If I tell you that any God the mind can conceive is a creation of that mind, how does that sit with you? Do you become defensive? Do you immediately go to a place where you want to make me wrong, or do you agree with this concept?
Is your mind open enough to consider the possibility that any concept of God is a creation of the human mind or do you want to fight to defend your idea of what God is?Â
Your response to this question can either open you to the possibility of self-discovery or you can have a reaction which shuts you down. Your response may fall anywhere between these extremes and regardless offers you the chance to learn something about yourself.
So where do your ideas, about what God is, come from, provided you believe in such an entity at all? Were they given to you by parents or other family members? Do they come from any particular religion or from your reading of some text you hold sacred? Or, perhaps, your perceptions arise from within your own heart and mind?
Regardless of the source of your ideas about God, have they been carefully contemplated or were they accepted without thoughtful consideration? Consider these words from Robert Powell: “It must be stated that it is so much easier to repeat and accept something one has heard than to question everything regardless of its source. Our propensity in this direction is constantly exploited in the areas of religion and politics.â€
A quick glance at the internet reveals that over 90% of the U.S. adult population believes in the existence of God. Less than 10% claim to be agnostic or atheist. I wonder what percentage of this number would say they “know†that there is some Supreme Being. It would be interesting to discover how they arrived at this wisdom.
What I “know†is that there is a Unifying Force which exists and gives rise to all that is. Is that God? I would say that this One power and Force far exceeds any concept my human mind can imagine. To name it God or any conceptualized terminology must, by its very nature, fall short of this Infinite Field of Energy.
If you believe in a God or know, as I do, that there is a vast Nothingness which is beyond the mind’s capability for understanding, what words do you use to define it, or do you even try?
I suggest you open yourself to really examining your ideas around this line of questioning and take a glimpse of how defensive or open you are to another’s truth.
Each such self-examination paves the way to true self-knowledge. It is a worthwhile use of your time to examine all you have accepted as truth and discover what is real, what stands up to thoughtful scrutiny, and what needs to be discarded. So often, when I have engaged in such soul-searching I have found that many ideas, I have held sacred, were given to me by those I never questioned.
If my above questioning caused any “reaction†in you, take it as an opportunity to use your response as an excellent entry point for such self-inquiry.