the god question....

someone on a forum i frequent was asking about the 'feeling' of closeness to god, and that just caused some thoughts to rise:

if i had to label myself spiritually, i would say i am a christian non-dualist. however, i don't subscribe to the traditional western ideas about jesus as moral teacher, but rather as one who came into being to preach against the dualisms of the culture at the time, as they contributed to forming the values reflected in hebrew [moral code, ie right and wrong, do's and don'ts] and greek culture [early philosophers ideas about ethics and phenomenon of opposites].

then as christianity developed its ideas out of the current philosophies and theologies of the day, christ's intended teaching missed it's mark. but that's ok, because that's the way it was 'supposed to be'. nothing has gone wrong in any way. some people think that christology has been defamed, but it has not, rather it is continuing to develop as the universe unfolds. BUT not in the way that churches believe it 'should'.

on the other hand, that which grows out my experience of eastern philosophy and theology, the non-dual aspect of my understanding, has more to do with the idea that beyond and prior to the concept of god, there exists formless presence of awareness that essentially cannot change. the world appears in all of its dualistic phenomena, but we have mistaken that for 'the real', and that is where suffering begins.

from a very early age, one is taught to identify with, to assign labels and meaning inherited through the social dna of the family [ and by extension cultural] system. as the 'i' continues to develop and emerge, it tries to make sense with what it notices is appearing through its perception scope on the front of the face, in the tactile, in the vibrations of air waves against eardrums, and so forth. its ongoing growth process involves synthesizing all of the data consumed by the senses from moment to moment, and inculcating into the functionality of the human mechanism.

now religion comes along and makes rules by which the mechanism must abide, and politics creates laws for protection, and philosophy tells it how to think about itself, but there lies the rub. humans rarely take time to self-reflect, simply because the western culture is a culture that encourages the fulfillment and elevation of self as its supreme acquisitive characteristic. if we were taught to reflect more frequently on the efficacy of self development then gaining wealth, popularity, titles would lose their value and thus their hold on us to form us into the misshapen subjects that we tend to become over time.

so we go along believing, steeled from youth for the battle to acquiesce, that we will someday achieve all that we have been trained to hope for and to desire, forgetting along the way to identify our deepest needs, in favor of our wants.

it's no wonder the further along this path that we trod, that we become more and more disenfranchised from the sense of 'the real'. we have buried ourselves in our acquisitions, material and sensual, and placed those as a wall between us and god.

and god is one, without a 2nd, but we live primarily identifying with ourselves, our egoity, as though we are separate, but we are not. and all the things we desire come to possess us in the sense that we cannot live without them.

yes, we cannot live without god either, but if we take our cues from the cultural matrix, then all we need do is make god into a picture in our heads and nod to it every now and again, making that the primary relationship with god, replacing it with the true joy and bliss that could be known if we would learn to dispossess ourselves of the stranglehold of egoity.

in summary, thoughts and feelings are all products of an ego that has entrenched notions which have spawned want and desire. to the extent that those are not fulfilled there will be frustration and grief.

but a very smart man said this about the god question:

'As long as there is enthusiasm for seeking amid life's alternatives, these questions remain superficial. But when death becomes real, or when deep disillusionment with the possibilities of experience overtakes the being, then one can no longer avoid the confrontation with fundamental questions. At such moments, the heart is open, inconsolable by ordinary means. Then there is a ripeness, an urgency for Truth, Reality, and Real God.'

in other words, until nothing else is of prime importance, not even one's own physical life, then the things that have come to possess us will continue to deter-mine the arc of life's choices.

the beauty of it all, is that all through life, god is always there, as god is now for you in this questioning, beckoning us to, calling us deeper and deeper into relationship.

to the extent that we yield, incrementally, such as you are seeking to do now, life becomes a series of moments unfolding to reveal the truth of our true nature, that being that we are not separate now, nor have we ever truly been, no will we ever be.

someone else said that the purest prayer is to ask the question: 'who am i?'.

in closing i share another prayer that arose in me during my time in the monastery. this prayer is based on the deepest human needs; desire, hunger, and thirst, the three things needed to 'live'.

god alone

may my only desire be for god
my only hunger for christ
my only thirst for the spirit
of god alone