Bank of lights

Imagine a bank of lights. You're one of the lights. You're indistinguishable from the bank of lights, because it is very bright.

Now imagine: you want to be seen. How would that be achieved? Because all the lights are maximally lit, the only way to achieve that is to dim the other lights.

When a person wants to be special, distinguished, marked out, they are asking to be separate, and separation can be achieved only by dimming all other lights.

This is why God says 'no'.

Of course, it cannot be done: we have no agency over our own brightness or that of others. But, in a startling act of imagined omnipotence, a delusion of grandeur par excellence, we believe we can literally outshine others. In doing so, we are separating ourselves mentally from others, and defying God, who, we imagine, projecting our own jealous competitiveness, will punish us.

So others are the enemy: their lights are literally a threat to our perceived existence as separate entities.

And God is the enemy: the vengeful projection of our own rage.

And we are ashamed, guilty, and frightened. And that's where all the trouble comes from.

The truth is that we're already shining maximally and that our indistinguishability does not diminish our contribution to the whole. There is no problem to fix.