polemotheos
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Proving God - A letter to the Respected Agnostic - 2005/12/31 21:31
I found this on myspace and thought it was intresting.
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=150498&blogID=72741561&MyToken=de0c3a49-718a-4068-b88c-0c11c6e0113a
A girl named Sarah politely asked the MySpace Religious Forum for proof of God's existence. As a different voice than the Fundamentalist Catholics or born-agains in the "room" I took the bait and started writing. Sarah kept egging me on, until she fell asleep --but I kept going because it was bringing to center stage the most important questions I have of life like, why am i here? And, what's the point, and what should I be doing with my time? So for her -- but mostly for myself, I decided to document it and publish it as a blog — because really this is the most honest, personal and revealing train of thought I have... If for some strange reason, you want to climb onto my train, you're welcome. But it's really just my train and it's headed to my house alone.
Dear Respected Agnostic,
A lot of god awful things have been done in the name of religion. And a lot of amazing teachings have been butchered and deformed by the most foul purposes known to man. So what I'm going to write here has almost nothing to do with religion in the way it's normally talked about. So toss out the image of the big cathedral, the naked white man with the beard, or the Stepford wife at your door with the Book of Mormon or some crap like that. And forget all the bad associations you have with the word, "God." I'm starting from scratch. And it's only my opinion...
God means so many different things to different people so the first thing I need to do to communicate is to define the term "God" itself so I can prove that my God-concept does exist. At least initially.
Consider the sum total of everything that exists all the way back to the big bang and up until now that has been proven. With a tiny leap you can decide that all that is one thing. You can call that "all-of-known-existence" if you want. Now add to that, the mystery of everything unproven, or that which we don't know. You can call that "all-of-known-and-unknown-existence." Or for short, "everything." And to me, "everything" = "God."
Now whether you believe the oneness of God (everything) is wise or conscience or not, is up to you to prove to yourself. And that I think, is the road to the meaning of life. Because for me, if there is no wisdom to everything — then I might as well live a big loud life of total hedonism and no regard for the world or myself. I almost live that way anyway... But seriously, I don't believe that. And at a pretty early age, something intuitive within me indicated a deeper meaning to life -- that I should seek it out. But that's no proof.
So moving right along: If the sum of absolutely everything, inside and out, backwards and forwards is God, then it's also accurate to say that the sum total of everything that exists, seen and unseen, created itself. It's sort of a funny way of saying it. But it's true. The sum total of everything created itself. That is proven. Scientifically even. So there's the proof that "God" exists. Everything created itself therefore everything is a creator and everything = God.
But what is the nature of God? Is God all-knowing and all-wise? Or is everything just totally oblivious. Well there are many ways to brooch the subject. If we approach it scientifically there is little point. Because science can only explain so much. We can see clearly that as of today, all the university schools of knowledge known to man put together would actually be too small a tool to bring us close to understanding the totality of everything. Certainly there'd be no way to prove whether the totality of everything or "God" is awake and alive.
But we have a lot of different "spiritual" people and different societies in the world that claim they have the answer to how God (everything) works -- or how to know the oneness of God (everything) or the true world of God or even claim to define the nature of God, and even more strange, anthropomorphize God (meaning make God sound / seem like a human being) and define God on a human level.
This is all a bit crazy though because for a human being to claim to know the nature of God (everything) sounds a little naive since humans can barely describe much beyond their own family accurately and not very much within it very comprehensively. Overall we're pretty much stranded in our tiny worlds on planet Earth so for us to pretend we can define the nature of God or that-which-is-everything is pure hubris besides being utterly unprovable...
But still, we're looking at the whole of everything as one thing and calling that God and recognizing God as the creator. And then we're looking at all these paths and people claiming to know the nature of God and warning us that it's really important that we try and learn the nature of this God business or else we're gonna be bummed later when we die -- for totally different and conflicting reasons and ideas. And just as there are a million different ways to describe the nature of a single human being, there are infinitely more ways to describe God (or everything). And almost none of them make any sense. So where do we turn?
Apparantly people claim that some human beings were closer than us to understanding God (everything) than we are — enlightened messangers or prophets who could help provide a map or way to make it easier for mankind to come closer to God -- and by closer to God, not meaning a map to go look for God behind a tree or something like that. Because if God is everywhere and everything than it would be more of an awareness or experience. Like expanding your awareness from just your head hurting from my blog to a full awareness of your entire body down to your feet -- but this would be even beyond that -- a feeling or experience of a connection with something maybe even beyond your entire body...
Wait a minute, you're saying. Where the hell are you going with this? You're weirding me out. Bear with me. Because now I'm just one of those many people — most of whom are charlatans — talking about stuff that's outside of any mutual experience we both have. And that right there is the rub. I don't want you to take my word for it. Because this feeling or sense of the world of the spiritual is utterly pointless without you proving it on your own. If you're up for it, I can take this a little further before words in a language become useless...
And in order to go further, we gotta get deeper into the God-concept a little more. Although I'm not a Muslim per se, I do find the Muslim God-concept to be the most clear (try to suspend your preconceptions) because I need to jump around to other "prophets"...
