What is God?
I’m exploring my understanding of what “God” is at the moment as I’ve noticed that the word triggers a lot of unhelpful thinking and I want to try and understand why.
My thoughts about “God” make me feel like I want to recoil in shame because I feel as though I’m not good enough as I am right here and now.
I feel like I’m being judged for having an appreciation of God, and also that I’m judged because my way of appreciating God doesn’t align with standardised religion.
I also experience feeling scrutinised within myself, and that I’m a bad person for embracing my human needs and desires.
In the face of all this thinking, I feel as though I’m unable to be my natural self and that’s why I want to get to the heart of what I feel and know about God.
Exploring the word "God" has made me realise that it’s tied up with different kinds of doctrine, beliefs, rules and dogma. It's gone from being a word that I can use to describe a feeling, or an experience, to a word that has the power to create and conjure a being that is separate from myself.
The word "God", I think, has been used in the past as a way of attempting to control human behaviour. It’s often associated with experiences that have the potential to incite fearful thinking in us — such as — what might happen when we die, or what might happen when we are alone and unwitnessed by others. I think this uncertainty has left a lot of room for speculation and has been the source of where a lot of our unhelpful ideas about God have come from.
I’m reclaiming this word for myself and want to use it how I see and understand it.
I see the word "God" as a way of describing the energy and intelligence of universal life which exists in all its forms, and beyond them.
God, to me, is a creator of forms. It is what creates all life.
It is not a “he” or a “she” or a “them”.
It is not a separate form of existence, and yet it is completely impersonal to our individual lives.
It is an energy that is present with us all the time.
It flows through us in every moment offering wisdom, guidance and support.
It is the expression of the sun and moon.
Nature and the trees.
Flowers and the earth.
The oceans and the stars.
Human beings, birds, bugs and fishes.
It is the life that exists all around us,
God is not, to me, a judgement on how we should live our lives.
God is not an opposition to thinking for yourself and making choices about your own experience of life.
God is not an external entity that you can anger and prompt to punish you when you make a mistake or get something wrong.
God is not a personal opinion or judgement that can change the fate of your entire existence.
God is a word that you can use - alongside lots of other words (Goddess, energy, love, flow, Gaia, Mother Earth, Tao, Divinity, Mind, freedom, nature, expression, intelligence, creativity, the universe) - to describe your experience of life, within and beyond its many wonderful forms.
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#understandinggod #reclaiminggod #exploringspirituality
