So, I'm sitting here at work In a nearly empty office, it's Christmas after all, and my mind is busy doing its usual thing, wandering all over the place. I started thinking that my religion posts have often been critical and negative and might be seen as attacking others who post very good and entirely innocent questions. I want to fix that, if only a little bit. Here we go then with the caveat that this is entirely my own opinion and reflects the beliefs of no current organized religion that I know of.
I'm going to use some quotes and examples from Christianity only because that's what I know. I'm sure that if I was more learned then I could find similar examples in other religions.
What is God? He is the origin of all things. She is that from which all else originally emanated? I switch pronouns back and forth intentionally for God is neither male nor female and God is both male and female. God is pure spirit and encompasses both fully.
Can I prove God's existence? No, of course not; so I don't even try. Call it intuition or the result of a couple of pretty vivid mystical experiences I had, but it is more than just blind faith and less than certain proof. Interestingly these experiences were devoid of religious context and point me to a reality well beyond any organized religion today, or for that matter ever.
Did this unknown origin create all that is matter from the universe down to the human being? I don't know but I don't think so. Maybe it happened like the atheists think or maybe it was beings that emanated from the origin. I don't think it was the origin because face it, the world is unimaginably cruel and imperfect, filled with senseless suffering and death. The unknown origin is pure innocence and pure universal love, at least that's what my experience communicated to me. Now, if the world and all else was created by some intelligence not God then it was created by a lesser entity that is not the origin. This entity is what religion worships, it does not worship God. The entity is proud, arrogant, and destructive, demanding submission and adoration with the alternative of eternal suffering and death. Can a God possess pure innocence and pure universal love and at the same time display the most negative personal characteristics imaginable? No, that is not consistent and therefore not possible.
Or, if all creation came into existence like the atheists think then the God worshipped in religion is simply a reflection of man's lust for power, realized in the tribal war Gods that have evolved into what we grovel in front of in Church, Mosque, or Temple. Either way, it doesn't matter because in either case religion is a dead end, worshipping either an imperfect and evil entity or simply their own vain and egocentric imaginations.
So, after all that negativity, where is the positive? We sense that the there is more than the physical and visible creation. We sense the spiritual element that is invisible and indescribable. That is our connection to the unknowable spirit, God. We each possess a piece of this spirit. It lies hidden and dormant within all of us. The Greeks called it pneuma and I will call it light as that is how it is often described by Mystics throughout the ages. Having God's light within us does not make us Gods in any way but it does directly connect us to her as this light once existed entirely within him and now is shared with all of us. It is the eternal light. As importantly, since the light is eternal, from the unknown origin, and since it exists in all of us we are all connected together in the same way we are connected to God.
How did it come to be that this light is within us if the container, the body, was not a creation of God. I don't know. There have been various speculations to explain this throughout the ages. We call these speculations mythology and they seek to put into a human frame of reference that which, at least for now, is unknowable. Anyway, the why and how isn't important. The awareness of the communal light that exists within us is the knowledge that leads to the answer to the original question, how to love God.
God is within this light so to love God is to cultivate that spirit within us, to become aware and embraced by the light, to let that light be our guiding principle, pure innocence and pure love. This is not solely directed upwards to the unknown source somewhere in the cosmos but to the light that exists in other people, all other people. TO LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR IS TO LOVE GOD. The love directed upward is amorphous. The love directed towards your neighbor takes form and is manifest in thought, word, and deed. Before I go further I just want to say that while I have come to earnestly believe this I am still far from reaching any semblance of perfection in its practice. I have a long long way to go.
You may now reply, this is simply a rehash of Christianity? I answer, yes and no. Yes, it reflects ideas in Old Testament and reflects very closely what Jesus taught. No it isn't because the religion goes astray with all its dogmas and mostly irrelevant teachings, organizations, and practices. The Jewish/Christian/Muslim mythology contains reflections of that origin, love, but is permeated throughout by the ignorance and evil that comes from that creator of the material cosmos, or from man's own prideful ego, whichever you prefer.
Jesus said, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the greatest and the first commandment. 39 The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments." MATT 22: 37-40
This was not some new thought in Jesus' time either. He was repeating that which had been said earlier.
thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. DEUT 6:5
You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. LEV 19:8
I am acting pretty bold in accepting this while rejecting all the rest. After all, lots of really smart people have written tomes that embrace the rest and brand me a heretic. I said above that I had reason beyond just faith to believe, this being one particularly strong mystical experience. I wish I could say it happened all the time, but no, it was only once, about 22 years ago. It happened in a totally non-religious setting, at a carnival, lasting just a few seconds. What it felt like is difficult to describe, but I'll do my best.
It felt as if my vision was seeing something more. Everything still looked the same but the colors were deeper and richer and it looked to have more depth. It felt as if I was somewhere else. I was still physically there but the sound and movement seemed to somehow fade into the background of awareness. I could see the people nearby but it was if I could see more, see their soul. This was not a visual thing but more an awareness. Then there was a feeling of total powerful love. Naming it as love does it injustice because it was so much bigger than that. But there is no other word to use. I felt it go through me and project outwards. It was not as if it were something from inside me but rather something from outside, channeling through me, and focused on all the people around. It was total love and acceptance, no judgement, sacrificial love. The thought passed through my mind "I would die for you," referring to all the other people. It was quite overwhelming and there was nothing in it that said I am Jesus, or I am Allah, or I am YHWH and you'd better follow my book. None of that. Simply total love for the people as they were. Then the feeling passed and everything returned to normal focus. Oh, there were no drugs or alcohol involved. I was stone cold sober. Maybe you think I deluded myself but it felt very real and it felt external as if for a moment I was seeing and feeling through somebody else's body. It also didn't tell me to do anything or for that matter say anything to me at all.
It has taken me a long time to come to where I think I understand it. Along the way I took a very twisted path embracing and studying religion very seriously. Now I have come to understand that it really is this simple – Love. All the rest in all the religious books ever written are just human mythologies that cloud the truth because in the vain imagination of humanity love itself is too simplistic. A real God must want more. We want more so so must he. No, it really is that simple.
I want to add that reading this forum has played a part in me coming to where I am right now in my spiritual thought. I daily read of people hurting, and hurting badly, abandoned by family and condemned by religion. And I read in their words that these are not evil people. They innocently seek peace and help and the religious of the world turn away with sneers on their faces. They ask for love and are slapped away with uncompromising condemnation. These religious know nothing of the God I once glimpsed. Enough said about them.
What comes after this physical life I don't know. I walk away from anyone that claims they do know and the more vividly religious their description the faster I walk. I do believe that our spirits reunite with the unknown origin, God, in some manner. Whether there is reincarnation or not or something else I don't know and it really doesn't matter. Seek perfection in love and the rest will follow. For me, simply the thought of going to the place where that love I felt 22 years ago resides reduces every other thought and desire to insignificance. And it resides here too, within us, ready to be known, and practiced, and expressed to all others. And that's it. If you want to love God then love your neighbor, not with superficial words but with acceptance and sacrifice. God is there.
Those are my somewhat rambling thoughts this morning. If I have offended or insulted anyone with my sometimes harsh words on organized religion in other posts then I apologize. I'll try to do better.
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