Image: the Earth, this life, what we can see, the world we were all born into, is a structure with a roof and a floor. People lacking in life are kept from floating downward by the floor. People full of life are kept from floating up by the ceiling. Logically, if there is a structure to the realms above this room, there is a hierarchy, with more darkness, relatively, the closer to Earth, and the less, as they diminish in the distance. Perhaps one reason to come here is to confront darkness in a more pure form, so as to see it, and discard it more mindfully, resulting in, ultimately, spiritual growth and a higher state of being.
Image: God is pure light, at the top. At the bottom, there is nothing, not even (the visible appearance of) God.
Thought: light and dark are not objective, but rather conditions of awareness. All aspects of the universe are lit by God equally, but this is God’s immanent, latent aspect. In terms of what is accessible to consciousness, God is in some places, and is not in others. There is light within darkness, and darkness within darkness, if I might reference the Tao Te Ching in my own way, and according to my own interpretation.
Idea: God, in turn, is a physical force, like physical light, or gravity. God can be “used” for good and ill, just like the laws of physics, which do not change based on the intent. And God’s use is that of the non-local transfer of information. This is what prayer does. Prayer (and cursing) does not always work, because the “user” is not always informationally coherent (i.e. the signal is weak or non-existent in the ways that matter), and because there are factors in play–as with any other physical force–which are variable and which we have not even begun to understand, except in those repositories of memory we call religions and spiritual practices, and whose collective wisdom we have not even begun to fathom or even investigate scientifically.