Michael – The Catalyst

Some of my close friends including my wife and me always have discussions about topics that often would result in conversations lasting until 3 in the morning.  We lovingly call ourselves “the Group,” and the Group was just given a homework assignment from one of our members – our friend Bridget the Messenger.

In case you are wondering, you’ll soon find that almost everyone in the Group has a nickname.  Mine is the Catalyst, my wife’s is the Bridge, and Bridget’s is the Messenger.  I’ll give you the reason behind the nicknames at another time, but I figured if I didn’t acknowledge that I am using nicknames then I know someone would ask about it later.

Bridget’s assignment was for us to answer three questions completely off the top of our head as an experiment because of a new approach she is trying to take in helping people.  Bridget recently went to watch Gary Renard speak.  If you are not familiar with this speaker, he is the bestselling author of the book The Disappearance of the Universe that I highly recommend.

In watching Mr. Renard speak, Bridget had a “EUREKA!!” moment (in her words) and realized that in order to be the Messenger and help people with spirituality, she needed to understand what people believe in the first place.

Bridget’s three questions are:
1)    What is your idea about God?
2)    How do you feel about God?
3)    What do you really know about God?

I thought I’d complete my homework here because I’d also love to hear your own thoughts on these questions.  In the meantime, here are my answers off the top of my head.

What is My Idea about God?
After many, many years thinking about this question, reading other material, and trying to come up with something that makes sense to me, I currently have the belief that we are all part of God.  That is, I view God as a non-physical mind.  Because of this, the universe and everything in it is all a part of this mind and is somewhat like a physical representation of a brainstorm.

Each of us is a part of the one mind experiencing this brainstorm from different perspectives.  We “feel” as though we are all individual and separate, but this is simply an illusion created to allow us to experience different perspectives and idea of individuality.

This conclusion may strike some people as hard to accept (I too completely rejected this idea when a friend proposed this several years ago) but the more I think about this, the more I realize that both science and spirituality point to this possibility.

For example, even though you feel whole, the atoms in your body are not static.  Your atoms change all of time constantly going in and out of this shape you call You.  Even from a cellular level, every cell in your body is completely replaced every seven years.  If you are 21 years old today, congratulations!  You are now using the third version of your physical body.

If the atoms are constantly flowing in and out of your shape, then you can’t really claim any of the atoms as your own.  If anything, the atomic particles that make up your body are really just borrowed from the mass of particles floating out in space.  Because of this, you truly are a part of the one whole mass of “stuff” floating in the universe.

From a spiritual perspective, many religions say they are children of God or a part of God.  If God is everything and all powerful, then you must be a part of God.  There is no way for God to create something that is beyond him or her.  Think about that for a moment.  If you assume that God can create something beyond God, then this must mean there is something more than God out there.  Perhaps God is part of another universe and our universe is right beside God?  This becomes a never ending path because you then must ask what who or what controls the God universe?

The only logical conclusion in my mind is assuming that God is all encompassing.  That means that we are simply a part of God and that you cannot speak of God without including ourselves in the discussion.

How do I Feel about God?
Instinctually I can’t help but anthropomorphize God by saying God must be curious, creative, and many other adjectives.  This is a biased notion because my feeling is that this whole “universe” is God simply asking “what if?”  I believe the universe was created by God asking the question resulting in what we view as the universe and everything in it.

By viewing God this way, I will have to change the question and ask “how to we feel about ourselves?”  From my perspective, Earth is only a tiny part of this thought experiment existing among billions of stars and planets which are part of billions of galaxies which are then part of billions of universes.  As such, we as a species on this planet probably have a limited view on this answer, so all we can do is approach this from a human perspective.

God on our planet is expressed by the physical forms, thoughts, ideas, and emotions we experience.  The trees, the water, the cars, the computers, the people, the animals…everything here on this planet is an expression of God experiencing the perspective of the What If question from the viewpoint of Earth.

So how do I feel about God?  Well, I’ve only experienced God from Earth, but I have to say, I really enjoy all Earth has to offer and I like the ability to self reflect about me/us/God.  My hope is to constantly gain a better understanding for who we are.

What do I Really Know about God?
I know that God has to have existed forever.  Forever is a tough concept to understand because we are so used to dealing with the world in terms of time.  What is funny is that time itself doesn’t even exist at all levels of what we refer to as reality.  At the atomic level, time does not exist.  In fact, matter itself doesn’t always exist.  Particles constantly flicker in and out of existence.

I believe God must have existed forever because if you put a start time on God, then this again implies that there is something beyond God.  My personal belief is that time is only a concept within our universe but time only exists as a way to experience this thought experiment.

So, I feel that I know God is eternal.  I also feel that I know God is all encompassing.  By taking these two ideas together, it doesn’t really make sense to say God is compassionate, upset, angry, or any of those emotions because this again implies that there is something beyond God to experience those emotions with.  I mean, how can God be compassionate if everything that exists is a part of God?  How can God be angry if everything that exists is a part of God?

One assumption I must make is that God is an entity that wants to experience itself and we are that entity.

Please add comments below as I would love to hear how you respond to these questions.

Thanks and look forward to hearing from you!

Tags: ask God, God game, God truth, homework answer, homework assignment, homework completion, power of God, who is God

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 16th, 2009 at 11:53 pm and is filed under Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.