Tag Archives: God

THE NECESSITY OF FREEDOM IN ACHIEVING SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION

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The more I think about what’s required for us to evolve spiritually, the more I have ended up thinking about freedom.  In Diner Mystic, I included a Zen quote by Lin-Chi, that says:

“O you followers of Truth! If you wish to obtain an orthodox understanding of Zen, do not be deceived by others.  Inwardly or outwardly, if you encounter any obstacles kill them right away.  If you encounter the Buddha, kill him; if you encounter the Patriarch, kill him; … kill them all without hesitation, for this is the only way to deliverance.  Do not get yourselves entangled with any object, but stand alone, pass on, and be free!”

At the time, I thought he was right, but hadn’t yet thought all the way through just why he’s right.  Ultimately, I have come to the conclusion that the essential nature of God is freedom – that it’s impossible for God to exist without absolute freedom.  Any ideas that we have of God that are less than this, or that restrict God’s freedom in any way, are just plain wrong. It’s difficult, however, for human beings to think clearly about a God who has this kind of absolute freedom – because it’s difficult to think about what possessing that kind of freedom would mean for human beings themselves.  Without this freedom, God is not God and, equally so, without it, it would never be possible for human beings to discover their true selves.  It’s that important!

I intend to address this issue of spiritual freedom more fully in my next post.

Would You Be Kind Enough To Call In Now?

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For the ancient Greeks, there must have been a time when the name “Zeus” suffused people with awe, especially when gazing up at rugged Cretan mountains and seeing frightening flashes electrifying the night sky, along with hearing deep-bass rumblings rolling out into the distant horizon like huge heavy metal balls.

When Roman civilization succeeded the Greeks, however, “Zeus” got translated into “Jupiter,” and the numinous began to fade in light of this new rapidly-expanding world power. What were “gods,” then, compared to people’s actual experience of Roman world power – the power relied upon by successive Caesars to justify declaring themselves to be “gods”?

Today, in America, as Rome’s successor empire, “God” has gotten as dim as the evening star – barely visible through vast metropolitan conurbations of “light haze”. When any of us ever does bother to look up from our ongoing daily affairs, we usually only see the spiritual equivalent of phosphorescent streetlights.  All the earlier “bright-line” moral/spiritual distinctions set down by the ancient spiritual masters, prophets and saints are no longer clearly distinguishable by us through this society’s electronic media haze.  Tragically, the numinous – that is, the direct individual experience of the “Holy” – is no longer even imaginable for most of us.

Why am I talking about a Nineteenth/Twentieth Century “God” who’s apparently already started on “his” count-down to retirement, on the way to becoming just another of civilization’s memory-relics?

Isn’t it true that the entire Western religious infrastructure, along with all the people supporting it, has now entered a process of irreversible collapse – and is rapidly becoming part of the past?

The main question for us, now, is: does anyone out there know what’s coming next? Who might be capable of spotting incoming bits of joy somewhere out there on the horizon traveling fast enough and hard enough to break through our protective-concrete traditions and bring us a hint of fresh spiritual life?

Who’s out there and, if you are, would you be kind enough to call in now?

SOME KALEIDOSCOPIC IMAGES OF GOD

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A plump, kindly old man with a full white beard sitting humming merrily to himself.  He’s dressed in soft red flannel trimmed with white fur, topped off by an amazing red cap hung with silver bells.  You sit on his broad lap and ask for all your secret wishes to be granted.  Some time later, responses come shooting down your chimney in the middle of the night while you’re fast asleep and least expecting their arrival.  Let’s hope your wishes were pure.  Who knows what you’d find in the morning if they weren’t.

 

Think emptiness.  Like a gas tank out of gas or a well gone dry – but emptier.  Empty even of emptiness.  Turn inside out and look again.  There’s still nothing!  It seems circular but isn’t it a fact that, originally, everything came out of nothing?  Moreover, isn’t this similar to a God who abides nowhere, yet exists everywhere?   Maybe, this is too much!  Instead, why don’t you imagine God as a gigantic metaphysical merry-go-round, spinning around, with lively music, reflecting mirrors and flashing colored lights – children rushing to get on.

 

Many in the past – some even today – visualize God as a powerful Man living up in the sky who doesn’t mind taking the time required to oversee all our daily affairs.   This God has traditionally been imagined as a strong male figure – but gigantic in size.  Mountain chains could be crumbs stuck in his teeth.  This God makes things – like daisy-chain universes, Alice-in-Wonderland dimensions, and way, way too many ungrateful people.  This God can say a single word and whatever the word denotes immediately comes into being – whether stars, green glaciers, or fleas.  It’s a good trick!  Given such power and creativity, God has to be very careful with what He says.  Everything He makes always comes out perfect – with the sole unfortunate exception of freedom.  When God tossed that bit into the mix, it fouled up all the pre-existing perfection.  But this wasn’t God’s fault, was it?  A perfect God-built universe just gone all to hell!  So, now, there’s God, just standing around, patiently waiting for us to get His universe back together again.  He’s kinda tapping his foot – an omnipotent, omniscient type of guy.  We should be awed, but it’s difficult to concentrate, given His infinitude.  Maybe God should consider greater finitude if he really wants a better relationship with us.  But perhaps He already tried that once.

