Who is God, Anyway?
Religion is a complex subject to approach because like the
splintered cross it is old and cracked like a winding road through tangled
woods and brings just as much agony as it does relief. In ancient times,
mankind invented religion out of respect, awe, and fear for their miraculous
environment. They saw how beautiful and harsh the world could be and
were terrified and elated at the same time. The true root word for
religion is the Latin "religio" which means to
"re-link". The implication is that we each need to find a way
to re-link ourselves with the divine intelligence who created everything and
who we are extensions of.. The Biblical Creation Myth states that when
God created man he breathed his spirit into our nostrils. That's pretty
clear that we are only alive because we are extensions of God which I define
as eternal being.
Now I'm treading into fierce waters when I get into my own
beliefs. I don't think we need to "believe" in God as if he
were some kind of magical fairy that's going to vanish if we don't believe in
his existence. I think we need to know God, to share a
unique relationship with eternal
being. If I had to pick a religion I would have to say I'm a
Christian mystic, Taoist poet-Magi. Now that's a mouthful! I
am inspired by the Biblical stories and their lessons of love, forgiveness,
inner peace, and the inner battle to align our lower egotistical, selfish
selves with our higher, cosmic loving origin. I write about these themes
in my fantasy adventure novels all the time. But I'm also deeply
inspired by the wisdom of the Far East in Taoism, Shinto, Buddhism, and the
spiritual path of awakening through body wisdom and nature wisdom. I
also love the Celtic wisdom and the Egyptian and Persian teachings. My
religion is pretty much like Einstein described it when he called it Cosmic
Religion. It's universal. It works for everyone and doesn't
alienate or isolate any group. I have deep reverence for nature, the
stars and planets, love, and languages, but I do not "worship" them
in the Biblical sense. I am aware that their is a deeper intelligence
behind creation that lives in my heart and I open to that intelligence in my
meditations and when I write. To me, sitting before the blank page with
my heart aimed at eternity is my Zazen, my temple, my praise, and in the words
of Antonio Michado, my listening at the shores of the great silence.
Overall I would have to declare that my path in life is one of
communicating with divinity through the celestial spheres. I am here to engage
the infinite. So the ancients would have called someone like me a
Magi or Astrologer, like the three wise men who came to visit Yehoshua (Jesus)
after his birth. I wrote a poem about their journey called Quest
of the Magi. There is definitely a dark force that we are struggling
against in the world. You only have to look at the way our society is to
see that! Watch the news for ten minutes and you'll see how prevalent
the evil is. But I think we create most of this evil through ignorance
of universal principles of harmony. I believe that evil is just the inharmonious
blending of the natural forms, colors, and tones of good. If you play a
note on an instrument it may sound "good". But if you combine
it with other notes it can sound melodious or awful, depending on how you
blend the music, how you create it. This is the same with the
world. There is a recipe for wholeheartedness, and our world has lost
it! In any recipe if you don't follow the steps and use the right amount
of ingredients then it could turn out disastrous.
Life too has a recipe for living a balanced existence in
harmony with the divine current. There are Seven Energy groups which
make up what I call the Way of Fruition. This is the "Diet"
that leads to Am-ness, unified consciousness with divine being. Here are
the Seven Energy Groups:
Fire
Air
Water
Earth
Fire/Air Polarity
Water/Earth Polarity
Spirit |
Sunshine & Celestial Energy
Pure Breathing & Mental Stimulation
Pure Drinking & Emotional Expression
Pure Eating & Nature Connection
Transformation & Change
Love & Relationships
Pure Sleep & Meditation |
My goal in life is to balance these energy groups for total
physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. It is holistic living
made simple. Just get enough of each of these energy groups and watch
how your life flows. I know when I'm out of balance intuitively.
And I can look at these energies in my life and see where I've gotten off
track. Fire, Air, and Water are the Divine Elements in the sense that
God is always showing up in scriptures as burning bushes, mountain top clouds
or winds, or living waters pouring out of rocks in the desert. They
symbolize the Cosmic Trinity of God's essence. Air and Water are the Yang
and Yin elements, the masculine and feminine faces of divine being and
divine image in which we move and live and have our being.
The Christians are always calling God Father, inherited from
the overly-masculine Hebrew culture where they referred to God as Abba,
father. Some of the New Age folks prefer calling divinity Goddess in
revolt over four-thousand years of patriarchy. I think the answer is
unification as always in this Age of Pisces. God can neither be male or
female and yet contains both and more! Even the Hebrews described God on
certain occasions as the "many- breasted One." God is both Yin
and Yang unified. I often meditate on the koan "What is God divided
by two?" Yehoshua said that the most important principle was that
God is One, the unification of Divine being. In my fantasy
writing the Elves always refer to the creator as the Eternal One. So
what is God divided by two? Well the Yin/Yang answer works but it's not
so cut and dried. I think the answer, and koans don't really have
logical answers, is vibration.
