illusion of separation. It is the belief in the ego, the self as separate from other. This boundary is ultimately arbitrary and doesn't exist outside of our heads. As my allegory implies, it is only evolution that has caused us to believe in this illusion. It has helped us to survive better, but it is also making us suffer.
By seeing past the illusion and recognizing that we are fundamentally one with the universe, we can put our suffering in context. If you will indulge a bit of mysticism, we are the result of the universe getting bored, and deciding to play human for a while. Suffering while in human form just makes the universe (which we can also call God, or Brahman, or the Divine Self, or the cosmic consciousness, or whatever term you prefer) all the more relieved when it remembers that it was just, after all, a game. (It's important to understand that I'm not literally proposing that the universe is a spirit being that gets bored and incarnates as humans. This is heavily symbolic language meant to convey concepts that would be too difficult to explain directly.)
In order to keep the illusion of separation at bay, I meditate. Meditation suspends the ego and allows you to directly experience the flow of the universe. As I once put it, meditation is a way of becoming God, because once you realize that you don't exist, there is no one else to be but God (this, again, is heavily symbolic language).
TL;DR: The idea that there is a separation between self and other is an illusion. We are only (metaphorically) the universe playing human for a while. We can realize this through meditation, which suspends the ego and opens a direct channel to the flow of the universe.
So that's the gist of it. Thank you if you actually read all of this. I will probably hang around for a while to read any responses I get and reply to them if I feel the need to. I'm mostly interested in hearing thought-provoking opposing viewpoints. I want you to tell me why I'm wrong.
Okay, so pretty much the same response I got last time.
@Chris Anchor: Maybe you should have read it. It's not even a type of theism at all.
@...WAS a Jewish carpenter.: Yeah, I definitely borrowed heavily from Buddhism, but I didn't want to attach myself to a particular tradition, so I went for the generic brand spirituality.
@Cynical B@stard: Yeah, I've heard that one before, but since I'm actually making a claim that goes beyond "lol universe is god lol," your answer is useless to everyone besides I guess your own sense of superiority over those you deem "weak-willed."
Last notes before I choose best answer:
@Vexed: Solipsism is pantheism not fully realized. Solipsists understand that the border between self and other is imaginary, but instead of uniting self and other as one large happening, they conclude that self is real and other is imaginary.
@Without Reason: A while ago I would have agreed with you, but you haven't quite grasped the illusion of separation yet. You say we can only control our own selves, but we can't even do that--free will is an illusion (as most naturalists agree), and our actions are one process with the universe. We are not in the universe, or part of the universe (because dividing things into parts is the illusion of separation); we ARE the universe.
I don't think there is some disembodied universe mind, an idea altogether too close to a deity for my taste, but the universe has no shortage of consciousness. You and I are proof enough of that.