God

We are in Taos, New Mexico now to try out the infamous slopes of Angelfire for a few days. The mountains here are huge, up to 13,000 feet in some places; the runs can take a half hour to go down because they are so long and rambling. The views of the mountains and valleys below are breathtaking.

Every time I would fall, or even when I would sit down to take a rest, I would take the opportunity to just look up at the clouds in the sky and listen to myself breathe, or to stare out at the beautiful vista of the snow covered towns far below us. you could see for miles from almost anywhere on the mountains.  Snowboarding is not just a sport. It is a meditation.

I have not talked on the phone in about five days now nor checked email. I think it’s a record. And I feel great. It is very liberating and I find that I am still at the stage of the vacation where when I think of going home or talking on the phone or watching the news or checking email I start getting this feeling of dread swell up in me. so I am just totally hibernating. Trying not to think about anything at all actually. Just trying to stay afloat in each moment.

At one point while laying in the snow I thought about everything with Juliet and how after our meeting there seemed to be this strange kind letting go. an exhale. Again, still a little dumbfounded by the whole experience. I thought about the strange almost miraculous series of coincidences and synchronistic events that took place all around us and regarding us. Our parallel dreams, our dreaming in stereo, and so many more things and wondered how it could all mean nothing... I thought about that one night when I was praying and had said to God/spirit that I was going to drop the whole thing because the signs were not clear enough, and then the next day I get this email from Juliet saying she had dreamed that she was walking down the aisle getting married and it was me she was marrying... now in all honesty I took this to be a kind of sign from the universe if you will. but today or yesterday I don't remember I reflected on it more and realized that through my own thoughts that it could be highly probable that I had created that myself, that we co-created it together. that God was not so much a someone or a something that was in control of things as much as a power that we wield. All on our own. God must be something that we have the power to wield through our mind energy rather than some conscious being that exists outside of us.

Of course I wanted to believe that this strange synchronistic occurrence had a deep meaning and was a sign from a higher power. but lets be honest here, it wasn't. what it was instead was a sign that I was able to create this event from my own consciousness. And because Juliet was game, because we were so plugged into one another, it was an easy thing to have happen. concentrate enough on anything without secondaries and you can manifest all sorts of seemingly miraculous events.

As terrifying as the thought may have the potential to be – a godless God, a God not in control, but rather being controlled, by us, and who knows, perhaps by others as well --- I found comfort in the thought. It certainly makes more sense. Is easier to swallow. In fact, if you step far away enough away from the way we were and still are all raised here in earth in this kind of monotheistic ‘God exists and is the ruler of all mankind’ sort of ideology that has been so prevalent in our history for so many thousands of years, this other idea upon closer inspection seems much more probable ---- that God is not a God at all, but more of a unified force that is indeed responsible for life and death as we know it --- we got that part right, but it is a workable pliable force that we can breathe into and latch onto and can use at our own discretion. For good and evil. I mean that part at least seems much more likely. For certainly if there is anything close to a God or a force of any kind in the universe one would not be very successful in arguing the case that he/she/it is all good any more than he/she/it is inherently all bad.

I think that mankind has always wanted to believe that there is a God that is all good and has our best interest in mind. But we have never seen even a remote proof of this. we just really want it to be so. And that's o.k. that makes sense. Of course we do. the world is fucking chaotic and scary. Two days ago there was a giant tidal wave in Asia that killed over 52,000 people. in less than five minutes fifty two thousand people dead. That was us. you and me. fifty two thousand of us were killed in a heartbeat. It would be great if we could believe that there was some higher grand purpose in that. that there was a God that did that because he had some special secret reason for it. but truth be told, we don't know what the fuck is going on. We live. we die. God changes with each of our breaths as we need him to change to justify our varying ideas of him in each moment. that's just the way it is.

The people that died in that tsunami yesterday were from all walks of life. some were Christians, some were Jews, many were Muslims and Hindus. That's the force that is flowing through us and seems to be flowing through the whole world. breathe in, breathe out. get born, get killed. Birth, death. Born, die. life. death. More life. more death. No rhyme or reason. Well, very little rhyme. You have to look for the poetry in it.

But the power in this idea is the feeling of liberation we can get from it. I mean, after all, if there is a force at all, and even the most atheistic scientist will attest to the fact that there is some force at play in the creation and destruction of things, I find it comforting to believe that we can hook up with that force at times and wield it to our own advantage and to the advantage of others.

