This Saturday morning I want to talk about God, or Allah or the Higher Power.....
The contrary, contentious and jaded part of me wants to disbelieve because I don't want to be a part of the masses who are manipulated by guilt, fear or the need to believe in something after death.
Conclusively I know that there lies serious spiritual issues with existing organized religions. But that doesn't have a lot to do with a spirituality, either. The historic writings such as the bible, koran, tora, etc. bothers something in the logical side of my thinking, as well. A Lutheran pastor once told me that God speaks to us through the bible, so it is our responsibility to read it to know God's word. What I inferred about that was the idea that we would receive God's word on a unique and individual basis. Which I agree with. But I don't receive any spiritual feeling from reading the bible. What I get there is something along the lines of the same information I would get from the National Enquirer. Decades and decades from now historians may be reading the National Enquirer and documenting our human history. Oh my.
I hear God through the relationships I have with all those who people my life. It is through the trees and birds, the sun and rain. It is through the paths I have chosen to follow, and the happenstances along the way. Sometimes I know in my heart that I have been kicked in the butt and lucky to have had the wake up call. I feel something big in myself when I sing to God. (I miss that terribly.) Sometimes I know in my heart that I have been gently and lovingly rewarded for doing something right. I'm not sure that's the same God that the bible talks about, or the churches/temples/mosques worship. My picture is that a balance of all things was created, and when one strays from that balance or fits in the balance, a sensitive person will feel that, and an intelligent being will adjust their behavior accordingly.
Listening to myself reason things through, clearly my 'God' does not fit with the ones the predominently Christian society in which I live try to give me. Those Gods do not fit in my head. But I know I am not an atheist. I feel something. I've felt something since I was a wee one.
In my (admittedly limited) experiences with Godly organizations I have observed that pieces of the whole puzzle seem to be chosen by questionable 'authorities' in order to 'complete' the puzzle while serving a specific and very human agenda. The 'completed' puzzle not only doesn't appear completed to me, but curiously is arbitrary and different across the board. The Gods that are put forth seem to have distinctly human qualities, and that makes me uncomfortable. Perhaps the only thing we humans should be faulted with is creating a literal being out of something that is veritably subjective. When churches tell me that "God wants..." or "God doesn't want..." or "God likes..." or "God doesn't like..." my flag comes up and I ask, "How do we know? How do you know?" Its a very secular thing to 'want' and 'like'. I'm choking on that one, folks.
Pulling it all together, I believe that there is a Higher Existence. Maybe not a Higher Power- my head is not completely around that one yet. The implication that bothers me is that our individuality is important and worthy of 'attention', and I'm not entirely down with that. But I think this Higher Existence is the sum of all components of everything. And we humans are such a tiny single and (most likely) unremarkable component, that no human could ever know what this higher thing is. For one, because we don't have a handle on what all the components are. We can only know what pertains to us in this world...the clearly tangible. And I am pretty sure there are a lot of pieces to the puzzle that we don't even know exist.
What I do know is that, sometimes, I feel whatever it is that is out there. It is humbling and seems good. What I believe is that it benefits me to seek that out on a regular basis. I've learned that I experience the most comfort with myself when I am gentle to the world around me. I'll go with that.
Sidebar - there is something strange and pulling in my upper abdomen region. Deductively, it must be one large, or some small, lypomas. Hopefully it/they are benign.
Peace
