 What the icon thus symbolizes is the experienced simultaneous connection of different levels of reality. Indeed, I have separate reality as a contracted image of God only through my relation to my divine Source. What is telling about Nicholas’ version of seeing God is neither what vision discerns nor what practices one must follow in order to gain the correct standpoint for such seeing. Rather he revises the meaning of “seeing God” so that God is both subject and object of our purported vision of God.