DO YOU BELIEVE IN GOD?

At different times in my life I would have answered either yes or no to that question.  Then I had some very powerful experiences after which I could no longer answer no, but it still made me uncomfortable to answer yes.  Why does the question, "Do you believe in God," make me so uncomfortable to answer in the affirmative?  Because, according to the way that I now experience the world, the question makes no sense.

"Do you believe in God?" is a question posed by either a material materialist or a spiritual materialist.  The question is asked to determine whether the responder is in agreement or out of agreement with the asker.   If one believes in God, they also believe in a world of tangible things; they believe that the material world is not composed merely of the attraction of forces masquerading as solid particles, but that there are actual and everlasting things and actual and everlasting solid particles out there.  And somewhere in the cosmos, among those myriad things, is God.  Even if they claim to think that God is immaterial, they do not truly understand what that means.  Something that is truly immaterial, has no boundaries, because there is no 'thingness' to separate 'it' from anything else. If God is truly immaterial, then God is everywhere.  There is no place where God is not.  That means that what we are, and what every creature is, at their essence, is consciousness; and our consciousness, which is us,  has chosen to experience this life through the filter of a particular organism and a particular brain and culture; and although our consciousness is involved in all sorts of idiotic things, as we wend our way back to Divine consciousness; is still, in its pure essence, which is one's true self, an aspect of the Divine. 

Why would we do such a thing?  Why would we go from being totally unattached, omniscient and loving; knowing, not only how everything works, but how to subtly alter those workings to shape this universe as we see it; to a limited being who is working its way through this illusion, with a limited awareness and a tiny segment of actual knowledge?  Because that is the experience that that being has  chosen to live out.  That is the drama that that being wants to go through, with it's pains of separation and its joys of union, with its frustration of disappointments and its satisfaction of fulfillments.

Being God is an existence of total service.  God is one hundred per cent committed to this universe.  Not committed to providing a perfect universe, in a cliche Garden of Eden way, but providing a perfectly challenging universe, where passionate people can have dreams and can struggle to realize their dreams, and can have the experience of fulfilling their dreams, or not.  And for people to see that, ultimately, there is no pleasure left in their selfish dreams, that the only true pleasure is in providing happiness, or the chance for happiness for others.  Not the total denial of personal pleasures, but the hungry pursuit and passionate desire for selfish pleasures, especially at the expense of others, yields not happiness, but isolation.  All of this is part of the journey back to God consciousness.  

Meanwhile, our self, not our impulses that can lead us anywhere, but our true self; the one that authorities refer to when they say  "watch your self," because they know that if you would just take a moment to drop back into yourself, and observe the situation you are in from that perspective,  then you will always do the right thing.  Or when a therapist asks you to find a way to step back, when you are in the process of falling down a habitual  rabbithole of negative emotions, and 'watch yourself,'  or give yourself a story or a breathing exercise, or some kind of reminder, because the instant you are out of being reactive to the moment at hand, you are back in touch with your 'self'; and your true self, unencumbered by the heated up passion of the moment, will know exactly what to do.

To say, "Do you believe in God?"  is a little like asking a fish if he believes in water.  He will probably say no, because after all, he has never encountered anything that could be called 'no water'.  Water is the context of every moment of his life.  So he cannot experience it.  If we were a species that never slept, we would have no concept for being awake.  'Awake' would have no meaning because we don't have an  experience of  not awake (of sleeping) to compare it to.  Not that it's not there.  It's everywhere.  For a non-sleeping species it is the context of every moment of their lives.  So they can say, I enjoyed going to the movies today, or I enjoyed lunch today, but they cannot say, I enjoyed being awake today because that concept cannot exist in their vocabulary.

When a fish is cold, it moves to where it's warm.  But it doesn't have the experience of moving from cold water to warm water.  Just cold to warm.  It has no experience of the medium which is the context of all it's experience.  Things are salty or not salty enough; things are forceful or not forceful enough; but they have no thought about the water being too salty or too fresh, or the tide pulling the water forcefully or not forcefully.

Catch a fish and let him flap around on the dock for a few moments, unable to breathe and quivering in a terrified panic, and it will then have an experience of 'no water,'  Then you can release him back and he suddenly gets water as the context of his life; suddenly gets the great gift of water and his utter dependence on it.  He not only knows it, but is forever and  profoundly grateful for it.

I will not answer that question anymore.  I will not say whether or not I believe in God.  I will say that I am a spiritual spiritualist and your question makes no sense.  A question that does make sense is, "Ultimately, do you think there is anything else but God?"  And to that question I would  answer comfortably and resoundingly, "NO!"



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