God and the myth we Created of the Parent (part 3)

To say ‘God is Love’, while true, is a definition. It circumscribes God, suggests limit even. As I said at the end of the last piece you didn’t create Love, since it created you, and thus it follows that you didn’t create God. You do, however, create an idea of God, based on the parental model discussed in parts 1 and 2, where perceived helplessness causes us to locate power outside ourselves, first in our actual parents, or substitutes, and later referred to society and the various agents therein. “God” is the final destination of this projection, the super parent. And, because our power is never given voluntarily, but through a feeling of being weak and cornered, ultimately we come to resent this figure. Resentment begets fear, even hatred; guilt and denial follow closely behind.

In this way we misunderstand the terms authority and power. We think authority means anyone with power over us, a role the State has assumed. But authority comes from the word ‘author’, which is also creator. God is the only authority in our lives, and yes it is absolute. By absolute I don’t mean oppressive, only that all other notions of authority are false and illusory. It is important that we become very clear not to confuse this authority with preconceived notions of the term. It is not an authority over us, it is an authority of us. It is our authority too, the means by which unfolds the phenomenon we call our lives.

It is from this Source, or ‘author’, that you get your power, and your power is limitless. But you’ve been tricked into believing you’re helpless. Thus you confuse your true Source with its false counterpart outside of you, and so you give your power to this. Furthermore, mistaking the counterfeit for the real thing, when you encounter the teachings of Enlightened Masters, such as Jesus, or Babaji, you think they’re talking about the counterfeit. And so you either reject these teachings altogether, or you defend the indefensible. In this way your enslavement by the world is complete. You are like a character in a science fiction drama who has been whisked off to an imaginary, counterfeit world, which his captors have made to look exactly like his own. Not knowing he’s been duped he never thinks to escape.

Counterfeit authority is obsessed with rules, because what is not real must continuously justify its existence, continuously strive to convince. It must always find that ‘other’, and convince its allies of a hidden threat. It’s a bit like in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four, novel, the war is completely imaginary but the citizens must continue to believe in it in order to be kept in line. Having no internal reality in itself, this illusory world can only be upheld by rules. When they become worn out they are replaced by new ones. Morality is another such invention. Again you mistake this as coming from God, but God is not involved with morality. God simply is. God has no vested interested whatsoever in whether you are ‘good’ or not. Indeed the notion of ‘good’ is alien to God. This is an idea we, humans that is, invented, and we did so in response to its opposite, to ‘not good’. Remember the dualist world, of ‘same’ and ‘other’? Morality is a gauge, a control valve. But what rests in unchanging state has no need for morality.

When we believe we are helpless we struggle (like a man drowning) to gain back control. Control is not the same as power. Control is making something conform to our will, it is wanting things to be a certain way. Control is an agent of force, which is the very opposite of power, of intuition, of the creative process. Here’s a good one, try telling someone, leaving out no detail, how exactly you tie your shoelaces. Tricky. You really have to let go of how you know how to do this in order to do it. Control tries to fix the illusion. Power knows it doesn’t exist.

We are all part of this group mind or collective consciousness that sees the counterfeit for the real thing. Now God is not angry with you for seeing things this way, nor is he plotting revenge on you because you don’t worship him. To see thus is simply to view God through the lens of the world. These practices were developed over millennia, and gradually, as we began to believe our own version of reality, our own projections, they became encoded on the human genome. Nor is it a conspiracy of the CIA or the Illuminati, or some such group. Don’t buy into that either. It will just have you trying to figure out the illusion. Do not worry. When you awaken, which is what the Unscripted Self is all about, all programs and scripts fall away. And, the good news is a huge awakening is taking place right now across the globe which will make it easier. In fact I’ll let you in on a secret, post 2012 it will be very hard not to be awake. see the mayan calendar This is because human consciousness is being raised to the level of Christ consciousness at this moment in history.

Encounterment

Try this. Begin by either sitting comfortably or lying down, close your eyes and enter into a meditative state. Just let the world drift away. There is no right or wrong way to do this, just get into a comfortable state. Next, briefly scan your body; your feet, ankles, legs, lower back, upper back, neck and shoulders. This is just to notice if there is any tension there, and then to let it go. It’s surprising how much tension we hold in our bodies. Mentally tell your body to relax as you scan, and then enjoy that beautiful feeling as your body responds. Don’t forget your eyes and jaw line. Often we clench our teeth unconsciously and hold tension in the jaw area, as well as around the eyes. Spend no more than five to ten minutes doing this, and then forget about it. Don’t become obsessed whether some part of your body is fully relaxed. If you’ve done meditation before this will be easier. But don’t worry if you haven’t. You can do this experiment even if you’ve never done any kind of meditation before, and you will still get success.

