God. Wow, what a powerful word. It’s one of those word-bombs that almost always elicits some sort of response in folks. Heart-stopping reverence. Stomach-turning resistance. Even God -apathy is stronger than an army tank. Whatever emotion you have when you hear / speak the word, it’s likely to be potent.
I’ve run the gamut of responses to the G word. Growing up, I was a devout, very sincere Catholic girl (no uniform, sorry). I was confirmed in high school, and gladly drank my blood-of-Christ Catholic koolaid. I was a eucharistic minister, altar girl, and overall Good Christian. Until the hypocrisy as I saw it was revealed after a friend’s suicide in college. I eventually found that Catholicism didn’t support who I came to be, so I exited stage left and never looked back.
After this stage, God became a dirty word. I detested the reference, because with it came the baggage I had carried from the guilt of a failed Catholic. That was my story back then, and it stuck for years and years. In order to heal the anger / betrayal I carried from those early years (all made up in my mind, of course, but it felt real at the time), I had to make God a swear word – something I developed a figurative allergy too.
Yet the secret truth is, all this while, I prayed my little heart out. I stayed very, very connected to “my” version of God – a less human, more altruistic, awareness-laden God. Yet I didn’t call Him / Her by that three-lettered name, as it still represented an omnipotent, scary-strict, angry fellow who would cast me into hell for batting the wrong eyelash unless I asked someone wearing a collar for forgiveness. So while I still held tight to my notion of a greater energy beyond my human frame, I didn’t have the heart to call it God back then. The word I most adored during those days – The Universe. It came to match a more story-less, warm + fuzzy vibe, and that worked for me.
Nowadays, The Universe is just too small a word, and I’m right back to loving it up with God. Only He / She has morphed into something / someone more recognizable : me. Not the small egoic me, but the “big” I, the one connected to the universal consciousness. The part of me that is pure awareness, and not a conjured fairy tale. The only piece that’s truly real.
How this happened is really magical. It really started when I met ex-boyfriend Z. He and I connected on MySpace, of all places, and it was just an insanely “right” union from the get-go; one of those clear moments that “higher” forces were at work. That’s how it felt then – that my hands had come off the steering wheel and something really big had just been sparked.
Z introduced me to the concept of enlightenment, and I took to it like a manically hungry child. Eventually, I got to meet Pranananda, an enlightened master who has dedicated His life to helping us all wake-up. Pranananda absolutely enchanted me, and scared the bejeezus out of me too. The Man carries an *incredibly* tangible energy, something that still makes me shake every time I’m around Him. He’s the most “Godly” gentleman I had ever come across. But there was one troubling aspect – He used the word God. A LOT. A bazillion times per sentence sometimes. And it drove me a little batty. How could this new beautiful paradigm of enlightened spirituality use the same word I once ran full speed away from?
Of course, Pranananda uses the term God regularly because He knows it pushes our collective buttons. Just hearing the name uttered brings up the shit we’re trying to hide from, quite often, and P asks us to really look at what we’re feeling around this (and, really, every) matter. What that did for me – well, I felt that pain of separation that I had created. First, the idea that spirituality had ever done anything to hurt me – I had to cry that one out in a big way. It was untrue, of course, but I held it to be so for a long, long time, so there was a big release that had to occur. Secondly, I got the chance to redefine the word God. To see / feel it in a different light. And to realize there was no man in the sky ruling over our every move, or watching without compassion, or moving us around like chess pieces – whatever it is that we believe. No, God was much, much closer than that. He was deep inside me, radiating out of the eyes I peered through. Hiding in those spaces I thought were empty – waiting for me to wake up to the reality that there was no separation from “me” and divinity.
The funny part of this awakening was that it did actually have its roots in my Catholic upbringing. I remember the bible teaching me that God made men (and women) in his likeness. I should have taken a clue right there to the Truth. Of course He did, right? There is nothing that is not God. The bliss we feel when we’re connecting with love – that’s God, of course. The hatred we hold for the bastard that broke our heart – also God. The breath of newborn baby – that reeks of God. But so does the gum wrapper someone just tossed on a railroad track.
As I came to own the divinity of all things, I had no choice but to finally look within. It’s a scary thing for me, honestly – holding myself as that powerful and Godly. It’s such a dramatic shift from the old way of being. When you accept yourself as all-God, and nothing but, you don’t get to hold anything back. There is no longer a spectrum of comparisons – in other words, my compassion = God, but my anger does not. No, it’s all-encompassing. And that’s very confusing for the traditionally programmed mind. When I step back into the big view, however – wow does it ever make sense. Every thought I’ve had, every move I’ve made, every tear I’ve cried. . .has brought me to this moment. The realization of who I really am.
Peel back that pesky little ego – which is, of course, comprised only of the stories we choose to tell ourselves – and there we all are: God. Not Gods and Goddesses – that’s an important distinction. We aren’t our own brand of divinity – we are just IT. From Hitler to Gandhi, and everything in between. We are all here acting out our passion plays, playing our amazing life-games, so that we can wake up to what’s real. What’s real is awareness, and awareness IS God. It’s an absolutely gorgeous realization – and one that sometimes (still) terrifies me. I am not fully realized, but these things I speak of I feel very, very deeply.
I do know there’s still a story or two inside me that tells me this isn’t true. If they weren’t there, I would be enlightened. I still play the separation game, maintaining that pieces of me are disconnected from the whole of divinity. As much as I can intellectualize that this isn’t the case, my state of being proves that I haven’t surrendered to the truth just yet. And there’s no guarantee I ever will.
Lately, I’ve noticed a bit more sleepiness in my way of being. I have been more immersed in the Maya than in past days / weeks. And that showed up today via chest pains and a general agitation from things that normally make me coo and melt – namely, the God-cat Mr. Boo. So I allowed myself the luxury of a brief but deep meditation, and I found a piece lingering in there that still desired that old separation. Why, I asked her? Why hold tight to the notion that we are separate, alone, and not-so-divine? Because, she answered – if I know wholly and completely that all I am is God, “I” will die. I teared up and sent her an energetic hug. I keep forgetting that there’s a piece of me that does need to die in order for this transcendence to occur.
So this was a good reminder, this light shone on the fear of death. It’s an ego death, not a body death, but it feels like the real thing. It really, really does. And there’s nothing I can do about that but keep feeling the genuine love I have for myself, and keep going deeper into the ownership of the falseness of the ego. The ego, too, is of course God as well, but she has to totally let go in order for grace to step in. Maybe that’ll happen, maybe it won’t. One thing I do know – I’ll die trying, one way or another. All roads lead to God anyway, so I have nothing to lose.
What a word, that. God. I wonder what it will mean to me tomorrow.
Hi Kitty
Reading your message I had a few thoughts. One is that God isn’t hatred. God may be the energy underlying the hatred but that’s as far as it goes. It’s a paradox is it not? Also if you maintain that pieces of you are separated well perhaps they are, or to be more accurate, perhaps you think they are which amounts to the same thing in a sense. For me the realization that I am myself was very ordinary and not powerful-seeming or ‘divine’ at all. I simply felt at home, as if things had come into focus. No drama – though it was nice, I have to say. Quietly satisfying, to put it mildly. There had been a lot of drama prior to that I have to say!
It isn’t a piece of you that has to die. It’s something false that doesn’t really belong there.
Lindy