Unification leads to Vibration.
When you study astrophysics you find that everything is energy
in vibration, including matter. So the Air or Yang face of Eternal Being
is the phenomena we recognize as space, awareness, intelligence, and Spirit
flowing. While the Water or Yin face of Eternal Being is what we
recognize as organic pattern, wisdom, and compassion. When Air and Water
symbolically merge the Element of Fire is created in the mix which symbolizes
light, creativity, and the spark of life and love. So now there is
consciousness in the universe. God can say "I AM!"
What a great realization that is! "I AM WHO I AM"
he said to Moses. So once the universe is in a state of cosmic
vibration, rhythm is born and the wisdom and light that flows through rhythm.
When this happens inside a human being I call it the State of Amness being
realized. It's when you realize your intimate connection with
everything, everyone, and especially with Eternal Being as the Ultimate Whole
containing all individual wholes and flowing through them all giving
connectivity and pattern to creation. That's intense.
So what comes out of cosmic vibration? Is it the unified
field theory that astrophysicists are searching for? I think so.
But I also think it goes beyond mathematical equations because scientists
can't write equations for why you are alive and can't come close to explaining
creation as it really is. That's the domain of metaphysics and
intuition. The third Element of Divinity is Fire, and the third process
of creation that results from vibration is the Gravitational Principle of
Divine Love. Sheer consciousness, utter Amness! The universe
literally and symbolically starts to Gravitate. Everything is
attracted (in love) with everything else. And this is the beginning of
motion in the eternal realm, which gives birth to a whole new dimension in the
universe that I can only call the Life of the Imagination.
William Blake said that Christ was the Imagination.
Eternal Vibration gives birth to Gravitation, the
principle of Divine Love.
These are the three critical components of God: Unification,
Vibration, and Gravitation. Air, Fire, Water and their mysterious union
which is beyond words. The Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal
Tao! The word God can't even contain Eternal Being. But I think
the sound AH which is hidden in God and Tao is key. It's the same Ah!
you say whether you're inspired or in pain. An old Japanese poet-monk
named Kukai wrote an amazing poem about this Ah sound. He understood all
this centuries ago.
Singing Images of Fire
The hand moves and the fire's
whirling takes different shapes.
All things change when we do.
The first word, Ah!
blossoms into all others.
Each of them is true...
I think it is this unified field of Divine Love, Wisdom, and Creativity that
both Yehoshua (Jesus) and Gautama Siddhartha (Buddha) aligned with and became
one with. I think they surrendered their will to Divine Will to the
point where they embodied eternal being. They brought God into the body,
or out of the body where it lived all along. We all have the Image of
Divinity within and according to the Hebrew scriptures God created us in
his image, male and female. So we have the male and female aspects
of eternal being within. And the only battle lies within to unify your
consciousness with this realization. This is the ultimate quest and
adventure of life. But I think it scares the hell out of people because
the intuition is that you're not going to survive this quest and the intuition
is entirely correct. Your old selfish lazy self won't and can't
survive. But your new reborn self will rise out of the ashes of the
old. This is what it means to be reborn, a twice-born individual.
And actually, the Greek term in the New Testament means literally "to be
born from above". The implication is to be born from Heaven
Within. But people would rather have someone do it for them and would
rather not as Paul says, "work out their salvation with fear and
trembling." When Leo Tolstoy wrote his masterpiece "The
Kingdom of Heaven Within", the Russians exiled him. No one wants to
hear that the spiritual path is a dangerous journey. So instead they
dive into relationships which is really the same thing. They think
they'll just settle for the pleasures of love, but all love is a reflection of
this Gravitational Divine Love that holds the planets in orbit and the stars
on course around the galactic center. So either way we come to it, even
beyond the threshold of death, the ultimate transformation.
It's kind of strange to think that planets orbit the sun
because they are in love with the sun. But it's okay in our thoughts to
think of lovers orbiting each other (being together) due to the power and
mystery of love. This third aspect of Divinity is the love that binds us
all.
As gravitation comes into being the potential is realized for creation.
Gravitation leads to the stage of Divine Imagination which I like to refer to
as the Dream of God. In this stage the three-fold or triune God
starts to dream the possibility of creation. This is when awareness
realizes that it can create! So after I Am, eternal being gets really
excited and declares I can Create! Thus the Dream of God flows through
the universe to produce a kind of background prototype of creation we like to
call the spiritual realm which is really just the imagination of God extended
into Space and Time. This spiritual realm has many intersections and
dimensions and it's the realm in which the angelic entities were first given
life. It was the realm of the physical universe's conception. But
the physical realm still had to go through the creative process of
labor. The word universe is derived from "uni" which means
"one" and "verse" which means "to turn."
