Who Created Who?

A world without God seems bleak, shallow, unreal and dishonest—to me anyway. It feels like a world that doesn't recognize goodness. But that idea, I have to admit has been carved into our consciousnesses. Maybe a world without god CAN recognize goodness and it's just harder to see. Like the way we rarely see earthworms, but know they're there because the good brown soil is there to remind us of its work. Sometimes god feels like the biggest cop out of all—a reason to avoid the face of our destinies and expect them to float up to us without any effort of our own. God gives us the right to let go—but should we be letting go? The idea that there is a God in the sky guiding every moment of our lives is slightly oppressive. Did my unconscious self feel the need for that and ask for it, or was this care relegated on me. Is it possible that everything I am---body, soul, spirit, ambition---is all I need to create my very own destiny? I like that a lot, that makes me feel like the most powerful being in the universe. That makes me feel like Eve, who ate from the tree of knowledge despite the rules, and made a hard life for herself—yes, but learned to relish her suffering as well as her pleasure, and learned too that both feelings are so intertwined, at times it is difficult to distinguish one from the other. If paradise had been ours, what would we have learned? We would have remained endlessly children. But I don't envy children and I never have. I would rather be blissfully aware than blissfully ignorant. I think the fall was a gift. I think we ought to thank Eve for what she did because if she hadn't, we would have lost our ability to choose. Anyway, I don't believe this story ever happened.

But metaphysical speculation leaves you all tangled up in sharp wires. There is so much that it is impossible to see clearly. Once again, I come back to the idea of God and I can't let it go. Believing in God is the most natural thing in the world to do, indeed if he didn't exist he would have to be invented. It's a part of our nature to recognize there is a huge current under the ocean of our consciousnesses, and the only thing keeping us aware of it is a ripple on top of the water. Things are going on we can't see, and if we could see them we wouldn't understand. The thousands of years of our existence have been spent inching closer and closer to spiritual truth. The closest I've felt to God hasn't been in a church (and trust me—I've seen and worshipped in plenty of them). It has been in moments when I've least expected it; moments which I've spent with nature, feeling a deep and contented connection with everything. Feeling like nothing mattered, and like every molecule in my body was bending towards every blade of grass, aching to be a part of every individual star, opening itself to every last particle of dirt. Moments like those occur, and I think: There. That is what I want from God. I want him to remind me that I am a part of everything and in everyone, and that the world and our existences are beautiful because of that. I want spiritual fortitude, I want God to remind me that I am human and because of that I am flawed--but must love myself regardless of that. Still though, I don't think I'm being entirely fair. Being in a church makes me feel so very mystified, a feeling that I like. I don't think churches are dead and spiritually empty. I think they are very alive with something. Being in a church makes me feel like the sky is cracked wide open with hope and forgiveness. There is a connection with other people and with yourself that happens there, which can so rarely happen anywhere else. Actually, it is similar to the feeling I get on the subway, or whenever I am with a lot of people at once. It's the feeling of being connected. So maybe God is wherever that connection is. And maybe that's why we are always seeking to force ourselves under one banner even if it's by way of violence, because mysteriously we long to be close to each other. Mysteriously, we are all aware of the connection which exists between us, but don't know how to handle it or what to do with it. Maybe sometimes it frightens us, too.

All this talk reminds me of Socrates and his talk of shadows in the cave. How the world as it truly is exists behind us, and the world that we are actually seeing is only a shadow, a wisp of the representation of the real thing. But at least in this realm of existence we can create things and control things and make our own lives—or at least get the sense of it. I wonder, how many realities it is possible to experience at once.

 

I don't think all this existential talk will ever end for me. I don't think I will ever come to a permanent conclusion as to what God is—so far, every single definition of him I've listened to makes me feel restless, like there is something I'm failing to notice or simply am not aware of. With talk of God, inevitably comes talk of death, and I'm not quite sure I'm ready to comb through my feelings on that, just yet.