Thank you, Gerald, for your interest. It's not zimzum.
The basis is that energy prior to materialization ended up establishing a new and truly fundamental separation within itself.
If we translate this into God, then God established within an internal separation. In an analogy, it would be like God creating Heaven's Gate (and nothing else). Then, investigating Heaven's Gate, parts of God fell through, this energy materializing into creation.
Naturally, this is a metaphor for an original conflict, a separation, an opposition that could not be overcome, and all taking place before matter even appeared.
If I turn this into an equation, then we have the following:
1 + x = 1
In this equation, both 1s represent the same total amount of energy. Though we don't know what that exact amount is, we can say that 1 represents the total of energy accurately.
We also know that energy does not get lost, which means we can have it both before and after the establishment of matter.
The x in the equation expresses the change of (some) original energy into matter.
The x is of course 0.
With 0, we can see Heaven's Gate again, or the full separation. It is not something itself, but in the larger setting it declares the separation in that larger setting. Not a 'marriage' started the universe, but a 'divorce'.
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When people think about the creation story, they tend to think unity creating something new (zimzum, for instance), they do not think about separation being the underlying structure. When people talk about God, they talk about unity. So, ultimately it comes down to which structures we have in our minds and where we put them.
Gödel already showed us his incompleteness Theorems, so we already know that the ultimate connection among all cannot exist at the largest level. The ultimate connections are found at the 'local' level with planets and stars, not anything larger. And then, the largest connections among all these masses are galaxies, and not something larger.
The universe is very loud and says: 'divorce'. Only at the local level does it say 'marriage' (in many smaller manners).
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I fully reject the idea that we can have something from nothing. It is something children would say; an adult person would not. But I'll explain better that God cannot have created ex nihilo:
I don't mind at all to start with God, but when we start out with a position for which there is no data, then it is very weak to have a subsequent action for which there is also no data. I hope you are not asking me to deliver evidence of such second degree. It is not a mature request.
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If we start with God 1.0 that established creation by partially sacrificing godself, then we have space as the larger reality among all. It is infinite, and nothing else is infinite (though we can still say that God has infinite wisdom, no problem).
Said differently, when a fundamental separation of universal proportions occurred, then there is nothing that can overcome it.
With the establishment of matter, we have two realities, matter (seen) and energy (seen and unseen), and if we envision God 2.0 among the unseen energy, then God 2.0 cannot overcome the self-created fundamental separation. I hope that the logic of this structural setup is obvious.
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Gerald, not many people entertain the idea that there was a prior. They either reject it (scientists do), or they unite it (religious people do).
I see a very old universe in which something fundamental happened some 13.8 billion years ago. That was new, and it was a separation among what existed prior.
I can explain that process better, but this is quite a long reply already. Thank you for your curiosity.
If interested, here is one article about a religious version of the Big Whisper theory:
https://fred-rick.medium.com/in-the-beginning-there-was-separation-b36fb1eeb6a3