So the universe is literally the Turning of the Eternal One! The word
conversation is equally startling because it implies that we can turn or
"verse" with (con) the One and each other!
Gravitation leads to the stage of Imagination, the Epic
Dream of God.
At this point the possibility of form is realized through the
mixture of all that is Good. I think our concept of Cosmic Evil enters
at this stage when one of the created beings in the Imagination Realm tries to
take over that realm. Suddenly this angelic being says, "Hey, I'm
creative too." But then he goes on to think incorrectly, "Hey
I must be God" Which leads him to declare, "Hey, you other
beings lower than me, bow down and worship. I am the living God of
eternity." Big mistake! Here we have a mix up but it's a
little bigger and more cosmic in its implication than playing two notes that
don't go together. But it's pretty much the same principle of inharmony
emerging from two good things that were mixed incorrectly. But God keeps
on dreaming anyway right on down to creation.
Imagination leads to the Seven Stages of Creation
I think the Biblical seven days of creation were actually
astrological Ages from Pisces on down to Virgo and the fabled Garden of
Eden. The Age of Virgo was the time when God rested and Man roamed the
earth and multiplied. We used to live a thousand years in those
days. What happened? The wave of inharmony must have swept in from
the spiritual realm and now were sitting here forgetting our true nature and
destroying our planet. In our modern culture of technological
sophistication, God has been slain on the alters of both science and religion
and replaced with the human ego. Call me ultra-traditional, but I think
I'd like to align my life with the Eternal Spirit of Love and Harmony moving
through and guiding the universe. This is why enlightened folks like
Yehoshua and Gautama came along to illuminate the Way of Living Truth.
And this Way as the Tao calls it too is a life of deep faith in eternal being
and a life of simplicity, contemplation, and sharing in the spirit of
love. If I had to recommend a book about it all I'd say read "The
Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ." My astrology teacher handed
me a copy when I began my studies at 14 and I was blown away. It goes
deeper than the Bible, even into the 17 missing years of Jesus's life when he
went to India and they called him Issa, the Light from the West. It
gives a great non-denominational, universal look at the life and teachings of
Yehoshua (Jesus). Check it out. But also learn about Hebrew and
Greek writing and study the scriptures. You'll be amazed how inaccurate
and devoid of poetry our English translation are. In our Bible, the first
line of Genesis says, "In the beginning God created the Heavens and the
Earth." In Hebrew the meanings come across more deeply as,
"The first fruits of the Sacred Spirit aspiring to express eternity
through a fountain of Divine Wisdom were the creation of the celestial
dimensions and the manifest worlds." Now that's some scripture you
can write home about!
Great teachers have come throughout the last 6 Ages to remind
us of eternity and unconditional love. It's like God is still at the
center of creation trying to have a conversation with us but our lives are too
busy for eternity, silence, and contemplation. So we live these
shallow lives in desperation trying to stay alive in the world while were
committing spiritual suicide. And we try to fill the spiritual void with
TV, sex, movies, recreation, and plastic religions that don't make
sense. When all you have to do is go within and listen at the edge of
the great silence and let it guide you. It's that simple.
Cultivate a relationship with Eternal Being through your creative power and
the living conversation with Divinity in your heart. The scriptures say
that God has placed eternity in the hearts of humans and hidden it from them,
and that we don't understand why this is so. Well there is a season for
everything including you realizing that eternity is etched into your
heart. That's why I study astrology so deeply. It opens up a
living daily conversation with God through the motions of the universe.
I can get fired up about that. It's sheer poetry woven by the Eternal
One. God, I sound like a preacher!
The Seven Ages of Creation made way for the Seven Ages
of Civilization.
These last six astrological Ages have been leading up to the
Seventh Sabbath Age of Aquarius, the enlightened man pouring forth the rich
waters of divine wisdom from the sacred urn. This is the Age we've all
been waiting for! And yes I do believe their will be a massive awakening
on the planet. But I don't think it's going to be a Hollywood version of
Jesus coming down out of the clouds followed by a Holy Ghost with a sheet on
and some white-bearded, Saturn-like figure who I'm supposed to bow down and
worship. That's insanity! I think that slowly there will be a
rapture in people's hearts that brings them back into alignment with the
eternal heartbeat. I think the Second Coming will be more like a fiery
orgasm in our hearts where our corroded, egotistical minds fall away with all
their worldly desires die as the planet is aglow with spiritual light. I
think Earth will become one of many planets in the galaxy to have a spiritual
awakening. And I think these 7 Ages of Civilization that we've been
grinding through are paving the way for the seventh and final installment in
the unfolding of the Divine Image which I like to call the Ages of Illumination
where each person activates 100% potential and people get to travel the stars
in their spiritual bodies!
And the Seven Ages of Civilization point the way to the
Ages of Illumination!
And thus goes the Poem of Being!
