"Let's talk about God baby. Let's talk about You and Me. Let's talk about all the good things and the bad things we can be. Let's talk about God. Let's talk about God." Thank you Salt n Pepa (with a little amendment from me).
Emboldened by blaming everything on my friend Cara, and having promised myself that no topic is taboo, I want to talk about God.
Scary! God is a sensitive subject but I subscribe to the view that God is individual to each of us. I began to question why we are here from a very young age - always asking questions!
Now, for many years I struggled even with the word God. I saw the word as a symbol of male domination and a weapon of control, bearing no relation to any concept that I could relate to. And so I turned to Eastern religion, studying Transcendental Meditation and reading books on Zen Buddhism and Taoism. The simplicity and "rightness" of their concepts made sense to me. The idea that we are all connected, that we are here on this earth to evolve spiritually, that we reincarnate all made sense to me.
I spent 5 years studying 12th to 16th Century Italian and Flemish art at university and at no point during my studies did I consider the Christian subject matter as representative of real life events. God as a big hairy scary man with a beard sitting on a cloud shouting at everyone? Everyone told how to behave by more beardy men who subjugate women and persecute minorities? Nah, no thanks. I'm a woman, I'm not a practicing Christian, I like sex! This Christian God just wasn't believable to me.
But there was something out there that I was desperate to find, to understand. As early as age 5 I can remember lying in my bed in the dark and trying to figure out what was going on, why I was here. So how did I get to where I am today with my own personal faith and my own relationship with God?
I'm nosey - I like to know things, we all do. And despite my lack of faith in the Christian God that I was raised under, I still knew that there was something more out there - something more than just the life in front of my nose.
God aka: The Observer, the source, the field of intention, Love (my favourite), the Almighty, infinite, all pervading - the list goes on. I have finally decided that despite my aversion the the word, God is still the most easily translated. So God is the word I will use for these purposes.
Maybe I'll tell you where I am now and then fill in the gaps: At 45 I am now a true believer in God. I regard my faith in God as immutable - more of a knowing than a belief. I see God in everything and pay more and more attention to his messages, many of which are delivered with a sense of humour which rivals Billy Connolly's!
I use the term God and the male form because that is how it is in this Christian society. It still rankles to have to do so because I hate the connotations, the idea that God is a man. Not only does it offend my feminist sensibilities but more than that - I cannot bear that we have created God in our image as if we are the be all and end all - too arrogant. To do so is to limit Ourselves and our God - proof of which is in every war, every murder, every lie. Excuse my outburst, I feel strongly about this.
For me God is in the spaces. God IS the spaces. I like to understand things, I like to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together so that I can assimilate stuff - make sense of it. God continues to be my most constant study. And the more I discover the more I am changed.
Now those of you who know me well (and some of those who don't!) will know that I have lived my life fully, so to speak. By that I mean I have had my share of experiences - many of them melodramatic, many of them leaving devastation in their wake. But I'm not a born again Christian by any means. In fact if I manage to explain my own personal God to you then there are many who will regard it as blasphemy. That doesn't concern me, none of my business. We all have our own personal Gods even if that god is money or power or doing good. Every one of them serve their purpose - I know.
Key texts which have helped me on my spiritual journey:
Anything by the Dalai Llama
The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint Exupery
Conversations With God by (well, God) and Neale Donald Walsch
The Tao Of Physics by Fritjof Capra
Manifest Your Destiny by Wayne Dyer
What The Bleep Do We Know - film and book
How To Know God by Deepak Chopra
The Seven Secrets of a Successful Person (or something like that) by Steven Covey
Don't Sweat The Small Stuff, and it's All Small Stuff by the wonderful and now departed Richard Carlsson
Oh I can't think, and looking at my list it reads like an art student's - which I guess it is! But that is who I am. I'm a woman and artistic and a mother and a wife and my faith reflects who I am - as it does for all of us.
The biggest clarification as to what God is came for me through reading "Conversations With God". My sister had given me the book some 18 months before I first picked it up. Knowing my interest in this subject and always being so thoughtful with gifts, she had given it to me for my previous birthday. But having such a strong revulsion to the word and concept of God, I had shoved it on a shelf and ignored it.
Ah but everything in its time and place. When my mum died after a long battle with breast cancer, and my life had once more sunk to depths of grief and pain beyond that which I'd experienced before, I returned to this book in desperation.
What I found was a text that changed my life. Oh dear, I am sounding a bit evangelical! I really don't mean to. This is my own personal experience and I share it with you because I've learnt a lot. And a bit like Therapy, if I can help another in a similar situation then it seems worthwhile.
So to give you the gist of the text: this book is by God, translated by Neale Donald Walsch (thank you). In it God discusses his reasons for creating us and the world we experience. What kept me reading is that his words described my own life experiences perfectly. I'm not saying it was easy reading, especially with my prejudices. God had to talk a lot of sense before I was going to take him seriously.
