I doubt that anyone can know God; in the sense that we can know another person. God is not a mere acquaintance, a friend, a relative, although God has been depicted as such. I understand that, as human beings, we tend to anthropomorphize things we relate to. I do it all the time, including when thinking about "God," but it seems to me that God becomes increasingly remote; "out there," the more one assigns anthropomorphic attributes as a description. God is not at all remote.
While God is not the same as me or us, God is not separate from me or us. The only word that comes close to describing the term God is the word holy; a word that connotes otherness, an otherness we can experience within ourselves. In this sense, knowing God cannot be accomplished by looking for something apart from us, something other than what we are. The quest to know God, to encounter God begins with the quest to know one's self. I've titled this post "Encountering God" because I believe encountering that which is called God is not only possible, it's constant.
One morning while I was practicing mindfulness meditation my mind turned to Socrates and his dictum about knowing oneself and the importance of the examined life. As I observed this passing thought, it dawned on me later, that the examined life is a life lived mindfully. Mindfulness, in the Socratic sense, implies the Self observing the self; watching our step(s) as it were. Such mindfulness inevitably raises questions and offers insights that transcend "self" and lead to encounters with "Self.." Such pursuits, can lead to an encounter with what it means to be or "being" and its roots in "becoming-ness." These terms represent the ever-fluid state of what I referred to in my last post as "Is-ness." [See GOD IS A VERB]
When religion separates "God" from the created (the evolved) and the on-going emergence of creation (evolution), we lose this important understanding of God. We become disconnected from God and from each other. God becomes a remote thing, "out there," inaccessible or accessible only through one's religious affiliation and that affiliation's controlled or controlling means of identifying the divine. I can readily lose the important perception of my fellow human containing the same "other within" that I feel; of being blind to face of God seen in the face of another human being.
Religion, used here, is understood to be the product of a collective human consensus on the holy, a response to it, and there are many such collective consensuses. In other words, religions are a creation of humankind, not God. God, as the term is being used here, has no need of religion. Religion reflects a collective need to respond to our sense of transcendence.
Contrary to the fear-generating theological dogmas of many religions, God is always accessible*. God is in our every breath, in our every heartbeat. God is not "out there." God is "in here." God is immanent. Everything that exists is an expression and an emanation of God. Everything that has breath is an incarnation of God.
This is not said to imply that religion serves no purpose. Religion is very purposeful and important. As humans, we cannot escape being religious. To ignore this fact is to court danger in the form of willful blindness. We are, after all, homo religiosus."
We are all, singularly and collectively, prone to ritualizing life in order to make it meaningful. Cultures and societies, considered to be non-religious and secular, all incorporate ritual in their social structure. A prime example of this is patriotism. Patriotism in any country is highly ritualized; utilizing symbols and public events to encourage it (flags, national "holidays," oaths, pledges, and memorials), all of which is rooted in the religious idea.
Institutional religions serve as the primary means for humanity's collective expression and understanding of life itself and the transcendent. Institutionalized religions (for the most part and whether intending to or not) have historically attempted to fix "God" in place as a supreme other that's "out there." Even if this was not a religion's intent, their leadership through the centuries have done little to discourage this fixed thinking among its adherents.
For many, institutionalized religion represents the locus for their encounter with God, but for an increasing number of people encountering God or the spiritual is a quest free of theological dogma and doctrinal bonds (at least for the moment), free of a defined locus. For some the quest for such encounters is through self-examination and the discovery that in the examined life all dogmatic and theological notions of God are rendered inadequate; that the credibility of one's traditional/cultural beliefs is no longer sustainable as a means to encounter the ineffable.
Such individuals, and I include myself as one of them, find there is nothing left but the silence of one's own being; the pervasive silence of the cosmic state of becoming-ness that envelopes everything and everyone which is that silent but immense force gently flowing in, through, and around us,shaping us in our individual manifestations of Being, unique to us in this moment of life. Still, others within the framework of religion are capable of moving within their religion's dogmatic and doctrinal bindings to encounter God in the form of mysticism. All such endeavors, I feel, can ultimately lead to an unbounded sense of awe and the holy or "the other within."
For the most part, God emanates through our varied existences without our awareness. Our very existences are manifestations of God's cosmic intrusion called life. Our lives are God's life at this time, at this place, and in this particular shape and form. God is alive through and in all creation, and all life and all creation has its being and is enlivened by the being or becomingness of God.
