When reading the bible, (the Old Testament and the Torah especially) the view created is of a God larger and more powerful than us but with human qualities of jealousy, anger and retribution. A God that desires blood sacrifices from its people to keep it happy. A God that doesn't hesitate to kill the firstborn children of the Israelites' enemies (the Egyptians). In other words, a God who is, what we today would call a child abuser. We've basically created a God with lower standards for life than our own.
Understand clearly that what we call "God" possesses none of these attributes.
This is not a solid Universe. Solid matter is really just tiny energy particles vibrating very quickly. There is a fundamental emptiness that underlies everything. If you could look inside an atom, you would see that it is made up predominantly of empty space.
Science believes we live in a purely mechanistic Universe and that the phenomenon of evolution arises out of chance mutation. But, the truth is that nothing comes out of nothing! Most people intuitively know this and that is why there is a feeling of discomfort about the current paradigm of scientific and spiritual knowledge. It is incomplete. We don't have the big picture yet.
What if there is an eternal consistent foundation to the Universe which is what "God" or Universal Consciousness or "Love" (whatever you want to call it) really is? Human words and concepts are not helpful here because you can't know what you don't know. But, it is also human nature to try to reach past that fact so let's go ahead and have a play:
What if everything holds varying levels of "awareness" inside it which is infinite and eternal? You could call this a tiny piece of God. On this planet, humans have reached the highest level of consciousness we know, by which I mean we are the only creatures who realize we are "alive" and know we are going to die. Everything else around us simply lives as part of nature without appreciating this fact. The dinosaurs didn't spend their time worrying about their demise. They just lived, something we, as self conscious creatures, can no longer do.
Once a life form reaches the level of self conscious awareness, chronic anxiety sets in along with a compelling need to reduce that anxiety to manageable levels, hence our creation of many distractions from this problem and in particular the creation of religion, our primary coping device for dealing with life and death. The question we need to ask ourselves here though is...Is there a "God" or a universal consciousness behind the Gods men and women have created in our religions and history? One that can be experienced but not defined. One that makes all of our definitions woefully inadequate.
Perhaps this ultimate level of consciousness; something way beyond the self consciousness we currently experience, cannot be fully known by an individualized life form because to know it fully would rob us of our individuality, that is; we would become part of IT once we knew it completely. Just a thought!
Perhaps it is inaccessible yet undetectably everywhere, existing in a state of equilibrium, silence and stillness out of which everything else arises, all visible and invisible creation.
If we could split universal consciousness, it might divide into two impulses or forces; one being creative, outward moving, masculine or electric energy and the other being, feminine, inward moving, survival focused magnetic energy. For the sake of simplicity, we could call these two forces the Mother and Father impulses.
If you think about the "Mother" impulse, there is a drive to create security and protection for any form of creation. Without this impulse (some people call it the survival of the fittest or the "selfish gene"), life and its survival would not have unfolded.
Perhaps as we evolve, you can start to feel "IT" or God more discernibly because it underlies all reality. People in both religious and non religious environments might experience an awareness of universal consciousness if the right conditions inside and outside of them exist.
What could have happened at the time of the big bang or according to the book of Genesis when God created the heavens and the earth was that the "equilibrium" of these opposing forces within universal consciousness exploded and split to bring about the creation of individual form? The splitting process also created the impulse of consciousness in all matter or life.
The initial period after the split was one of chaos of particles but slowly, perhaps over billions of years, the process of creation began to unfold. The two forces, one electrical the other magnetic started to draw matter together working both independently and together, having two separate natures and different functions to create and evolve life.
These impulses work together within the individual human, within a personal relationship, a country, a planet and a universe all in much the same way. Whenever they are out of balance or one is unnaturally subdued by the other, sickness follows.
A good example of such an imbalance can be seen in the widespread child abuse within the Catholic Church. This has arisen because of a refusal to honor the natural balance of the feminine within its patriarchal structure. For 2000 years it has stereotyped women as either whores or virgins, presented its priests and congregation with a warped sense of sexuality and damaged many lives as a result. Even today in the midst of scandal and internal disease, it is still incapable of allowing women to hold a senior leadership role. It is of course unfair to pick on the Catholic Church when one could refer to so many other religions or cultures where this scenario is common. Equally there are many organizations now where an over supply of the feminine impulse, causes lack of positive growth, drama and fear. Parts of our media exhibit this imbalance. Just take a look at the front page of your local newspaper on any given day and see what the lead story is.
The result of an excess of the Father Impulse eventually leads to discord, chaos, suffering and if unchecked by a weakened or controlled Mother impulse; war and death. Likewise, too much of the Mother impulse creates fear, drama and inertia. It is the two forces working together and honoring each other equally which leads to harmonious and creative evolution. This is the case at every level of creation.
The two forces powerfully perform the work of creation from the formation of elements to living molecules and cells to conscious and eventually self conscious creatures...us! These two forces also work in men and women to prompt them to join together, conceive and rear children to continue the evolutionary process.
What is the next step in this unfolding ladder of life? Is it possible for us to expand our consciousness in a way that can balance the competing needs within us and around us more creatively?
Is it possible that instead of appealing to an external deity whose favor must be earned by our good behavior, we could choose to behave and see ourselves as more autonomous or dare I say it, more Godlike?
Could we choose to rescue ourselves and our world by an expansion of our understanding of the "Self"?
Could we accept a deeper knowledge of how the Mother and Father impulses work within us and around us to produce our own optimum life?
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