Someone asked me recently if I could say for certain that God has given us the answer to all our problems and we have ignored it.
My answer is: yes, with a slight amendment. “God had given us the answer to all our problems but we have forgotten it.”
The difference in framing is nontrivial. “Ignore” postulates a self who chooses to ignore helpful advice from authority. I am saying we are more like little kids who forgot to brush their teeth so their parents have to remind them.
Choosing to ignore helpful advice from authority figures sets up conflict – somebody wants to help us and we blow them off. It’s like a teen-ager saying, “no, I’m not going to brush my teeth – what are you going to do about it?”
My model proposes a gentler correction coming from the authority figure – sort of like a parent who reminds their child to remember to brush their teeth. And then let’s pick a book for bedtime, etc.
In other words, good parents don’t take it personally when 4-year-olds are forgetful. They just cheerfully correct them. They just want to be helpful.
We aren’t ignoring God’s gift so much as forgetting God’s gift. And God is happy to remind us.
If we stay in the “ignore” model – the going head-to-head model – the best-case scenario is that God throws up His hands and says okay, find out for yourself what happens when you don’t brush your teeth. Which is one thing if we’re talking about dental hygiene but another for, say, drinking and driving. Or going to war.
There’s a better way which is: trust your Creator. Trust Creation.
I mean that literally, by the way. You did not make yourself (T-10.V.5:3). What did?
If you go into this question deeply – if you seek your Creator, if you seek the site of Creation – you will see that what created you is Love and it created you like itself and that this creation is eternal.
And when you remember this you will never be lonely or unhappy again.
The Love of God is in everything He created, for His Son is everywhere. Look with peace upon your brothers and sisters, and God will come rushing into your heart in gratitude for your gift to Him (T-10.V.7:6-7).
How easy is that? All we have to do is look with peace upon one another!
But to know this – to live it as our practice – we have to go deeply into the experience of remembering and reconnecting with our Creator! This means that we have to find out what God we are projecting because the God we project is what hides our actual Creator, whom we can only know in the absence of projection.
Are you scared of being punished? Do you think suffering is meritorious? Do behave well because you want or expect a reward? Do you hate Republicans/Democrats? Libs/fascists? Do you secretly – or not so secretly – think you’ve got something other people don’t?
It can be hard to answer those questions honestly.
But listen. The problem is projecting – the actual act of it. What is projected is not the problem. There is no right or wrong projection – they’re all neutral. Once we start projecting we’re as lost and confused as we’re going to get, regardless of the projection’s content. You can project a kind father or a murderous despot and the problem remains the same because they are both projections.
So we become responsible for our projection of God not by finding a better projection but by finding out what God actually is – as in, right here and now, in this actual moment, this very Holy Instant.
If you know what God is, then you don’t have to project anymore.
In my experience – and my study of others’ experience in this area – God is gentle, loving, patient and kind and we are like unto to little kids to Him – totally innocent, totally safe, totally happy. Punishment, sacrifice, suffering and conflict need never enter into it. Really!
Of course I mean we are “little kids” with respect to God. We are women and men in the world and in our experience. But what happens when we live as the grown sons and daughters of that Loving God? What do we do? Who do we do it with and for?
What does our living in the world look like when we know we are the one creation of love?
That is a radical life.
Those are fun questions to answer! All our egoic dysfunction and its mad premise of separation dissolve in the answer. It’s not that we become “one” with God – a kind of silly frame, really – but that we become love itself, actual expressions of love.
Therefore, don’t be stressed. Be playful. And the joy you feel will be God’s joy in you.
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