 

Some people believe God is everything – one colossal unit.  You, reading this, are part of God; me too, along with my cat, Maui – we’re all God – just not individually.  It takes all of us, collectively, to make up God: the dust collecting on the dining room table, the doorbell’s electric buzz and even passing-by sweet cat farts, all together.  If we leave out anything, God would be incomplete.  So, given that God is everything, and everything consequently is holy, shouldn’t we begin learning to relate better to one another?  On the other hand, maybe we shouldn’t talk about it, just experience it; hold it like a sweet mint under the tongue.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be God knowing everything else is God too?  Now, if we could only just get rid of all those tiny irritations hovering just beyond the edge of our exquisite spiritual sensibilities.

 

We’ve been informed, officially, that God is a close relative of select groups of people – maybe even a few unique individuals.  By longstanding reputation, these people have an “in” with God.  They’re considered almost super-human, even angelic, in comparison with ordinary human beings.  We ask them for what we want and they, in turn, pass on our requests to God who almost always stamps them “Approved” since God owes these people a lot!  Not many have done as much for God as they have, so God isn’t willing to cross them up.  It’s best to develop a one-on-one relationship with such people – for example by attaching a plastic statuette onto the dashboard of your car or installing a larger concrete version out on your front lawn.  Some people believe it’s impossible to reach God without first establishing this type of special connection.  Listen, everybody knows God hasn’t made any actual appearances in the world for a very long while.  Maybe God has gone away on a long vacation where days are measured in generations.  Or perhaps God’s simply ashamed of us and has taken to avoiding our company.  Or, maybe even, the problem is that God, without any formal notice, has taken out a final divorce and gone to live in some alternate universe and is now taking care of more reliable and loving beings.  It’s been said, at times even fervently believed, that long ago and far away people were able to speak directly with God.  Fortunately for us, they wrote some of it down and posted it in the form of an extremely long letter.  Since this is all we now have left, we worship it.

 

The Evangelical version of God is a lamb holding a lightning bolt in its mouth.  Peace and judgment in one.  Love and consequences.  Maybe the Evangelical God wants to keep us on our toes, especially since there’s nothing we can ever do on our own to reach God.  All our best actions fall short – absolutely.  Well, that leaves the Evangelicals just one ticket to ride.  But it’s inexpensive!  You simply have to say the right things about Jesus and everything turns out copacetic.  At the end of the line, we’ll find our family and friends (provided of course they also qualify as “saints”) waiting for us in a cosmic community center called “Heaven” – a pretty joyful, boring, kind of place.  How so?  Because the Evangelical God has only a limited imagination, valuing faithfulness more than any other known human quality.

 

Perhaps God is not even Christian, much less Jewish or Muslim.  Buddhists, for example, say that God is Not.  Maybe God is Ganesh, the Holy Elephant, with all the other world religions acting out a dozen blind men feeling around the great mystical elephant.  And isn’t it obvious that even six billion of us, using all of our five or six senses, could never, individually or collectively, picture God as God truly is?  That’s why each religion has carefully stored up all its singular encounters with God, derivatively sharing these experiences with the faithful through their own distinctive writings and sacraments.  Unaware of its own blindness, each religion believes that all other religions are vastly blinder than they.  Each believes that God can be found only in their pocket, that their holy tokens are the sole authentic ones, and that the passing whiff they once experienced must certainly be how God truly smells.

 

So, let’s face it, God will never be fully known by humans.  God’s existence, by definition, ranges infinitely beyond the farthest-most reaches of human understanding and sense – as a kind of super-reality.  The only way we’ll ever be permitted to get near to God at all is in a relationship, and then only if we desire it, even if that sounds obvious.  How it works is that whenever we reach out to God, God immediately reaches back.  Given the right desire, we’ll always end up in a relationship.  And depending upon the strength of that desire, we’ll be permitted to know as much as we’re humanly capable of knowing.  God will open up to us, directly and proportionately (and certainly in greater proportion) that we are able to open up to God.  Obviously, this is not a relationship of equals, but it should be the most important love relationship in our lives.  So while it’s true that we’ll never fully “see” or “understand” God, each of us does have the capacity to love God and to feel God’s love in return.  Every person on earth experiences this at some point in their lives, and all of us, in our heart of hearts, know that it’s real.

 

In the East, they have historically taught that God is everything and consequently that we “are” God if we’re but willing to recognize it.  This is true in part.  In the West, they have historically asserted that everything is everything, while God is God, the two being separate.  This is also true in part.  But, really, it’s not either/or.  God has never been restricted to logic in human terms.  God is transcendent and immanent; impersonal and intensely personal.  God is wisdom disguised as a holy fool.  Yes, God is separate from us, but if we’re willing to carry out God’s will, we’ll find that we are expressing God in human terms – just like Jesus did.

 

So even though God is not the same as everything, it’s true that everything is touched by God.  We can discover traces of God anywhere and anytime if we begin looking through the eyes of God – which are right in our own heads.  God looks at the world through us and sees God.  The world is not God, but God does see God when looking at the world.  So can you.  Sometimes this experience, rightfully, has been referred to as the “Holy Spirit”!

 

(Published in Issue Five of Tiferet, A Journal of Spiritual Literature (2007) which is a wonderful journal that all “Nones” should seriously consider subscribing to.)