The power of a 3 letter word

I wasn't raised in a religious household. My sister and I were baptized Catholic as babies, but our parents left it at that. They wanted us to formulate our own truth.

I remember asking my church-going friends what all that stuff was about, and being puzzled by a lot of it. Especially that my fellow 8 year old friends had to confess. In the "eyes of a creator", what the hell could you do at 8???

The stories of having to live by a book, interpreted multiple ways by multiple different groups of people (and later revised...?), was enough for me to question it's "truth". Plus, I just couldn't imagine that all life was created by a fear-inflicting, vengeful deity, who commanded that you apologize regularly and go sit in a building every week. All this coupled with the disturbing number of inactive "God lovers" who supported the abuse of animals, our planet and / or "different" people, or just sat by, doing nothing to help "God's creation" as terror reigned, really turned me off of organized religion, and that 3 letter word, all together.

In my teen years, I realized that I genuinely enjoyed being nice and helpful to others. I didn't need fear or commandments to dictate my behavior, so I let go of wanting to know more about this god thing. I embraced the title "atheist" and left it at that.

Sometime in my early twenties I developed a new perspective: saying there's NO god seems just as arrogant as saying their IS one, since there's no way to prove or disprove - it's all perspective. So my "atheism" label morphed into "agnosticism". I felt my moral compass was guiding me down a humane path anyway, so this label change didn't matter. Plus labels are limiting.

Fast forward to today (and by "today" i mean more like 2009-ish). I began my spiritual journey with the recognition of energy as the force behind all things. My college days really illuminated the "process" of life (I was an ecology major). I spent time pondering what motivated a seed to germinate, cells to divide, genes to mutate, etc. I realized there was a force, what I called a "life pulse", and it seemed to drive life.

As I continued on my spiritual path, this "life pulse" was being discussed by countless thinkers and visionaries that I listened to: Eckhart Tolle, Wayne Dyer, Selacia, Gary Zukov, Marianne Williamson, etc. What they all said is that this life pulse "energy" is referred to by many names: Source, Holy Spirit, God, Universal Source, Universal Energy, etc.

Eek. That God word???!!!

It was WILD how I would just shut down inside as soon as I heard that 3 letter word, incapable of hearing anything said after it.

The part of me that judges (ie the other 3 letter word - ego) would throw up a brick wall and want to discredit everything the person said from then on - instantly! Even if they previously reiterated that the word God does NOT refer to the idea of a supreme being watching over us, commanding that we behave or else (throughout history, "man made god in mans image", distorting what was meant as the energy that drives ALL things, of which humans are merely one piece of, not the entirety of).

Even in the midst of hearing beautiful words from loving enlightened people, my knee-jerk ego would internally say "Ok, if you believe in God, you subscribe to all that angry vengeful deity stuff, so clearly you're not a reliable source of information." Frikkin' hilarious to watch my ego do this! It judges other people as right / wrong / stupid / smart / superior / inferior / evil / righteous / pretty / ugly. These are all opinions, formulated by the limited aspects of ourselves (c/o the ego), the part that doesn't realize we're all connected. It has a superficial view of itself and all life, and dysfunctionally feels it has to uphold an image, since that's the extent of the egos reality - the image (a body, social/economic status, opinions, book smarts, relationships, jobs, etc.) When we view someone else as "wrong", we're making ourselves and our beliefs "right". But to whom? To our limited perspective of life. We're all part of the same exact energy source, no one being is superior to any other. Division is ego based and brings dysfunction and suffering.

It's easy to type this, and "see" this, but that internal pattern takes a while to disarm. Learning to love it, not fight it, is the secret weapon ;)

My view point of this god thing has morphed over the years. If I was so right before, how can I be right now? I can't. There is no wrong or right. Only perspective. The 3 letters making up the word "God" have no meaning, other than what I give them. My ego wasn't just assessing the message, it was automatically discounting the messenger based on my ideas of rightness, even when I knew it was being misinterpreted! My ego's image as an anti-God feels it needs to assert it's position, lest it be annihilated! All the ego has is it's image. No wonder it freaks out so easily!

HILARIOUS! Once you begin to see the ego in yourself (and others), you start to take shit like this less seriously. It's so automatic, yet ephemeral. Humans are losing their "ego control" on the daily (crises motivated, yes, but it's happening).

What's cool is that over the years, I've been detaching from my ego's control, and am seeing results. These days, when I hear the word "God" come out of a spiritual / motivational speaker, my knee-jerk response doesn't have the power to shut me down inside. There's still a twinge of "eek", but - since I don't let my ego's interpretation of things drive my life - it's a fleeting eek. Those are harmless :)

If you, too, are embarking on the spiritual path and find yourself stumbling on the word "God" (or struggle with bits and pieces of dubious information seemingly credible people share), take what works for you and leave behind what doesn't. After moving to LA in 2010, I decided that I wouldn't "think outside the box". I got rid of the damn box.  THERE'S NO BOX! Let limitations be a thing of the past and know your internal discernment will sniff out bull shit easily. You don't need to be on the defensive listening to visionaries speak. To this day, I don't subscribe to ANYTHING anyone says. If something feels right intuitively, I go with it. Things shift so frequently, holding onto ANYTHING as truth is limiting.

Except for love.

Like REAL love.

That's timeless :)

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