I remember standing in the middle of Islington in London - out on a day trip to search out new business - and reading and re-reading the first pages of this book. I confess it took a while for my brain to absorb it because (as my sister says) I had no files on this.
The gist of the book is this: Neale Donald Walsch sat down one day and ranted to God, writing down all his questions and complaints...and he got a reply. Yes, weird. As he sat with his words on the page he had the urge to pick up his pen and write. And the words that he wrote were the words of God. Freaky huh? Too right! He was freaked by it, I was freaked by it.
But as I read on I discovered that it all made perfect sense. I mean Perfect. So God tells of how he was sitting up there just "being" in all his glorious and infinite perfection. And he got bored. What's the point of "being" if you can't experience it? So he decided to break himself up into "individuations" (Neale's word) of God - Us. And being individuations of God, we are imbued with the same qualities, the same abilities, the same choices - that is every choice. In making us in His image, we each have the power to create our own lives.
Pretty powerful stuff and like I said, fairly inflammatory. Okay, downright blasphemous. But these are God's words. Yes interpreted through a writer, but undeniable - to me anyway. Because I had proof of what I read, what He said. I had lived my life in a frenzy of experiences and I had concluded that the words I read were true for me.
True because God tells us to question everything. He tells us to be suspicious of religions which would have us subjugate our right to choice. He tells us to listen to ourselves and remember what we know. And He talks of Quantum Physical phenomena like the time - space continuum and the constant momentum of everything.
Once I assimilated the ideas and connected them to my own experiences, the book made me laugh - roar with laughter! Seriously, the Buddha laughs for good reason - he knows how the world works. God is a funny guy. Did you know - Neuro Scientists have proven that we learn best when laughter is involved. It leads to optimum absorption of information. Think about that. really think about it. How cool is that?! We learn through laughter, we learn through having a good time, feeling good. Nice one God.
That's probably enough for now. I never imagined I would write the above - I never imagined I would feel this way. I always regarded my faith as a private matter and was embarrassed by people who did discuss it in public. But it is part of who I am and I think that the fact that I am a Divorcee, a Step Mother, the daughter of a cancer victim, a bit of a loony (although I prefer the term eccentric), totally in love with my husband and a believer in God is interesting and probably makes me similar to a lot of you out there.
I'd love to know what your own experiences are, so let me know if you want to discuss.
x
Emboldened by blaming everything on my friend Cara, and having promised myself that no topic is taboo, I want to talk about God.
Scary! God is a sensitive subject but I subscribe to the view that God is individual to each of us. I began to question why we are here from a very young age - always asking questions!
Now, for many years I struggled even with the word God. I saw the word as a symbol of male domination and a weapon of control, bearing no relation to any concept that I could relate to. And so I turned to Eastern religion, studying Transcendental Meditation and reading books on Zen Buddhism and Taoism. The simplicity and "rightness" of their concepts made sense to me. The idea that we are all connected, that we are here on this earth to evolve spiritually, that we reincarnate all made sense to me.
I spent 5 years studying 12th to 16th Century Italian and Flemish art at university and at no point during my studies did I consider the Christian subject matter as representative of real life events. God as a big hairy scary man with a beard sitting on a cloud shouting at everyone? Everyone told how to behave by more beardy men who subjugate women and persecute minorities? Nah, no thanks. I'm a woman, I'm not a practicing Christian, I like sex! This Christian God just wasn't believable to me.
But there was something out there that I was desperate to find, to understand. As early as age 5 I can remember lying in my bed in the dark and trying to figure out what was going on, why I was here. So how did I get to where I am today with my own personal faith and my own relationship with God?
I'm nosey - I like to know things, we all do. And despite my lack of faith in the Christian God that I was raised under, I still knew that there was something more out there - something more than just the life in front of my nose.
God aka: The Observer, the source, the field of intention, Love (my favourite), the Almighty, infinite, all pervading - the list goes on. I have finally decided that despite my aversion the the word, God is still the most easily translated. So God is the word I will use for these purposes.
Maybe I'll tell you where I am now and then fill in the gaps: At 45 I am now a true believer in God. I regard my faith in God as immutable - more of a knowing than a belief. I see God in everything and pay more and more attention to his messages, many of which are delivered with a sense of humour which rivals Billy Connolly's!
I use the term God and the male form because that is how it is in this Christian society. It still rankles to have to do so because I hate the connotations, the idea that God is a man. Not only does it offend my feminist sensibilities but more than that - I cannot bear that we have created God in our image as if we are the be all and end all - too arrogant. To do so is to limit Ourselves and our God - proof of which is in every war, every murder, every lie. Excuse my outburst, I feel strongly about this.
