All I can answer with is my personal understanding. I speak for no one else.
But for me, your question is answered in its definitions. Once I accept God as infinite in every way - in existence, in consciousness, in the bliss of love - then I also have to accept that nothing exists outside of God.
The logic is extremely simple - if something can exist outside of God, then God is not infinite, because there would be a place where God isn't. So with that definition, I have to accept that all of Creation is manifesting inside of God. Or, put another way, all of Creation IS God, manifesting AS Creation.
Which means that God is also manifesting as each one of us.
People think that that means we are actually superheroes, or megalomaniacs, or psychotics, or whatever. I think they haven't thought it through carefully enough. My analogy is a ray of shining sunlight. The farther away that ray gets from the sun, the smaller and more narrow it gets, and the larger the darkness around it. In fact, it becomes defined by its narrowness and distance, and the "shape" that creates of it. To say, therefore, that that ray of sunlight IS the sun is, on the one hand, literally correct, because that's what it is made of. But it's identity AS a ray of sunlight is created by it's distance AWAY from the sun.
I think human beings are like that too. Our "souls" are the ray of sunlight that we think of as ourselves, but "up" and closer to the sun of God. We live lives of our personal human identities at the very tip of that ray of sunlight. And the choices in our lives either lead us farther away from the sun, or stop our fleeing and lead us back towards the sun. But it doesn't change what we actually are, and what we're made of. And saints and spiritual masters have said repeatedly that the closer they have experienced God, the LESS they have experienced wha they thought of as "themselves" - while at the same time being able to experience the bliss and love and consciousness and eternity of God.
So I don't see a problem there, because the closer we get to God, the less of our personal ego - literally defined BY our distance AWAY from God - simply vanishes. And so I believe that's why Jesus taught that one had to give up the world in order to be saved. Because "the world" is what we experience way out at the tip of the ray of sunshine, while also travelling ever farther away from the sun. While God is experienced when we - literally - move away from that, back towards the sun.
That's also why I believe Jesus taught to beware people who claim to be God. God CAN come AS God in a ray of sunlight, and Jesus is proof of that (yes I know that my metaphor breaks down here, but God tends to break metaphors, so it's not my fault). I believe that God has done this many times, not just in the person of Jesus. Most Christians believe that God did it once, for all time, in the person of Jesus. Fine, I understand the disagreement and I'm not arguing about it here. All I'm saying is that God can do such a thing, and it's different than us being out here as rays of sunlight. Because WE are trying to get AWAY from God, while when God does it, He's NOT trying to get away from Himself.
Why are we trying to get away? Depends on who you ask. The negative reasons, based on sin, are well known. Interestingly, however, there is an Eastern teaching that God's nature is to shine, and shining makes rays of sunlight that have to be reminded who they are, so they can return to their experience of God. So in that sense the word "sin" goes back to its original meaning of "missing the mark" in archery. In other words we are "sinning" not because we are bad, but because we are ignorant, and we need to turn around.
THEREFORE AND IN CONCLUSION, someone who is "saved," to me, is someone who has, for whatever reason and inwhatever way (but I believe always, somehow through Grace), realized they are going "in the wrong direction," and have "turned around."
And yes, I am well aware of how many people don't agree with this explanation, and who at this moment are revving up their Bible fingers. But you asked me, and that's my answer. No one elses.
Of course, I'm right though.
(That's a joke. Lighten up, sunshine. LOL!)
If we are saved by God, what are we saved from?
Personal understanding is fine but the answer to the question from the Bible is we are saved from God’s Wrath.
We are not saved from hell. We are not saved from going down the wrong path. We are saved from a God that must be just. Or another way of looking at it is we are saved FROM God BY God. Now that requires some thinking as to the nature of God.
To expand on this, think about the story of Abraham offering Isaac as a sacrifice. Think to yourself what the purpose of the story is. Now read Gen 22:12 and you will find God’s reason for doing what he did. “.....for now I know that _______________”
That should also lead us to thinking who God is. It is not something our human ears want to hear or think about. That He would take Abraham through that experience for that one purpose should give us pause.....................