Dear Shelby,
It's understandable that it appears that what I am pointing to is an "abstract idea", because the mind can not get its limited comprehension around it. But then, the mind can never truly understand what is real and actual, it can only comprehend and offer a mental interpretation or simulation of reality. The mind is nothing but abstracts. What I am attempting to point to is what is not thought, simulation or abstract; but rather the Reality that the mind and all existence exists within.
It seems we simply come from two different perspectives.
Through the eyes of duality and phenomena, time and space, separate isolated things and creatures great and small, gods and slaves, good and evil, love and hate, etc. In this realm, what you say, dear Shelby, is fitting, and even attractive, warm and beautiful. A greater good, external to us, existing, like us in space and time, a distinct entity with a name, hating and destroying for us what is bad that we may live in love and peace. The prime ingredients of most all legends and religions. Hard not to like.
However, my emphasis is on the unmoving peace and stillness of That, which all things within space and time -- and even space and time itself -- exist within: That which -- absolutely and flawlessly -- has no beginning and no end: That, which is the exact and pristine foundational reality of all things, unconditionally and without restriction, no matter how they appear through the eyes of quantitative and fragmentational duality.
Through eyes fixed upon the minds duality, that which is truly Whole (nondual), seems hidden, and so we suffer. Yet, it is the very same consciousness which witnesses duality that is, in truth -- eternally pristine, whole and complete. It just needs to be seen.
j