Apr 27, 2014

One of the most fundamental questions that appear in our minds is: Why are we here? Do we have a purpose, or are we just an accident?

That is one of the most fundamental questions we all have. The four basic questions in life are :

1. Who am I?

2. Why am I here?

3. Why am I where I am?

4. What do I intend to do about that?

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p> I have had questions along this line all of my life, as I contemplated on “Why?”, the most basic question anyone can have. At first, like most children, I just accepted life, but by the time I was early in school I began to look around and wonder what life was really about. What was “I” doing here? Was “I” just an accident of my parents? If so, did God matter? But I had learned that God watched us and lived close to us, eventually realizing that God was with me all the time, never separate. I grew up in the farmland of central/northern Ohio, and I could feel God as a child wandering out in the fields, in the woods, looking at the beauty that was so vibrantly present. As a very small child, before school and during summer vacations when I was often alone, I would fantasize being with God, the Holy Family, wandering and talking, basking in the glow of their love, feeling wrapped in the Cloud of God. I went to Catholic schools all 16 years, and never really had any of those soul wrenching questions answered, in fact, they were never asked, and if i asked something like that, “why?”, I received vague answers or just a look that said “don't ask”. These were questions that were never asked, because there were no good answers.

I have a feeling that everyone else has had these same questions at some time in their life, and the implications of these questions can be very frightening, bringing most of us to the point where we were afraid to ask. I was given the Baltimore catechism early on, and they had some answers that never satisfied me. (“Why was I made? Ans. To know and love God and be happy with Him after death”) They were too simple, not really good reasons for me to be happy with my existence, as they never explained “Why?”? “Why was I alive, now, here, in this place and time?” That is the question.

I grew up, found out what my life career was, had the strange feeling that I was being led by something I did not understand but I accepted. Went to college, grew more understanding of life, loved and was crushed, but determined to love again. Found a terrific job some 700 miles from home in New York, on Long Island, and landed a dream job working for the founders of commercial television. I met this beautiful Irish lass, and we were married about a year later, almost 53 years ago at the time of this writing.

But I still had these basic questions buzzing around my head unanswered. I tried burying them in the bustle of life, but they kept cropping up in my soul. Nothing seemed to satisfy the needs of these questions. Then when I was 33, God came to me one late evening and lifted me up, enveloping me in this cloud of Love and Compassion, assuring me I was here for a purpose, would be guided all of my life, and I could not get lost no matter how hard I tried, for God would pursue me so that I could never run away, no matter what I tried. In truth, I came to understand that the Hound of God would never give up on me, no matter what I did. Read the “Hound of Heaven” by Frances Thompson, a short poem that tells the tale of how God never, ever, lets go of us.

I am one of the few I have met who KNOW God exists, and we are never away from God, never alone, no matter what is going on in our life. I know that God is in me, part of me, IS me, in a form I can feel but not express. My soul is a Branch of the Vine of God, my mind is the bridge between my prosaic brain/body and my soul, and my body consists of the energies released by God to create the universe we exist in, and these energies are a facet of God Alive, Living as the universe.

That is part of the answer of who I am, the first question. I also realize, from my perspective, that the answer for me fits everyone else, all seven billion of us alive today. We are all a branch of God, brought here for a purpose to grow and know who we are, and be the next grandest vision of who we may be. We are part of the evolving world, using the evolving technology and understanding of our world to become ever more linked in a common unity. Never before has it been possible to join together like it is today. Even fifteen years ago, when email was just starting, we could communicate faster, but it was still like a faster system of the pony express system. But today with so many different ways to instant communicate, the world is different, more globally linked, often difficult to tell where the person you are chatting with lives, so that national boundaries are disappearing between ordinary people. Oh yes, politics are still all about boundaries, but ordinary folks chat with people all over the world without a blink, perhaps foretelling some distant future without boundaries.

But to further explore who I am, I am a consciousness that lives in a mind/body/soul being. I can not be defined by any one part of that being, for I am not just a body, as a dead person is a body, not just a mind disconnected from my body and soul, and not just a soul separate by itself or trapped in a body, but a living combination of all three: body, mind, and soul. It is my consciousness that makes me ME. My consciousness is like a snowflake: beautiful on its own, and totally unique. There has never been anyone like me, and there will not be anyone like me, ever, for all eternity.

Each consciousness is unique from anyone else's. It exists inside our being and outside our being, like an aura that is attached to the mind/body/soul being that acts as the expression of that being. It is defined by our past experiences and factual input, but it takes those combinations, together with feelings and emotions, and creates something outside of all that, something new, with vast capabilities that are seldom used, as they are stifled by others expectations, guilt, and our own blocking of these extraordinary capabilities. That is where the genius of our potential lies. Our own consciousness, our own perspective on life, is not only dependent on facts and factual truths, but all is interpreted by our feelings, expectations, past and future hopes and desires. For me personally, my consciousness is pulled and directed by my God, who has pursued me all my life, ordering it and directing it even when I resisted. We still have no idea what our consciousness is, no idea what makes me ME and you YOU.

I write these words even though no one may ever read them, for that is who I am, expressing myself as God is directing me today. I have no idea, today, if any of this is meant to be read by any other, but that is all right. All these thoughts today may be only be produced for a future time, perhaps in another lifetime, but I feel compelled to put them down now.

I have other musings on God at my journal on God in Beliefnet.com, under Dave434.