My daughter Soriah asked me how God created the Universe and this is what I said to her. That everything, thought, feelings, matter, creation, the Universe, was Energy; even, God. And God created Energy and Energy created God. Which helps, I hope, those who ask if God created the Universe, then who or what created God?I suggest this circular exercise as a way of understanding God; because the hierarchists who see God as the ultimate also try to answer that question by saying well, God always was, which any child can see the fallacy thereof. Energy created God and God created Energy might better illustrate what I'm trying to show; except I don't want to provide easy answers to the lazy of mind. That's what religion does, and even philosophy, providing labels and rules of conduct that seem, on close inspection, to be whack (way out of :)
I note that religious texts are long when it come to telling you what to do but short when it comes to describing the ultimate. In other words, how can you use limited human understanding to define what has no limitations? And the holy books, while divinely inspired, are filtered through human consciousness, and therefore have holes in them. As the finest examples of literature, I love them, even the atheistic writings of Phillip Pullman and the Buddhists, even, the Gnostic library.
But this is what I say, in simple language instead of the complicated verbal structures of the religiosi. God is the creator of the Universe, but not the perfect, realised, being you would like him/her/it to be. What if God was perfect and imperfect, wasn't complete, but was, a slob just like us? (Joan Osborne)
Seeking completion, like us?
So who (or what) should we pray to? Ourselves (ye are gods) or God (we are nothing) ?
Just enjoy the ride. Ask what our purpose of existence is. To find, to understand, to experience, God. Then you'll see God everywhere, and in the everyday existence of all, without old men with white beards describing an old man with a white beard, or even a genuine saint like Paramahansa Yogananda describing a reflection of a reflected experience through his guru.
The Sufi Muslim quest to experience the ecstatic vision of God is the journey we must all undertake, even those who do not believe. Muslims believe that the night in Ramadhan, Laylatul Qadr, when the Prophet Muhammad flew to Jerusalem on his mystic steed Burak, has the power to bestow on believers the very same experience. My own mother had the experience of a Divine Light on that night, but I say, the least of you, has already had that experience and just need to be helped to see that.
So get this straight, God doesn't expect worship, or prayer, or fear. How you see God is a reflection of you, even if God isn't a reflection.
Oh, God exists, all right, whether you believe or not. God seeks only to help you see. Set Creation in motion and left the Universe to you. You created the rest yourself. (Even that is within God's purpose) If there was karma as a result of your actions, or inability to see, that was up to you. If you asked for help, you got it in one way or the other. That God loves you is for you to see. You can feel it in a hundred different ways, regardless of how much suffering there is.
Because, you see, God has chosen karma, and to be reborn, just like you. And lives, and suffers, just like you. To help you, God, incarnates here every once in a while. That has always been the promise. And if you should ever meet that being, you'll know. Not in a fireworks kind of way, but the light and peace you feel in that presence, and forever afterwards.
God comes as a soldier and a priest and a leader and a teacher and lover and child. You will see God in all of God's creation, but, if you look for that person here on Earth, then too will you find him. God is a woman in a man's form, a man seeking to find wholeness, a child that has the whole world before it.
What should you ask of God? Not a lottery win please. Not a perfect love nor a perfect world. That is yours already, if you know where to look. Maybe not now, but one day. And you are already within Gods' love, and may you have many many conversations with God, without talking to your own ego..
So if you ask, where's God, and why isn't he here to help sort out the world? Right now, he's outside, shovelling the snow.
