That Isn’t A God

To be recognized as a god, a being would need to be significantly better at following its own rules of moral behavior than its own worshippers are. A god which demonstrated a “do as I say, not as I do” type of lifestyle behavior would simply be a manipulative con artist and not worthy of worship by any followers.

A god who demands of its followers to “forgive seventy times seven,” would need to demonstrate the capacity to forgive even more than that, otherwise that god is less moral than its own followers. That god could not claim to “forgive seventy times seven” then prepare a place of eternal punishment for its own imperfect children to be tortured for not believing. There is no room for punishment or torture in forgiveness.

Equally, a god who creates a law, “do not kill,” cannot kill without becoming worse than its disobeying followers. A god who does not accept killing from its worshippers, yet creates plagues and pestilence to kill innocent babies and children, floods to wipe out the world population and a murderous crucifixion so its own child can be a blood sacrifice, should be seen as a devil, not a god.

If a god claims to love and protect those who are faithful to it, you would expect that love and protection to surpass anything one could experience from any human interaction. If that so-called loving and protective god then made a bet with Satan to allow its most faithful follower to be harassed and tortured for no other reason than just to test if that faithful person would become unfaithful, we should call that god a devil as well. One can’t just claim that god is not subject to the same rules it demands of its followers. We have historical records of kings, queens and rulers who created laws for their subjects and then did not follows those very same laws. They are known as treacherous leaders.

Don’t be fooled by stories of evil gods which attempt to convince you such gods are divine. Don’t listen to the ignorant people who claim to follow these gods. Don’t attend any church or temple that centers around such gods and don’t believe any book which calls those gods “holy.” It’s a lie. You know it because you are already better than any such god.

What Still Stands?

When you choose to deconstruct your faith, pay very close attention to what survives, what remains standing. Those things are pointers to what is ultimately true.

Original Sin?


The woman saw that the tree’s fruit was good to eat and pleasing to look at. She also saw that it would make a person wise. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her. And he ate it. 
Then both of them knew things they had never known before. They realized they were naked. So they sewed together fig leaves and made clothes for themselves. [Genesis 3: 6-7]

 

The popular interpretation of “Original Sin” as written in the book of Genesis in the Christian and Jewish scriptures is this: man disobeyed God, God discovered man’s disobedience, God removed man from paradise and tossed him into a world of turmoil, pain, toil and darkness. This flawed interpretation has been taught for centuries in churches and temples and is still endorsed as truth today.

I’m going to put forth a different interpretation in this article, an interpretation I understand to be more in unison with the teachings of Jesus as communicated in the four Gospels. That interpretation is this: human beings did not first sin when they disobeyed God. Human beings first sinned when they believed they were separate and apart from God (their source) in the first place. Original Sin was committed at that very moment humans (i.e. Adam and Eve) believed they had a life apart from God. A presence, a being, a will of their own, completely apart from God.

This belief is the moment of no return for human beings. God, Himself/Herself, claims to have the capacity to forgive “seventy times seven” and if the only transgression the humans made was disobedience, God would surely forgive and it would be done with. It is belief, however, that God is powerless to operate against because belief has no real existence. It is man’s belief that he is separated from God that creates the illusion of real separation. It was man’s belief in his separate life that also caused him to believe he was tossed out of paradise.

“Human beings did not first sin when they disobeyed God. Human beings first sinned when they believed they were separate and apart from God.”

The belief that we are, somehow, beings separated from our source is the very cause of darkness in the world but where could we have gotten anything we can call “our own”? The belief that we can be removed from the presence of God, our source, is a belief based in ignorance and superstition. You can no more be removed from the presence of God than you can be removed from the Life you are. For God is that very Life. Earlier, the book of Genesis illustrates this by saying God “breathed Life into man.” According to Genesis, man’s very life is the breath of God! How can you be separated from your breath? You cannot. Your Life is God breath, God’s Life!

This interpretation is actually the Gospel as taught by Jesus. It is Jesus’s message as written in the Christian Bible. Still, it was scandalous 2,000 years ago and it is just as scandalous today but the truth of it is the very truth Jesus spoke of that will set you free.

The realization of this truth is beyond any religion, philosophy or denominations. It doesn’t really matter what name you give to God or whether you even use the name “God” for this source. The ground of your being is beyond names, beyond words, beyond thoughts. How can you ever be separated from Life? How could there ever be anything that exists apart from Life? Nothing could be and nothing ever is. As Jesus taught in his story of the Prodigal Son, belief in a separation from your source can be dispelled simply by returning home. No practice, sacrifice or payment is required. No permission, blessing or credential is necessary.

Your birthright awaits the return to your source. This is the entire Gospel.

Why Spirituality? An Introduction

Lighting a Candle

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

 

What makes a person choose to live a spiritual life?