From a religious perspective, all things can be attributed to God, yet nothing is an attribute of God. God IS, and yet, is not what we think. The will of God is to be, but not all things that occur happens because of God's will. Cause and effect are different with God. There exists a moral ambivalence where God is concerned. Good and evil events occur, and it is our subjective experience with them that places such values on them. As Christian and Hebrew scriptures point out, rain (God's goodness) falls on the just and unjust alike. God is present in all occurrences, or, better said, all occurrences happen in God, but God does not act as the orchestrator of them but rather as the absorber of them to what ends, if any, we cannot fathom.
Nevertheless, religions tend to portray God as an outside being, as some thing directly involved in human life; as directing the comedy and tragedy that is life on this planet. Religion tends to link God to us by theologically demonstrating that God is affected by the events of our lives in the sense that we are affected. This is where things become complicated.
There is no small degree of comfort to the religious in believing that there is an other, out there, who understands what we're going through, but this sense of divine observation and "outside" interaction can easily become twisted into a memetic neurosis (ex. religious guilt) over how God perceives our activity. Does God approve or disapprove? What is the result of such approval or disapproval? How do we know? How should we respond?
Religious knowledge is largely intuited knowledge. God, more often than not, becomes a projection of ourselves trying to get life right by eliminating what "we" collectively perceive as being wrong with ourselves and the world. This is often the point at which we dissociate with being linked to our fellow human beings, where we become an "us" and a "them." This is tricky turf and has become increasingly more tricky in recent times. It would be far better for us to see all our lives as part of God's being and becoming-ness rather than to see God as an intermittent player in our lives who may or may not approve of who we (or they) are and what we (or they) are doing.
Most major religions have sacred texts that are considered inviolable; in that, they are considered God's words, divinely inspired writings, as opposed to being intuitively garnered writings or words (stories) about the relationship between God and humankind. All of religious writings abound with mythic content designed to present truths. [Note: Myths, in my definition, are the oven-mitts by which we handle truth(s).]
In some religions, these texts are not to be questioned by their adherents. This is unfortunate, as it seems to me, the purpose of these texts, of myths, is to use them in the pursuit of truth, and, in order to effectively do so, they should naturally raise questions and debate about their meanings, if anything. Any religion whose sacred texts are considered equivalent to empirical fact; considered inerrant, untouchable, and unquestionable is a religion ultimately doomed to failure. God is not a fixed entity. One cannot stuff God between leather bindings.
To encounter God (Being and Becoming-ness) is to sense God, to sense the other within. God can be felt, if not physically, then emotionally or spiritually. In almost all religions the one human emotion or feeling associated with God is the feeling of being loved; of being spiritually embraced and deeply cared about and cared for. This is universal among the world's major religions.
For those of a non-religious persuasion, this sense is encountered in the immense feeling of awe in what is and of finding a love of life on a personal scale for all things. With or without the notion of God, love is the sign of transcendence, of transcending one's self interests. Love transcends the ego and is traceable in all sentient beings. For many, God is synonymous with true love. God is love and true love, pure love, is the ultimate expression of God in life or LIFE. Amidst the chaos of the cosmos there exists cosmic order and it has a name, LOVE.
Emotion and intuition are vastly under appreciated. They are considered by some to be non-intellectual factors that can influence human behavior. There is some reason for this. Too often individuals will run with their emotions and intuitions, taking them at face value. They fail to examine and discern their meanings. Emotion and intuition have a connection with each other. Feeling and sensing before knowing is an important human function that, if used wisely, increases knowledge and understanding. A person's sense of "God" is largely felt or perceived on an emotional level which precedes reason.
The God-concept, I believe, started as an intuition that provided an identity, a locus which eventually evolved into a universal source that gave meaning and purpose to life. Whether as a concept, a fact, or a myth God exists. One cannot deny something without first acknowledging it. To say there is no God is to affirm, at the very least, the concept of God, and every concept encapsulates something true to the human experience.
Encountering God is constant in our being, in our becomingness, and in our Is-ness. Realizing this is a matter of becoming awake. Waking up is matter of leading an examined life; that is, the Self observing the self, of being mindful.
Until next time, stay faithful.
* The accessibility of "God" will be discussed in further posts.
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