Where is Your God

Ask most people where God is, and they’ll either say they don’t believe in God or point up to the sky.  In some religions, there are many Gods, in other religions there is only one, and in yet others like Buddhism, there’s no God per se.  And where do people go to connect to God?  Well, it’s either at their religion’s house of worship, or maybe at the altar in their home.

The other common viewpoint is that God is inaccessible.  Either you need a priest or a go-between, or if your religion does prescribe to a personal relationship with God, then you just pray and rely on faith to see if anybody answers.  If you’re a secular spiritual person, then the concept of a God is probably more ambiguous, and you might prefer words like the Universe.  And obviously if you’re an atheist or materialist then you see no evidence of a God anyway.

Most people will say that God is pretty illusive, if s/he is even out there.  And besides, the word “God” itself is so loaded with baggage that it means something else to everybody.  Is Shiva the same as Yahweh?  It’s just language.  Choose another language and there’s another word for God, so where does the sacred start and stop?

Well, it starts and stops with you.  Where is your God?  If you see yourself as a separate being, then by default your God, if you have one, is separate from you.  That’s the everyday perspective that most people have.  It’s the norm.  That’s ok, but that separation is what stirs up all the yearning inside and all the seeking.

That sense of separation is quite persistent, but our level of human consciousness has elevated to a degree where at least we realize that everything is connected.  We see that in our global economy, and we see that in nature too.  The real revelation is that everything we see going on in our lives, on our planet, in the cosmos… that IS God.  The illusive God of our religions is dancing right under our noses!  There’s no separation between God and this, right here and right now.

That’s why Buddha remained silent when asked, “Is there a God?”  How can you answer when everything is at the same time the infinite silent, stillness of the unmanifest AND the exuberant manifestation of form, time, and space?  The limited mind will look for a God, or dismiss the idea, but the awakened mind expands to integrate the paradox of the Creator being the Creation.  It’s all just One.

Sounds pretty esoteric, but the shift in perspective is profound.  Now, everything we see is an expression of the divine.  Nothing is not.  Can anything not be a manifestation of Creation as it unfolds?  Then where does our separated egoic judgement fit in?  The more separated and limited we feel, the more distortion of divine love we get.  It’s just a matter of perception, of the lens we have on.  The more attuned we are with life unfolding, the more we see love and luminosity in everything – even in painful events.  The homeless person is no less divine than the guarded relics of a saint.  That is where your God is… in everything including YOU.