Our world seems to have everything we could ever possibly want to experience. There are places to go, things to do, movies and TV shows to watch, hobbies to attend to, wars to fight, friends and families to spend time with, sex to have, partners to love, drugs to take, wines to savor, pets to cuddle, jobs to go to and tasty foods to eat. We literally have a universe of things to do. So why would anyone want to focus on spirituality, an activity which often removes us from all of these exciting experiences of our world?

Many of us have had moments when we have realized the experiences available to us in this life are not very fulfilling unless they are also giving us a sense of peace and happiness. If we are not experiencing inner peace and happiness from our jobs, we soon begin pondering different employment. We’ll leave relationships when they no longer give us the peace and happiness we crave. Even with a seemingly infinite amount of things to see, do, and participate in in our world, we recognize most of those things aren’t worth doing unless they make us happy or fulfilled.

One of the main selling points of religion is that it will give you loads of inner fulfillment. Since the beginning of time, prophets and dynamic personalities have promised peace, happiness, and a blissful life if you would just worship their gods, pray their prayers, and live their particular way of life. And it seems to work for some people. Their faithful attend places of worship on a regular basis, remove certain experiences from their lives, wear particular clothes or symbols, and read recommended holy books. Whether they truly find inner peace and happiness can only be testified to by the individuals, but there seems to be no shortage of believers, disciples, and devotees to the numerous religions.

Most of us, however, would rather not remove ourselves from the activities of the world. We have no interest in becoming monks or ascetics or hermits. We want to experience all the excitement and fun life has to offer while also gaining the peace and happiness we feel on an intuitive level is our birthright. So we examine religion a bit to see if there is something we can take away and incorporate into our daily lives. We try meditation but can’t relax due to our noisy, crazy mind. Friends may suggest yoga, but we can’t experience inner peace when we are trying our best not to topple over. So we give up. We’d like to find something that works but it’s just way too much trouble.

My own life has been a long, focused pursuit of the spiritual. I don’t recall a time when I wasn’t trying to find god or at least the most effective path of reaching him/her/it. I went to church, read books, prayed, meditated, fasted, listened to teachers, gurus, and preachers. At times I felt like I was close, other times I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing. Still, the quest for a spiritual life was always my main motivation. I didn’t know how to separate that seeking from who I was as a person. Then one day that happened on its own.

When I was forty-something years old and still living a life as a spiritual seeker, I had an experience in meditation that clearly “told” me there is no god. As you might imagine, that was a startling and unexpected message to come to one who had spent his entire life in the pursuit of god. Yet, oddly enough, at that very moment existence became clearer than it had ever been for me. Everything finally made perfect sense. At the time, I felt it was the closest thing I had ever felt to the experience Jesus described as being “born again.” It was a complete change of consciousness. From that moment, I ceased everything “spiritual” I had been working on, thinking about or studying and for ten years I lived life with no god. It wasn’t at all the life my Southern Baptist upbringing told me atheists experienced. There was no anger, despair, sense of loss, or hopelessness. On the contrary, I was filled with more joy, fulfillment, and inner peace than any moment I ever experienced as a spiritual believer.

Ten years after my “conversion” to atheism, I felt an inner pull to start meditating again. It wasn’t something I felt would be the start of a new spiritual practice. In fact, I assumed it would be nonspiritual meditation for the sole purpose of more focus, clarity, and creativity. It turned out, however, to be a doorway into a new experience of spirituality, an opening of inner perception and enlightenment. It was that “place” I sought to be my entire spiritual life. And it came without effort, expectation, or desire. Imagine that.

One of the continual frustrations on my life-long spiritual journey has been the seemingly complicated and complex instruction given by teachers which often seem to lead nowhere other than a new state of inner confusion. When I finally reached that space of  “enlightenment” it could only be described as the most simple awareness. Natural. Uncomplicated. Why was it necessary for me as a spiritual student to spend so much time trying to decipher spiritual puzzles, koans, and parables in order to reach this natural state of simplicity? Was there not a teacher somewhere who could have helped me wake up without pushing me further into darkness?

If anything, that is the main purpose and goal of this web site. To help provide a clear and simple path to those interested in “waking up.” Waking up to the nature of who you really are. Not to dish out a little bit of peace and happiness for your life journey but to help you realize that your own very nature is peace and happiness. That very nature is the background on which your entire life experience appears! I have no intention of assembling a new teaching. The world doesn’t need a new religion. My intention is to simply provide pointers in the way of thoughts, ideas, and examples that may prove helpful to your own spiritual life. These pointers may help shake your conditioned mental foundations and open new insights leading to your own awakening. It is my intention and hope that you too experience the beauty, simplicity, and infinite wonder of the reality which you are.