That's where the goodness of God comes into play. This is a very human idea that we at some point attached to this force when we decided to give it a name and create it in our own image, hence the title ‘God.’ we gave the force a name and we gave it consciousness and we attributed many human traits to it such as the concept of it being ‘good.’ because we want it to be good. we are dying for it to be good. longing for it to be good. unfortunately if we look at the world and the history of the world we have never seen any proof that the force that we call God is anything but neutral. Certainly not good. but not necessarily all bad either. The catholic church/religion has been one of the most wicked and evil entities in human existence and many humans still try to believe that it is a good thing because it somehow speaks for God who they believe is good. but actions speak much louder than words.

And it isn't just the Catholics. I mean, since man first started defining God, all of man’s great religions have taken part in their fair share of wickedness in our history as a species. We are not much different in the other animals that share the earth with us in our selfishness and in our ability to unleash great pain and suffering on those around us and even on the earth itself. And for most of our time here we have done this in the name of one God or another. In the name of one religion or another. As times change our definitions of God change, but our selfish nature stays the same. Saddam Hussein murdered hundreds of thousands of people in the country of Iraq. In the name of Islam. At least that's what he said. And in less than two years, mostly Christian soldiers of the great army of America have killed more than one hundred thousand Iraqis. Good? Hardly. Justified? Who knows. but that's what they say.

And I guess that's the point. Good and bad things will continue to happen. in spite of God. but as long as we keep the definition of God going these things will continue to be carried out in his name. and what is He if not just a force that is being wielded by the strongest and most powerful among us century after century for good or for bad; like a sword or a light saber.

Does that mean that we shouldn’t pray? I don't think so. I love prayer. I need prayer. I get a lot out of it. Every now and then this force makes its presence known to us in spite of us. as was the case with that big tidal wave that just killed fifty thousand of us. that's the force on its own. as a reminder. That we aren't quite gods yet ourselves. So there is definitely something there that is bigger than we are, something to be reckoned with. So I think prayer is rational and justifiable and helpful. To a certain degree. But I am starting to believe that it should come from a more meditative place, from a godlike place, rather than a purely ‘oh help me holier than thou’ place. prayer seems to align our consciousness. And through that alignment our realities can be better controlled. Sets up a certain sense of comfort and confidence that can help us manifest our dreams and desires easier. And also gives us a sense of gratitude. Something to be grateful to, since it feels weird being grateful just to ourselves. So we get this sense of gratitude toward this God idea we carry around in our minds and hearts and through that gratitude we build this sense of belief that he/she/it can do anything because we are so appreciative of him/her/it and then all we have to do is believe it and a lot of times it seems to happen. I'm too tired to write now, but you get the picture. Prayer is cool. it seems to help and it seems to work sometimes.

One more comment on prayer before I forget and then I'm crashing. But its important. You ever notice that when people pray for something, whole communities even, like when someone from church is sick, and the person then gets better, they say that God answered their prayers. This then feeds the flames of their belief in their God and their belief that he listens to prayers. But if the person dies instead, those same people – its all of us I'm talking about here – will instead say ‘well it was just gods will that so and so died.’ God obviously didn't answer their prayers. It’s a fifty fifty shot most of the time obviously. But its easier to say ‘it wasn't gods will that she live’ than to say ‘God didn't answer my prayers.’ This is an amazing phenomenon of human thinking. you would never find this kind of illogical rationalizing in the animal world. which is funny because they say that what separates us from the other animals is our ability to reason.

Maybe I'm just tired but to me that seems like an inability to reason. I mean if you were a lion and half the time you ate an elk it tasted great and the other half the time you ate an elk it tasted like total shit and made you throw up, chances are you would stop eating elk pretty quickly. Humans don't seem to have that with their God creation. We’ll just keep on praying and when we get our prayer we’re totally grooving with the God thing, and we don't get our prayer we just come up with some philosophical reason for why God didn't come through for us. we have no problem allowing our God a million excuses for not actually even being who we want or desire or need him to be. amazing. that's what I mean I guess, its just such an uncertainty at this point for us, its fascinating that we still are so adamant about keeping the God-belief going. makes me think of the drug companies and the fda. If the drug companies out there came up with a drug that worked as unpredictably, undependably, and infrequently as our God does, the fda would have shut down God years ago. Just goes to show. Lets face it. we need God regardless of whether he works a hundred percent of the time or not. We just need him. Like a witch doctor’s magic potion, we will take God in whatever dose we can get it in even before its proven to work or not. we just need that magic potion. But the good news is most of us seem to get a lot out of it. so why stop creating it and working with it. Might as well just keep on with it and see if we can create it a bit more regular and dependable as the centuries continue.