For me God is in the spaces. God IS the spaces. I like to understand things, I like to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together so that I can assimilate stuff - make sense of it. God continues to be my most constant study. And the more I discover the more I am changed.
Now those of you who know me well (and some of those who don't!) will know that I have lived my life fully, so to speak. By that I mean I have had my share of experiences - many of them melodramatic, many of them leaving devastation in their wake. But I'm not a born again Christian by any means. In fact if I manage to explain my own personal God to you then there are many who will regard it as blasphemy. That doesn't concern me, none of my business. We all have our own personal Gods even if that god is money or power or doing good. Every one of them serve their purpose - I know.
Key texts which have helped me on my spiritual journey:
Anything by the Dalai Llama
The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint Exupery
Conversations With God by (well, God) and Neale Donald Walsch
The Tao Of Physics by Fritjof Capra
Manifest Your Destiny by Wayne Dyer
What The Bleep Do We Know - film and book
How To Know God by Deepak Chopra
The Seven Secrets of a Successful Person (or something like that) by Steven Covey
Don't Sweat The Small Stuff, and it's All Small Stuff by the wonderful and now departed Richard Carlsson
Oh I can't think, and looking at my list it reads like an art student's - which I guess it is! But that is who I am. I'm a woman and artistic and a mother and a wife and my faith reflects who I am - as it does for all of us.
The biggest clarification as to what God is came for me through reading "Conversations With God". My sister had given me the book some 18 months before I first picked it up. Knowing my interest in this subject and always being so thoughtful with gifts, she had given it to me for my previous birthday. But having such a strong revulsion to the word and concept of God, I had shoved it on a shelf and ignored it.
Ah but everything in its time and place. When my mum died after a long battle with breast cancer, and my life had once more sunk to depths of grief and pain beyond that which I'd experienced before, I returned to this book in desperation.
What I found was a text that changed my life. Oh dear, I am sounding a bit evangelical! I really don't mean to. This is my own personal experience and I share it with you because I've learnt a lot. And a bit like Therapy, if I can help another in a similar situation then it seems worthwhile.
So to give you the gist of the text: this book is by God, translated by Neale Donald Walsch (thank you). In it God discusses his reasons for creating us and the world we experience. What kept me reading is that his words described my own life experiences perfectly. I'm not saying it was easy reading, especially with my prejudices. God had to talk a lot of sense before I was going to take him seriously.
I remember standing in the middle of Islington in London - out on a day trip to search out new business - and reading and re-reading the first pages of this book. I confess it took a while for my brain to absorb it because (as my sister says) I had no files on this.
The gist of the book is this: Neale Donald Walsch sat down one day and ranted to God, writing down all his questions and complaints...and he got a reply. Yes, weird. As he sat with his words on the page he had the urge to pick up his pen and write. And the words that he wrote were the words of God. Freaky huh? Too right! He was freaked by it, I was freaked by it.
But as I read on I discovered that it all made perfect sense. I mean Perfect. So God tells of how he was sitting up there just "being" in all his glorious and infinite perfection. And he got bored. What's the point of "being" if you can't experience it? So he decided to break himself up into "individuations" (Neale's word) of God - Us. And being individuations of God, we are imbued with the same qualities, the same abilities, the same choices - that is every choice. In making us in His image, we each have the power to create our own lives.
Pretty powerful stuff and like I said, fairly inflammatory. Okay, downright blasphemous. But these are God's words. Yes interpreted through a writer, but undeniable - to me anyway. Because I had proof of what I read, what He said. I had lived my life in a frenzy of experiences and I had concluded that the words I read were true for me.
True because God tells us to question everything. He tells us to be suspicious of religions which would have us subjugate our right to choice. He tells us to listen to ourselves and remember what we know. And He talks of Quantum Physical phenomena like the time - space continuum and the constant momentum of everything.
Once I assimilated the ideas and connected them to my own experiences, the book made me laugh - roar with laughter! Seriously, the Buddha laughs for good reason - he knows how the world works. God is a funny guy. Did you know - Neuro Scientists have proven that we learn best when laughter is involved. It leads to optimum absorption of information. Think about that. really think about it. How cool is that?! We learn through laughter, we learn through having a good time, feeling good. Nice one God.
That's probably enough for now. I never imagined I would write the above - I never imagined I would feel this way. I always regarded my faith as a private matter and was embarrassed by people who did discuss it in public. But it is part of who I am and I think that the fact that I am a Divorcee, a Step Mother, the daughter of a cancer victim, a bit of a loony (although I prefer the term eccentric), totally in love with my husband and a believer in God is interesting and probably makes me similar to a lot of you out there.
I'd love to know what your own experiences are, so let me know if you want to discuss.
x
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