This post and all others are a product of my experience and understanding gained from practicing martial arts and meditation. Please consider what I say, as always, as just that. It may challenge what you believe about god, but I do not mean it as a refutation of any belief system.
I don’t care what religion you are or what spiritual beliefs you have. It doesn’t even matter if you believe in god or not. You’re still god.
I mean this on multiple levels.
1) You are a part of god (the divine, the universe, however you think of it), and god is all of you.
2) You are the god of your life. You are the only person or force in charge of what happens to you.
Sounds like a lot of responsibility, right? Time to step up!
I came to this realization recently while praying. I don’t pray often because I don’t really believe in god, at least in the same way as most people. I was raised Catholic and the thought of a grandpa figure in the clouds judging me not only didn’t appeal to me, but sounded downright silly. I’ve grown to appreciate the concept of god as being much more complex that my childhood mind could grasp, but that was when I first began to look closely at what I believed. Sifu Brown and some other wise people say that if prayer is talking to god, meditation is listening to god. That makes sense to me, so I do way more listening than talking.
Nonetheless, I was praying to god and it hit me that I was really praying to myself. If, for me, there is nobody out there judging or even listening, then I must be talking to myself. Which sounds kind of crazy. Except I had the experience of talking to a higher Self. I realized that all that stuff that we say and think about god can and does live within us. Rather than god being above or separate from us in any way, god is us, and we are god.
Now some people talk about god in this way, like of course we are god, the universe, the divine. Because god is in everything. The universe is everything. We are all one. But I also mean that we are all powerful in our lives, and we hardly ever take responsibility for that.
I found it to be very empowering to think of god as a metaphor for our higher Self. Like everything you would say to god, or pray for, you should say to yourself. In that moment, in that act, there is a realization. I am not small and helpless, and there is nobody else coming to save me and fix everything. I am a boundless force of energy and will. I am in charge.
I recently found myself in a little bit of a scary personal situation where I had to confront somebody very close and important to me. I have historically thought of myself as being non-confrontational, so this sort of thing doesn’t usually seem fun. Yet this time, something was different. I felt myself getting a bit nervous about what I was going to say, and what they were going to say, and what they would feel or think about me.
Then I reminded myself: I’m god. I am all-powerful. I have the ability to communicate anything to and with anyone. I can be pure love if I want to. It didn’t even hit me like something to take responsibility for. It was more like a light feeling that lifted me above all the normal nonsense I experience in such a situation. It made everything clear and easy.
That conversation and many since then have been among the most connected, insightful and powerful communications I’ve had in my entire life. Try it out. Ask yourself, what would god do? Then do it, and be god.
“Namaste, Sifu!”
Loosely translated this means “…the god in me respectfully salutes the god in you.”
I found something else…a poem by Shani:
Whispers of Grace
Listen to Grace’s whispers
As if you have never heard words before.
The words mean nothing.
The sweetness is in the Silence the words come from.
In Silence, there is a secret unseen world that may be known by all who listen to whispers of Grace.
Whispers of Grace are like a ripe plum, juicy and dripping with delicious nectar in every drop.
Smell the sweet essence of Amrita.
Light the fire of Love within you.
Burn everything you know to ash.
The golden beauty of Grace never leaves.
Bathe in the sacred honey,
Sweetening your Heart with whispers shouting,
“You are God”.
http://www.greatblessingoftruth.com/books.html