I think this is the essential difference in our perspectives. I see the expression “I Am” as used in the Bible as referring to the unification of unity and diversity. Where I is unity Am contains all of its devolutionary potentials. I may be wrong but you seem to be saying that “AM’ is an imaginary creation since we are all ONE. I’m saying that the universe is a cosmological structure based on lawful levels of reality or qualities of being having different blends of spirit and matter. The lower the level of reality the greater the density of matter and amount of laws that govern it. The whole idea of conscious evolution is the change of being from the lower into the higher. From this perspective for example a miracle is easy to understand as the manifestation of what is normal for a higher level of reality manifesting either intentionally or accidentally onto a lower.Well yes of course anything that aspires to the sense of a separate self is creating the opposite of it's true nature which is wholeness. So yes, it's like a religious cult, even the atheist is a religious cult because it's all belief. It's ironic that an atheist rejects religion and yet believes in itself.
I remember watching a Star Trek episode where Troi became pregnant and no one knew why. It turned out that a quality of being made her pregnant without an earthly father in order to experience the world. When I saw that I wondered how many would begin to equate it with the Virgin birth. It seems miraculous to us but normal for the connection between levels of reality comprising the living universe.
Are lawful fractions real for you? ONE can be divided into two halves and four quarters etc. Granted, without ONE, fractions do not exist. But can ONE exist without fractions? I AM for me is just a necessary unification between no-thing and nothing with everything in-between.
The trouble as I see it is that we are not “I AM”. The human condition has made us “we are”. We lack inner unity. In reality we are a plurality. Man’s name is legion. So how much in this plurality is searching for God and how much is searching for self justification? The objective human struggle is always between our higher and lower natures. It isn’t a matter of self love but of the love of self or the potential for human being described as “I AM.” We are the “wretched man” with the being potential for inner unity or a “Son of God.” For that a certain quality of help is needed.A prostitute is searching for God...that's all...searching for love, because they have not yet learned to love them selves enough to know that they are love they are God in drag...they already are what they are searching for. And that we continue to hurt ourselves until we don't, until we stop and smell the roses.