Evolving With God

We are all individuals. Each of us sees, hears, senses, feels and interrupts the world from our own unique point of view. We all may taste ice cream and we really do not know how the others taste it. Most of us can agree we like it or even love it but still your tongue is yours and my tongue is mine. The same as cilantro. When my kids were growing up one of them always said he hated cilantro. At the time I thought he was being a teenager and looking for ways to be an individual but a fathers blindness does not change fact. I mean how can anyone not like cilantro it is so yummy especially in salsa.It turns out some peoples taste buds taste the herbal treat like soap. I  now can see how that could be true. While eating cilantro really go deep in the favor and there is a bit of soapiness there. It just so happen with some that little hidden flavor is more pronounced. 

When we get into more complicated experiences the distance between two peoples understanding can be totally different. We all love but what love means is two totally different things to two different people, what love means to 100 different people is 100 different emotions. Someone who grew up rich may think of love as have a monetary value, like gifts, or maybe they are turn off by gifts because that is all they got to express love while growing up and it left them feeling hollow. Someone who grew up in a turbulent home may guard their feelings of love. While one of their siblings may only feel loving after conflict. Yet a third sister or brother may have done tons of counseling and has moved beyond their childhood experience and is loving on a whole different level. The more abstract the subject the more subjectively one’s reality.  The more personal the concept the more individually complicated the feelings and understandings that are invoked.

There are many subjects that people shy away from; not wanting to look inside themselves. Most of us do not really try to understand how we relate mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and physically to ourselves. It is easier to buy into someone else concept; it is less risky. This is especially true when it comes too spiritually. To really look inside and try to fine one’s own God can shake someone to the core as most of us have been taught to accept and not question what others have come up with in the past. It is so expected to ignore one’s truth in these matters that there is a word that people use to hide in and escape introspection. That word is religion. The box of religion has been at work for thousands of years to stop the questioning of one’s true nature in the universe. Whether it Christian, Islam, Buddhist, Hindu or any other title, the label is on a box that tells people what to think. The tactics of religion have become so finely tuned at manipulating the mind that those strategies are now also used to control large segments of the population. There are many other labels now people can wear to stop thinking about all kinds of things. Labels like democracy, communism, democrat, republican, socialist, capitalist all come with their own tidy box so one can crawl inside and just relax, stop thinking and follow the ideas of another. The unfortunate thing is once in the tidiness of a box they become attached to it and feel the need to control others. The us and them mentality settles in and strife ensues. When one tries to leave a box the others in the box become enrage and threatened. This makes no sense, but being attached to someone else’s ideas to the point of war makes no sense either. If one leaves the box or just refuses to get in, the inhabitants in the box label those outside. Terms like heretic or traitor labels the person, while heresy, treason or blasphemy labels their actions. All this animosity towards someone who really only wants to be true to themselves, faithful to their heart, and pure in their mind. One would think it must get crowded in those boxes and to let some leave would only let a little light in and give some breathing room.

When it comes to religion the rules are all written down. It is hoped by the leaders that all the questions one has are answered. When they are not the answers become more vague. Answers like “all you need is faith” which throws the quandary back at the asker with a bit of guilt added just to assure them that if the where a good ( add mindless label here) they would not let their minds wander to such places. I am a believer in faith but not mindless faith. I feel we all need it to make one’s way through a life. Unfortunately, life is at times beyond one’s ability to fully comprehend all the whys and wherefore of every  situation. The faith I believe in is between me and my God/Goddess, Mah-n-Jah, not hanging on someone else’s words. True faith has little to do with a God or a leader’s twisted manipulations towards conformity. True faith is based in self-esteem. I have faith in myself, the abilities that my creator endowed in me, and my ability to make it through an experience to the other side. I had an aunt who lost her husband,then 3 of her sons, and then a daughter to Huntington's Chorea. Most of us would be devastated, angry at Mah-n-Jah (God), resentful towards life, including myself. There would be a long road in therapy if one was even internally strong enough to face their inner demons.  My aunt though just keep moving with life, of course she had ups and downs like all of us do, but no lasting grief, depression or rage. Her motto was, "God would only give me what I can carry" Her inner strength was incredible. She believed in her own ability to walk through the fire. Her healthy self esteem let her see her own strength. Then she put her praise in her own understanding of what her creator had given her to endure. It is with this healthy self-esteem that one can let God into one’s life to guide them.  The stronger one is within themselves the more one can let the divine plan flow through them. It is when one is not strong that the ego needs reassurance to move forward. Every time ego needs some energy it is less energy for God to work with or less God can come through us. In all truth Faith is the giving of the ego over to one's own  Goddess/God which mean one needs an ego to give away. One needs the incredible inner strength to believe they no longer need the false support of the ego. It is in that ego-less strength Mah-n-Jah (God) can enter.  When one blindly follows another’s teaching, they need to give up the teaching’s ego before they can even address their own.

