God is a Verb

Mention the word “God” and immediately you can just watch the sparking reaction in someone’s eyes.  One person may smile and dive into a religious monologue, while another may cringe and declare their staunch atheism, and yet another may go into a diatribe of how God is to blame for everything that’s wrong with the world.  People fight for God, deny God, tout their God ahead of your God, put God on a banner for everything, or pull the plug on God altogether.  If you step back from it all and view the whole affair with an alien’s perspective, it’s a bit of a head scratcher to say the least.

Human beings have always anthropomorphized everything.  We see everything in our own self-image.  The Bible says God created humans in His own image but really, we’ve created God in our image.  And that’s why God comes in all shapes and sizes depending on who you talk to.  There’s the Christian God, the Muslim God, Sikh God, Bahai God, Zoroaster God, the many Hindu Gods, and lots of tribal Gods.  Then there’s the no-God divinity of Jainism and Buddhism.  And of course, everyone thinks their God is the only true God and everybody else is wrong.  Billions of people are wrong, only my brand of God or Divinity is true…

The problem is that we try to see God with our minds.  You can’t see God with a brain.  You have to switch to your heart.  What just happened when you read that?  Suddenly for the briefest moment, you were open to anyone’s definition of what God is, and it was all ok just for a second.  But now your brain kicked in and you contracted back to opinions and beliefs.  Let’s take a breath and settle into the heart again.  Take some deep breaths, close your eyes, and settle into the heart that is fully open.  Now ask yourself, what is God?  The answer comes… God is everything.

Does the mind not have an off switch??  Wouldn’t it be great if we could turn off the mind for a minute?  Well, maybe the stream of thoughts and judgements and likes & dislikes is never-ending, but at least we can pause throughout the day and ask… “what is here, let me meet it with my heart.”  It could be a time of joy and togetherness, or it could be a time of stress and pain.  The key is in the ability to sit with whatever energy is present with love and without entanglement.  No matter what is happening, can we just be a loving witness, watching with curiosity as feelings arise and dissipate within us?  God is life as it is happening every single moment, so the question is, how do we show up in the presence of God?

There are no boundaries, no fences around what God is and isn’t.  There is no fear of God in the heart.  God is unbounded presence, there is no spot where God isn’t.  God is in the moment.  And to meet God there, we just have to show up with our heart.  Showing up with heart means we are open, aware, and in love… yielding to what is arising.