Jun 29, 2014

I am going to be talking about some ideas that may seem far-out to many that read this post. But this is my understanding after searching for 80 years through the teachings of the Catholic Church, the bible, and countless books by theologians, Catholic and otherwise. These have be combined with many, many books by physicists, both cosmologists and particle physics. The latest series of books and concepts that mostly closely align with my shifting understandings are the Conversations With God series that I have read and studied over the past 14 years, in parallel with many other authors of many persuasions. Feel free to accept all or none of what I say – that is what I firmly believe, that each of us must arrive at our own set of understandings, and that is not just all right, but it is the right and truth for each of us to have our own understanding of God and the Way of God. This is how we will perceive life when it is time to move to the next phase of life. There is no wrong way, just another way. And if our thinking changes, as mine have dramatically over my lifetime, that is all right too. There is no wrong way, just another way.

Are we made in the image and likeness of God? If we are, in what way? And what is God anyways? This post will talk a bit of my understanding of God, and what I have gathered from from what I have read, prayed over, and been given to understand, from my own private knothole. We each have a special way of seeing God, our Eternal Wisdom, and it always helps to see how others see the All in All.

How does one talk of infinity? Can a person even talk of infinity? Our universe, though very large by our standards, is still a finite size, and only a tiny portion of the Totality That Is! So small, in fact, since we are talking of infinity, an infinite number of our universes could exist, one after another, unless nothing exists whatsoever. But that is something we will never know in this life, but it makes great speculations, and a surprising number books have been written on the topic, starting way back from when Aristotle discussed the true meaning of life, based on his knowledge at that time.

But in order to limit our thoughts (they can get really wild here), we should stick to just our universe, and maybe even just our corner of our universe. Conversation with God (CwG) has God saying that even though God is talking in these books, the God we can understand is but a very small portion of the God That Is. Speaking metaphorically, it is like we are the branchlets of a mighty branch of a mighty limb, stemming from a humongous tree with an infinite number of limbs attached, all coming from the energy field of the ultimate Force that is truly the ALL IN ALL. The concept embodied by the giant Redwood trees gives me something I can grasp and work with.

Now we begin to see the problem of trying to put our arms around this idea and concept of God. It also helps us to understand that we have failed in the past to begin to appreciate the All In All, as we have almost always put our limits of humanity back unto God, that is we have made God into the image and likeness of humanity, limited in scope by our having a God with our foibles, good and not so good, and downright bad. But that still leaves us wrestling with the concept of “being made in the image and likeness of God”, and how that can be possible.

We have just touched on that if God is the God Of All That Is, how do we come across putting limits on this Force we call God. Yet humanity, in the form of most of our religions, seemingly insists that God has limits. We claim that God can not Love us Unconditionally, or if God can love us Unconditionally, we can somehow fail this God, and God can not Forgive us Unconditionally. And then this God, will become angry and sever us from the branch that is God (could God cut off part of God?) and punish us forever. CwG says no, that is not who God is. God is one who has no demands, only Love, and if God has no demands, then we can not disappoint God or fail God, under any condition what so ever. God is Love, and Only Love.

Whoa! What did I just say? God has no demands? God requires nothing? My 80 years of trying to gain greater understanding of who I am in relation to my God, revealed that God has no limits to God’s Love to me even before I read and understood that in CwG. If God is Love, the ultimate Love, then God has no demands of us, and we can not fail God at any time under any condition.

Now this is scary (or not, depending whether you are an optimist or a pessimist). If we can not fail God under any condition, there is no concept of sin from the perspective of God. And if there is no prospect of sin, then all of our groveling and pleading for forgiveness from God serves no purpose.

Now, forgiveness does serve a purpose from a human perspective, and is a necessity in this sojourn of life. We do an action, and that action has results and repercussions. When we learn to forgive another’s actions that may have impacted or hurt us in some way, we learn to remove the hurt from our heart, heal ourselves and the one who hurt us, and lift ourselves closer to the level of that Force we call God.

I am not saying that God does not observe or care about our actions, but the true question that should (but usually does not) govern our life arises: does this action stem from the person we want to be, or not? And sometimes this requires us to go under our actions and see if what we did served the purpose of taking us to the next highest level we can be? This level of self-observation changes us from being a passive partaker of our life to an active participant in our life, recognizing that we do bear responsibility for our life and the results it brings. That is a giant step forward in removing the id and the ego from controlling our lives and masking the soul from bringing us into direct contact with God through the action of our consciousness.

When we arrive at the point where we start asking ourselves that question, “Are we doing this action to be the next highest level person we can be?”, then we are finally starting to move, to find that point where our soul begins to be revealed, and we finally, finally, start reaching inward to that Kingdom of God that lies within.

Now, God does care about what we do, but the plan of God is bigger than our single acts. God’s caring does not mean God becomes angry at us, it means that God Loves us, and desires us to move into more conscious awareness of God, so that when we fail to move closer, God may wish we had done otherwise, but is never angry. After all, are we not children in the eyes of God, for do we not say we are a child of God, and like a toddler that spills their milk, we become disappointed, but we should never be angry at a misplaced move of a toddler. Yes we are like a toddler, and we still have a long way to go to become the joint creator of Life as God sees it. The ultimate goal is to have humanity, all of us, join with God in the creation of Life. That is our purpose on earth, to grow to the point where our actions and God’s actions are inseparable.

Desire and disappointment do not equate with severing us from God. Just as when a small child or toddler does something messy, we do not throw the child out, no, we clean up, give correction where we can, give a love squeeze, and go on. Action, (spill milk), results (mess), move child away from mess (repercussion). Not anger and severe punishment, no matter what the action actually is. So it is with God. We do an action, and we have to live with the repercussion. Unless we change our way, we will probably repeat the action with all the same results. We are, like Einstein said, a bit insane: “We do the same action again and again, expecting different results.”

So what happens if that is the pattern of our life? Well, as I understand it, we get to try it again and again, until we finally get it right. Yes, that means we can return until we work out the process of becoming Who We Are, the Branch of God, on earth, even if it takes a very large number of attempts to do that.

Some call that reincarnation.

Meditation

My Eternal Wisdom, aid me in opening up my soul and consciousness to become aware of Your presence in everything, visible and invisible. I am grateful for always giving me another chance or opportunity to grow, to take the next step and become the next highest level of person. I ask Your guidance and prodding to become more visible to me so that I can move forward with greater confidence. I am grateful for all that you have done for me, even when I (usually) am not aware of your guidance. I am confident that your gentle Force will always engulf me, holding me up even when the body fails me, and I am left with only You, and I. Amen

Next week I will talk about forgiveness.