Now set you intention. Mentally say, I want to talk to God, or to my guardian angle, or my higher self. Use whatever name you feel comfortable with. If you want you can call in Jesus, or the Buddha, or whoever, at this point. Ask them to guide you and help you. You can even picture them standing beside you helping you. Same thing if you work with angels. It’s really powerful to have angels around you when you’re doing this work. Remind yourself that you emanate from the Source of all creation, and that you are a being of light. Just do this for a couple of minutes and then let it go too. It’s only to prime your mind, if you dwell on it too long you build up too much anticipation, or you’re trying too hard.

You may find at this stage that thoughts start to distract you. All kinds of things can pop into your mind. When this happens gently put the thought aside and come back to the experiment. Don’t beat yourself up for having distracting thoughts, everyone gets them. Gently come back to the present. If something pop into your mind tell yourself, I’ll think about that later, not now.

So the first three steps are, scan your body, state your intention, and then check your thoughts. The next bit is a little harder, but very doable. Simply this, I want you to imagine that you have no body, (hem…might feel strange!) Rather than think about it, ‘where’s my arms, where’s my legs’, feel it. Feel the empty space where your body is now, the air rushing through it. Be that empty space. Imagine it being drenched in beautiful light. Feel the nothingness. Feel yourself as nothing. Don’t be afraid of this. It’s not as scary as you might think.

Like to go further? Ok. Now try reaching into this nothing. And now reach a little further, and a little further still, and still further. See what this brings up for you. I stumbled upon this technique by accident when I was meditating. It may work different for you. I can’t say what precise experience you will have. But try it. I believe you will have a response.

I call this encounterment. I gave it this name because it comes about from our willingness to reach into something more than ourselves. And when we do so, that something seems to reach back, to respond, to engage with us. There is an old saying that when you take one step the Universe takes ten. I think this is very true of encounterment also. When we ‘awaken’ to it, it suddenly awakens to us, in us. I think it’s our willingness that is the key. It is our desire that causes it to come into our knowing, to become aware of us, and our desiring. The two reaching out, or rather reaching in, makes the encounterment.

Now when you start encounterment you will need patience. Please, please do not rush this, as it will only cause frustration. Yes, your mind and your thoughts will get in the way in the beginning, but that’s natural. Anyone who’s done meditation will tell you that. Be gentle and patient with yourself. And don’t expect to hear a voice saying, ‘hello, I’m God, how are you?’ because that’s just drama. That’s Hollywood. And such expectation will only impede your success.

There’s much talk today about ‘manifesting’, and about ‘co-creating with the Universe’ that needs clearing up, because so much of it focuses on material things. Much new age thinking is reactive, that is it reacts to what is. When we fight against something we’re still, to some degree, buying into it. By fighting against the old false notion of God, we are in danger of turning it into its mirror opposite. God goes from austere authoritarian to doting granddad. In muddled new age thinking God is now some kind of fairy godmother, whose main reason for existence is to give you ‘stuff’. This is more infantile thinking, and is really only addressing the ogre in its sleeping state. Fear lies beneath this too. Love is something that can be given, therefore, it can also be withheld. Love becomes the tyrant’s weapon, the victim’s plea, and the advocate’s bargaining tool. Conditional love and the super parent are inseparable. But this is not the case with God. Just as the sun continues to pour fourth its radiant light on earth, so is God’s love constant. ‘He causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends the rain on the just and the unjust’ (Matt 5:45)

Actually, God will give you anything you ask for, and not just the things you think are good for you. God withholds nothing. If this surprises us it’s because we’ve failed to understand the real meaning of giving and receiving. God is giving to you all the time. And when she awakes in you, you’ll do likewise. This is the real meaning of ‘co-creating with the Universe’. Jesus said, ‘whatever you so desire, when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you shall have them’ (Mark 11.24), a passage that is often cited to support ‘manifesting stuff’. While it can include that, it’s meaning is more far reaching. You will only create or manifest what you really ask for. Carlos Castaneda in his series The Teachings of Don Juan, (I can’t remember which book) says that the warrior must ask, ‘does the path I’m on have a heart?’ And if the answer is no then he should get off it with due haste. You will only reach your destination on a path with a heart. If you are on any other you will make the wrong requests. And these you will not manifest, because you are not really asking for them, not because God is withholding.

However, anyone who asks that question sincerely of himself will soon find himself on the right path. Because, as Jesus also said, ‘your Father knows what things you have need of even before you ask Him’ (Matt. 6:8). God knows your path and knows when you’re on it, and so what it is you’re really asking for. And elsewhere, (Luke 12:32) ‘it’s your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom’. Of course this doesn’t preclude material things. Why should it, just know what’s important. ‘Seek first the kingdom and all things will be added to you’. Jesus uses the parental moniker frequently, both in the Gospel accounts, and in A Course in Miracles, but clearly distinguishes it from infantile displacement or mythic narrative, for example, ‘the Father abiding in me’ (John10:14), Jesus knows his Source is not something outside him. There is no separation.