When spiritually becomes a doctrine, it is no longer spiritual it is religion. It is to be followed. It ceases to evolve. The concepts are lost in a former time. As a Human Being I know throughout a life time we need to evolve. We can not be who we were when we were 10 nor can we freeze our thoughts, feelings, realizations at 30, 40, 50 or ever. This would be a death to the spirit and soul though many walk through life encased in that death. This is also true of one’s relations with their creator. If I still pray as I did when I was 20 or 50, I would be sorely disappointed in myself, but that is just me.  If my faith and my understanding of my ego still was still were it was 5 years ago, I would feel my God/Goddess, Mah-n-Jah, had somehow forsaken me, but, once again, that is me. As we evolve as a race, as a planet, as individuals, our spirituality must change; therefore, our relationship with Mah-n-Jah (Goddess/God). This is so apparent in today’s world were many religious boxes are becoming more and more obsolete by insisting that their doctrines are set in stone. One can see this obsolescence just by looking at the number of people no longer willing to enter or stay within the religion boxes they grew up with.  Some will leave one box just to enter another. There are many “Spiritual” paths out there that are just as laden with rules as the boxes that were left behind. Evolution, whether physical or spiritual does not conform to rules or boxes it is random, free flowing, and often surprising.  One cannot evolve through box hoping, moving from one set of principles to the next. This can provide comfort and a sense of belonging but in the end, one will need to move beyond all boxes to evolving to find their own God.

It seems an over simplification of God to assume that She/He does not evolve and grow into an ever-expanding energy. Why would a God or Goddess be satisfied with the being they were even just a minute ago? It may be a bit anthropomorphistic, as the human being I am, to suppose God desires growth, as all energies do, but it does seem likely. Growth is not the right word here as it comes with its own sets of meanings which are more than likely meaningless to evolution. The word that best suits this evolution is simply change. How are we to judge if change is growth or not? This is not an evaluation of a being whom lives a mere 100 years is in the position to judge. So, as we change, as Goddess/God changes, it only makes sense the relationship we share must also change. Anyone who has been married for a while knows change within a relationship is inevitable. The relationship itself promotes change as we see more and more of ourselves and the other; as we know each other on a deeper level. This is only healthy. A relationship that does not change will gradually become stale and die. Piece of the people involved will die. Love can not live in a box it needs to flow. This is true whether the relationship is with a human or with Mah-n-Jah (God).

As I evolve, as you evolve, as God evolves there is really no way another can tell any of us how or what our relationships can be. Just as there are an overabundance of books telling one how to have the perfect marriage or relationship there is an overabundance of opinions about how one is supposed to relate to Goddess/God. There is no book that is a cure all for human relationships. There also is no book, idea, concept or any belief system from someone else that can tell you how you should relate to your God. One is not having a relationship with God but with THIER God.  The main way to have a good human relationship is to be honest with yourself and the other. All the books may point us to that honesty but it comes from within. Self-honesty is forever changing, our partner's self-honesty is forever changing, the relationships’ honesty is forever changing. Books can point one in the direction to look at aspects of them self; to help create more honesty and they can not make one more honest. The same is true with one’s relationship with their God.

Just as I can not tell 100% what ice cream taste like to another, I can not tell how another’s relationship with God is to be and grow or change. Just as love has as many feelings, thoughts, expectations, manifestations and ways of being as there are humans on the planet, there are that many ways to be with Mah-n-Jah, your Goddess, your God. No one has the right to tell another how to evolve just as no one has the right to dictate how another’s deeper understanding of themselves is reflected within their spirituality. Our spirituality is ours alone just as our God is ours alone. If anyone tells you different I suggest answering “My life- My God”. Of course, this is only a suggestion may you find your own words.


Copyright © 2020 by Joseph and Human Anonymous