Oh God !

In the Mentor’s workshop conducted by Calvin Harris, H.W., M., the second year is in progress with emphasis on creative writing. We are given a word or topic and set loose to write for six minutes. We then finish the essay on our own time. The following is one such essay. This time we were given a title — “Oh God.”

Oh God...

I like to tell my atheist friends I don’t believe in the same God they don’t believe in. That said, I don’t consider myself an atheist per se. I do sense that man has a tendency to create God in his own image. The God of my understanding does not have a face or a body. It may reign in heaven, but my understanding of heaven may be different than what is usually inferred.

What do I believe in? A very good question. I’m glad you asked. I have for much of my life believed in a higher power from which I am not separate. It is a little hard to explain because as soon as I start to define it, I have minimized it. I see the Divine as a Principle. It has no physical being. I am not separate from it. It is, as Paul Tillich wrote, ‘the ground of all being.’ It goes by many names: Infinite Mind, the Universe, the Divine, Divine life, The Tao and many more. One of my favorite names is The Great Mystery. I like this name because I don’t believe we can ever fully understand its essence while we are in a physical form.

I also love the term ‘ground of all being.’ This encompasses a great deal of my understanding. It points a finger at something we all share: Consciousness. Not only are we conscious, but we are conscious of being conscious. What woke up this morning? I woke up and was aware of my awareness. It is the underlying commonality we all share. I also see it in my own life, and my beloved pets share some of this. The difference I see between me and my pets is my level of self-awareness. I am capable of self-awareness to a level I am not certain my pets can attain. It isn’t self-awareness itself, but our ability to become self-aware of which I speak. There are plenty of people in the world who are not self-aware; I know several. What I am referring to is our ‘ability’ to become self-aware. It is never too late.

So, the question is, “Do I talk to God?” Yes and no. I do not address a separate entity. I talk to myself. More importantly, I cognate on my self-awareness. I understand that cultivating my consciousness is the answer to my experience of life itself. I will never experience anything for which I have not developed the consciousness. I believe we live from the inside out.

It was said when the Spanish ships appeared upon the horizon, the older indigenous people could not see them. They were not a part of their system of reality. It took a few days for the people to begin to be aware of those ships. We often have such experiences in our own life. We cannot see that which is right in front of us. We must practice expanding our awareness.

My father once told me a story about when he and my mother first got married and went to visit my mom’s family in Kentucky. The whole family decided to attend the County Fair. Everyone piled in the back of pickup trucks and headed to the fair. When they arrived one of my mom’s cousins looked around, then looked at my dad and said, “I never knew there was this many people in the whole wide world.” He had rarely been off the farm his entire life. I am not making fun of him. I believe there is little bit of him in all of us. We must broaden our experience to expand our frame of reference. We cannot know what we don’t know until we have the opportunity for greater awareness.