One Power

One Power

We are all familiar with the story of the blind men who encounter an elephant. Each of them has their own experience with the elephant. The conclusion being each blind man feels only a small part of the elephant, but makes huge assumptions about the whole elephant, missing what the elephant really is in its entirety.  People do that with God all the time. They have their own personal experience with God and then want to say that is all God is.  

With that in mind,  I am left wondering if there was still yet another blind man who never even got close to the elephant, but perhaps got lost looking for the elephant and wandered around and came across a large boulder instead, and mistook that for the elephant; then told everyone he could all about elephants and how hard and cold they are. And maybe another got caught up asking someone else to tell them all about elephants or yet another got stuck thinking the zookeeper was the elephant. 

Two great sayings are:

“The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.”   

and

"The map is not the territory." 

We all think of God within our own individual experience, but let’s zoom out. Before we start breaking God down into the boxes we have created, what we are all talking about whether we call it God, Spirit, Lord or we don't call it anything maybe, because we feel all names are inadequate, but whatever name we call it, it is that one power.  You know, that power... energy... force... that animates everything.  We can see it.  We can feel it.  But it goes beyond our senses.  Even inanimate things are made of energy. We know that now. So, they are alive as well, are they not? Molecules moving... energy... creating mass at a certain level and with it the world we live in.  So, we are talking about the physical and the non-physical... basically everything. 

If we zoom out and continue zooming out until everything is contained in the picture (not sure if that’s possible, but you get my point right?)  If we zoom out far enough, everything is encompassed. And if everything came from what was before there was anything, then it’s ALL that... God.  Or whatever that is... that energy we have named God or Spirit or whatever we have chosen to call it. It’s all one power. One energetic force. We have just experienced it on different levels in different ways and have decided to call it by different names.  But that doesn't change what it is.

It is not wrong to have those different experiences. We all come from different cultures, it makes sense that God would be revealed to us in different ways, does it not? What seems very wrong to me is not allowing someone else to have a belief other than yours or to see the difference of experience as reason enough to hate someone or a group of people.  However, most religious dogma will tell you that only certain people are favored by God and God can only be what this religion has determined God to be, and they are SO sure of this fact that they will damn others who do not believe what they do.  

It seems to so obviously disturbing when we see that behavior in a radical religious group, but how about in our own lives? How much assuming do we make about God based on our own experience? And how do we judge others who have experiences different than our own? 

When we have zoomed out far enough and see our tiny, blue marble floating through space to judge just doesn’t even make sense anymore.  With our widened perspective one can not fathom such smallness any longer.  We see the myopic view we once had and how much more we all share and have in common.

What if the people of Earth decided to see our Oneness and not our differences? What if mutual respect and common ground was found in that oneness. Understanding flourished in the open air.

What might happen if instead of zooming out, you decide to go the other way and zoom WAY in?  You kept going past the persons clothes, skin, organs, all the way to the molecular level and beyond.  

Again all the differences dissolve and the sameness is evident as we are all made from the same basic elements and are animated with the same energy. 

In the end it is all there was and everything there is came from it.  So, zoom in or zoom out.  From the micro to the macro, it’s all one. One Power.  Whatever name you call it. It is what it is. 

I ask you to consider this as you listen to Daniel Nahmod sing as he puts it so beautifully in his song One Power. Shared with permission.

Much Love.

"C" is for Conduit

C is for Conduit

I wanted to challenge myself to write about my conversion, crack in my cosmic egg and coexisting and I chickened out! How’s that for some “C” words? 

But, then I asked for helped and reached out. My dear friends gave me some great advice about being truthful writing from heart and creating a trusting relationship with the reader.  And that’s how I feel about writing, so I get that. I feel like I share this part of myself with all of you. It feels very intimate to me, so I was hesitant to ruffle any feathers and have what I write make people feel uncomfortable.  But, honestly being uncomfortable is not necessarily a bad thing, especially not if it allows us to see things from a different perspective.

So, as I was about to close Facebook today, I took a look at a video my mom had posted about a new movie coming out called Holy Ghost. In it, Michael W Smith says quite fittingly that he want 2 things in life: One is to never be offended again by anyone and the other is that he wants to be an open conduit for the Holy Spirit.   And then I heard my new “C” word: Conduit. 

You see although I am not a card carrying born again Christian anymore, Michael W Smith and I agree completely. I also want to not be offended, (Jesus actually told us not to be!) and I want to be an open conduit for the holy spirit to use.  The difference being that I no longer believe that believing in the gospel of salvation and asking Christ into my heart is the only way to do that. 

I see God’s spirit as the essence of everything since everything came from God, we really can’t be anything but divine by our very nature. If God was all there was and then God created something, what did God use to create? So, for me it follows that God is actually alive through us and the holy spirit we all are talking about is God. No need for a trinity. It’s ALL God!  So, yes Spirit/God is within all of us, within everything.  We are spiritual being experiencing the physical and for those purposes we have the dichotomies of life to deal with, but we are filled with the same spirit that filled Jesus and we can walk daily recognizing that relationship just as Jesus did. He said, “The Father and I are One.”  But, Jesus wasn’t the great exception.  He wasn’t the only one who has that access to God. I believe Jesus was the great example, trying to show us the way. 

Jesus was a master teacher, yes. But, how short sited would it be to think God spoke to us one time, 2000 years ago and that’s all he had to say?  We have much to learn from many of the great teachers including Buddha, who would tell us to question everything, even what he says! Now that to me is a master teacher. One who teaches you to think for yourself, not tells you what to think. 

As I got older, I began to respect many of the things I read in other religious texts. I began to open the box I had put God in.  I let myself question my long held beliefs and listened very closely to my heart.  I knew how to tell if I was on the right track. Peace. Peace has always been my gage. Peace and the fruit.  You WILL know them by their fruit. And I began to see that God worked in the lives of many people...not just Christians. God was alive all over the planet, not just in the King James version of the bible. We are ALL the hands and feet of God. Living in that place of daily recognition of this fact is what heaven really is. So, wouldn’t hell be the opposite of that? Hell is forgetting that connection and believing that there is a separation from God.  Now this made sense to me.  

We are all conduits.  No one of us is more special than the other. None is more worthy of God’s love. No one has to do anything to receive what is already a part of who you are. Seeing the connection between all of us and God makes it so easy for me to see my neighbor as myself.  What if we all lived from that place of seeing God in each other? Wow. Imagine that.