The Trinity

I awoke yesterday morning with an interesting thought about the Trinity. As a child my concepts of the three parts of the Trinity were that God was a white-bearded old man upon a throne, Jesus was a man who walked the earth and died 2000 years ago and the Holy Spirit was given to human beings as a sort of place holder after Jesus died. (Jesus says in John 14: 16-17, "I will ask the Father and he will give you another Helper, who will stay with you forever. He is the Spirit, who reveals the truth about God.")

It is easy enough to understand that Jesus was human given the scripture accounts of his life. I have changed the way I interpret those scriptures but Jesus will always remain human. We know about God's nature through scripture but not God's physique. Hence, I have since morphed my idea of God from male to female to both-at-once to neither, God being I Am or All-That-Is. But the Holy Spirit? I have never really understood the need for a Holy Spirit if God is Spirit and not an old man. If God is supposedly everywhere, then God would already be within us. So what is the Holy Spirit's specialty and why would we need another Helper? Besides, if the Trinity represents God in three persons, all of them being God in one recognizable form or another, then all three are God and hence have been around as long as God has. Therefore, why the big announcement from Jesus suggesting the Helper needs to be invited to come on board. Wouldn't the Holy Spirit have already been around...forever...like God?

Yesterday morning I realized that part of me has never seen the Trinity as truly just three words for the same concept. That part has unconsciously believed that God, Jesus and Holy Spirit were three different beings. I awoke to what I see now was an awakening from that unconscious place and a blending of the Trinity. Just as Jesus was known as Master, Teacher and Friend God is known by different terms: Jesus, God-Incarnate; Holy Spirit, God individuated as you and me and the lamppost; and God, the All-That-Is. If I limit my uttering of the word "God" to mean only "All-That-Is", and Holy Spirit to mean the Individuation of God, then the three terms for the same entity finally make more sense to me.