If God is Everthing, then God is Nothing...

IF GOD IS EVERYTHING, THEN GOD IS NOTHING

24 September 2011

I am at a bit of a life journey crossroads. Perhaps crossroads is not the right word. Maybe I am at a life journey rest stop. Yes, I like that better. This place does not require me to decide on a direction. All that is necessary is to sit quietly, contemplate, listen to the occasional whoosh of a car as it speeds down the highway to my back, watch the sun set brilliantly…and fight off the occasional javelina.

My purpose in writing this is not to offend. However, if three people read this (a likely number considered my past readership) two of them may be deeply offended. Again, not my intention. This trite little essay does not put forth any new spiritual concepts and it does not settle any ancient religious arguments. Determinism, worship, faith, reward and retribution, moral codes, agnosticism: terms we all know and discuss. These concepts are explained very simplistically here. I am good at simple. Simple is all I really have to work with!

Spirituality has been part of my life since I was a child. The conflict between my inner “knowing” and what I had been taught of the spiritual realm always produced inner conflict and psycho-spiritual confusion for me.  When I was thirteen, I had a metaphysical crisis and called out to two anthropomorphic beings with apparently very different purposes: God and The Devil. All I wanted was to know if ANYONE was listening. In a dream, I thought I found the proof I was seeking. Looking back, I see a scared kid who had a strange dream. No proof of anything other than a wild ability to imagine in Technicolor detail.

Here is what I “believe” now, at 48 years old:

There are no anthropomorphic Gods. God does not have a personality and does not intervene here on earth, at least not the way most of us think of it. There is no cosmic Santa Claus to please, no one keeping score, no one giving gifts based on our moral choices. Good kids get toys and bad kids get toys. Bad gets get chunks of coal in their stockings and good kids get chunks of coal in their stockings.

God does not have a favorite country, or a favorite football team, a favorite religion, a favorite TV pilot episode this Fall on CBS, a preferred religion, or a horse in the Kentucky Derby. God does not have a favorite anything because to have a favorite something, would require God to have a personality: favorites, peccadilloes, prejudices, a linear and cohesive “life existence”…favorite people and favored nations. No.

If God is everything, then God is nothing. I think “Gratitude Lists” rock. I love em. During some of my darkest times (those moments, hours, and days stuck staring down into the abyss of depression, self-condemnation, hatred, fear and empty black nothingness) I was directed by folks to write down the things that made me happy, the things for which I was grateful. When I was able to force myself to do this, I always benefited. Why?

      

Why do gratitude lists work?

In the past, I felt that consciously acknowledging all the things I was grateful for (my family, my friends, my health, my mind, starry nights, etc) served as a kind of recognition that God gave me a lot of cool shit. When I was down, I wasn’t very grateful for any of it. If I was taking a vacation at the “Edge of The Void Resort and Spa”, I was not expressing sufficient thankfulness to Santa Claus, err……God. Something told me that God was up there (out there) someplace just waiting for me to say “Yo! Thanks man. You are awesome and I am a worm for not being grateful for all this stuff you have given me! THANK YOU!!!”.

I now have a different understanding of why gratitude lists work. Unfortunately, I cannot claim this as personal revelation. If I could, I would build a pole barn and start my church. No, this is not a new concept but it still feels revelatory to me. Gratitude lists work because remembering the good in our lives, raises our energetic vibration. There is nothing moral or immoral about it: No God to please by listing those parts of our lives that make us feel happy. No God to displease by failing to recognize his “gifts” to us.

Energy. Vibration. Gratitude is a feeling that raises our vibrational frequency and that feels GOOD! It is also free of any moral dimension. When we flip a light switch, the room is lighted up. And that’s kind of handy if we need to find something, yes? If the light comes on, then it comes on. Nothing moral or immoral about it. When we make a gratitude list, our energy is raised (the light comes on) and it is good. Not good because we were being “BAD” by not thanking “GOD” for all our “GIFTS” and when we make a gratitude list we are being “GOOD” and feel “GREAT” since we have dutifully thanked “GOD” for our “GIFTS” No. It is a mechanical law of the universe and is only expressed by the laws of energy (which are constantly being re-evaluated and tweaked). Speaking simply (because, again, I lack the intellectual capacity to speak “complicatedly”), there is more truth to be found in an appliance manual than in a holy book! Oh boy, there’s that offensive thing—ouchie.

Back to “If God is everything, then God is nothing”. What I mean by this is that if we are going to express gratitude to God for the good aspects of our lives, we should also thank God for the negative aspects with just as much fervor. If God is everywhere and is responsible for everything (positive and negative) and if all of life flows from that same universal Source—it does so without prejudice or interest in how things manifest for us as individuals. It’s not personal.

If God is everything, then a God that directs our lives, gives us blessings, intervenes on our behalf against illness/financial calamity/childlessness/loneliness/famine/fear etc effectively does not exist. If God is everything (and I propose she IS), then God is nothing (meaning she does not really have any direct and personal intervention role in our lives). If we pray to God for specific outcomes (save this person from disease, please give me a job, find me a soul mate, let my team win the Super Bowl, let my nation destroy that bad nation), then we are trying to change God’s mind??? This seems to be spiritual madness. We are going to change God’s mind by REMINDING God that we are down here sticking to his rules and praising his name??? We are going to REMIND GOD TO CHANGE HIS MIND and shape our lives more to our liking??? No. No. No. This is not an original thought. Not sure what I read that expressed it.

It’s not personal. If God is everything, then God is nothing. We cannot change God’s mind. IT’S NOT PERSONAL. God or Source is about Energy, energy that has no moral or positive/negative dimension. God is Love and we are all God. Our hands are the hands of God. When we hug each other God is hugging God. When we hurt one another, God is hurting God. And it is all okay. It is all perfect and sad and beautiful and wise and dumb…No one is keeping score but we should all try to keep score ourselves and look at the scoreboard before we go to sleep at night. We can act morally and lovingly knowing that God is Love while being brave enough to understand that our relationship to God is just not personal.