The word Muslim simply means, one who submits. And the Muslim concept of mankind's place in the universe hinges on the notion that Allah, or God, is the only true reality. There is nothing permanent other than Him. God is considered eternal and "uncreated", whereas everything else in the universe is "created." The Qur'an describes Allah in Sura 112: "Say: He is Allah, Singular. Allah, the Absolute. He begetteth not nor was begotten. And to Him have never been one equal."
So according to Islam, God is the one constant. But we can see that the entire universe is constantly undergoing change and transformation. Nothing is ever the same. No moment in time, no unit of space. And yet the existence of everything itself is constant. So this way of seeing God actually makes sense. So the existence of God (everything) is constant, while that which exists within everything always changes...
The Buddhists call this quality of the existence, "impermanence". To them, to recognize it and acknowledge it, is one of the keys to Enlightenment. As I understand it, enlightenment means the same thing as salvation in Christianity or the Kingdom of the spirit, or nirvana or heaven. So what is that? What is enlightenment or heaven? My sense of it, is that it's somewhere in the realm of awareness that is closer to the essence of God, that is to say, an awareness closer to the part of the universe that is constant and unchanging. The "real" part. Whoa. What is this, the Matrix? Actually it's a great analogy. Because if you never experience the reality of the permanent part -- then you will never be permanent yourself. And when you die -- the impermanent part of reality will be all that you will ever know and be. I'm putting that delicately and vaguely. But all the spiritual teachings of the prophets say this in one way or another and advise an alternative. Here's where the leap of faith comes in. Just like when Neo tried to leap from one building to the other in the Matrix (sorry to keep using the analogy).
So what is escaping the matrix or Heaven or the permanent part exactly? I have no idea, but I've had little tastes of it. And the only way to prove it, is for you to prove it to yourself. Just like you've done with every other hypothesis you've ever had in life. And for me, it's not through reading religious documents or scripture. Although some scripture verifies experiences I've had and helps point in good directions it doesn't actually bring me an experience of enlightenment. So what's the answer then? How do you approach God or Allah? Or Yaweh? Or the one constant essence of everything? The answer is through finding a way that works for you. And by works, I don't mean one that appeals. I mean one that actually does the job.
And again, there are a lot of voices claiming to know what will do the job, for example, that if you just name "Jesus is Lord", you'll get there after your body dies on Earth. Well I don't know about you, but if it were that important to me that I get somewhere, I'd want at least to verify the directions if not do a quick trip to the location to be sure I knew where to park... Again, I put that in a goofy way, but from what I've read in the scriptures, I'm paraphrasing what all the prophets say which is the only way to get there is to go there now...
The reality is that even the Bible's New Testament (in my opinion a somewhat distorted document of stories about Jesus) offers more insight into the personal nature of this journey toward God than most modern Christians teach. And in my opinion that's because the tradition of mainstream teachings of Jesus have been badly butchered for a few millennia. Partly because it's taught mostly by people who seem to have never experienced what Jesus was talking about, and partly cake on generations of over-active imaginations hell-bent on being "right," "powerful" and controlling other people's behavior for profit... Remember, the only time Christ ever got angry according to scripture was at the church. But I digress. Jesus says in the Bible that the "kingdom is spread out before us and we do not see it." He's talking about Heaven, or the realm of awareness and being-ness that is closer to God. Enough said on Jesus. They're just words anyway, right?
So I'm purposefully leaving tons out. Like why are we here? Why is there suffering? What's right and wrong? Do they even exist? Why is life so hard? Why do I make my brain hurt? What are the true scriptures? What are the true prophets? Etc... And the answer is, I have a lot of opinions. But they're not important. What's important is your proof. Your experience.
My understanding has lead me to want to find a path which could give me proof, i.e. a direct experience of this awareness of the "real" reality — the permanent one — and hopefully one that would take me onto a journey of actually experiencing the secret wisdom I have read about in the words of the Holy Qu'ran, the Bible, the Gnostic Gospels (in my opinion the way-more-accurate teachings of Jesus), the words of Buddha etc...
The one way I found is called Subud. You can look it up on-line if you're interested. But it certainly can not be the only way. I am convinced that it is my way. I have found my proof. The only way for you to know is for you to seek your way and find out. Or not. Maybe enlightenment is not appealing to you. Or not believable.
But if you want to seek a way and find proof, my only advise is I would suggest that the vast majority of "spiritual groups" that keep you locked in the realm of "faith" alone and / or force some sort of stationary hierarchy between you and enlightenment stay VERY, VERY far away from. Because you are then dependent on the truth of other human beings outside of yourself. Those human beings and their hierarchy are by nature part of the impermanence. And blind faith on any government, as we have seen from history, is a very dangerous thing.
But if you are inspired and unafraid, then may the entire oneness mysteriously guide your way and may I suggest that the journey appears to be quite deep. There are many similarities between the ancient and modern myths. And there's an incredible amount of bullshit. And too much thinking is the major cause. So I'll shut up now. Let me end by saying I know nothing about your path. I pretty much know nothing at all. All I know is what I have experienced. If you're interested in that, I am always willing to share it. Thanks for having me think about all this. And of course I could be wrong about everything and completely lost. Be well.
love,
matthew
Your Peace, Surrender, In You,
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