God really wants you to have everything, but you have a program that says something like, you don’t deserve it, you shouldn’t have it, or you are not good enough. That causes you to do one of two things: one, you give in to your program, and hide your light. Here you can play the blame game. Or two, you can ‘act out’, that is to take the program and try to play it in reverse. You say, ‘I’m not going to obey the rules, I’m going to do my own thing’ (just different rules) and you kick against the program. This is very popular with people today, who are ‘doing their own thing’.

Both methods are a form of denial.

And that takes us to another big misconception about God. The question of money. There is a whole energy of confusion, misunderstanding and fear around money and spirituality. On the one hand, perhaps among the old school, the argument goes that one cannot really be spiritual and have money. On the other hand, New Age writers might point out that only by being wealthy can we assist those in need and help eliminate poverty. Neither position is strictly accurate.

The first is based on the premise that spirituality and wealth are incompatible. All this does is create another set of opposites, a ‘good’ and ‘not good’, we elevate one and demonise the other without any logic for doing so. For example, can a banker not be spiritual? Of course he can. To argue that money itself will corrupt you is facile. Are there no poor people deemed to be corrupt? It’s not money, whether a person has it or not, that makes them corrupt, although they may use that as an excuse.

The second is based on the idea that there is such a thing as lack. God isn’t hoping you’ll get rich so as you can solve the world’s poverty crisis, because he knows there is no poverty. Just as there are no wars. Again, it’s a typical new age reaction to the first position. Let’s ask ourselves, are we secretly castigating the monk, who, without any disparagement of it, simply doesn’t have any need for wealth, when we argue for universal riches? However, sometimes those on the path of awakening can get confused over the issue, and thus create unnecessary blocks and periods of want in their lives.

The atheist’s perspective on this is equally as valid as the believer’s. For this person has chosen to worship God by not worshiping him. The danger here is that by denying the false images and the ‘idea of God’, she may overlook that which lies behind them too. We’re back to the Buddhist koan of ‘the finger pointing at the moon’. The devotee in his fervour may see only the finger, the atheist, blinkered by argument of logic, is likely to discard both. The former chases phantoms, and uses them to oppress, the latter fights those same phantoms by claiming they don’t exist. He’s right of course, they don’t. But by fighting them he’s participating in the other’s game. He’s buying into the idea. Everybody plays this game.

(By the way, if you find this koan a bit of a head wreck, think of it literally. Imagine you’re somewhere France and you come upon a signpost bearing the legend ‘Paris’. The sign is obviously not the great city of Bonaparte and Coco Channel. Its purpose is solely to point you correctly in that direction. Its signification contains the Louvre, Champ-Elysees, Tuileries, Sacre-Coeur, and a whole lot more. Of itself, being just an post, it signifies nothing.)

The game goes something like, ‘why does God allow all the terrible things to happen in the world; wars, terrorism, sickness?

The answer: He doesn’t. We do.

Or, in a personal capacity, why did God give me all these problems? Why is my life fucked up?

Same answer.

The questions themselves imply blame. Helplessness. Fix me.

Ironically, God can fix it! God is very near to you at this moment, with indescribable love, and very near to the planet that we keep lamenting about, how sick it is, global warming and all that. God can heal all this if we only let him. It was Byron Katie who said, and I paraphrase, ‘you are responsible for your life, but only for all of it’. When we’re blaming someone else we’re not being responsible for ‘all of it’.

A better approach I believe is to realize we wrote the script, that whatever happened in our lives we ‘called for it’ as the A Course in Miracles tells us. We can begin that process by seeing our childhood as the training ground for the things we chose to learn in this lifetime. The ‘good guys and bad guys’ of that drama are actors assigned by us to play those roles. They are the people we chose to have with us as part of that process , and so the need to apportion blame becomes unnecessary. And remember, not all of these people will be our friends. It’s when someone pisses you off, presses your buttons, or in some way gets a reaction out of you, that you need to take heed, here is an opportunity to learn a valuable lesson. The inevitability of analysis, parsing our story and those who populated it, can lead to unconscious blaming. Unfortunately, so much of modern psychiatry and self development seems to facilitate this, based as it is on the premise that ‘I’m broken’, there’s something wrong with me. Therefore, I need ‘fixing’. This postulates the role of a victim and that of a perpetrator. Another set of opposites.

But the real story is you’re not broken.

Your story of yourself is as much a fiction as was your story of God, based as it is on the same false premises, helplessness and displaced power. And what you are is far more than what you see when you look in the mirror. Indeed your story of yourself is inextricable linked with your story of God. But, that, I think, is a subject for another day.