Chapter Twelve       Where is God
Where in the Physical Universe Do You Go to Find God?

T.L.C.   Can we go back to the issue of experiencing God within ourselves.***ps-12-1     

T.L.C.   Acknowledging and accessing God within one's self is a spiritual concept not a religious one.***ps-12-2   Finding God within one's self  is an expression personal sovereignty.   Church leaders need dependent people.   They need followers.   

Big D    Stoney, is there a question there, somewhere?

T.L.C.   For the fundamentalist Christian leaders to  acknowledge and focus on a God within each and every one of us is all but blasphemy.   Such behavior would deny their present beliefs about God and would radically alter the relationship between the Church leaders and the people.   

Big D    I see you've been doing your homework.  

T.L.C.   Yes, I have.

Big D    But you miss the main point.   

T.L.C.   What's that?   

Big D    You just said it.   Major change!   The most vital and critically important  thing that churches need is a radically different relationship between the leaders and the followers. 

Big D    Humanity has reached a critical stage in it's evolution.   That stage is Wake Up or Die.***ps-12-3    The survival of you species is dependent upon people finding and following the truth.   Church leaders  have been denying the truth for centuries.   As a result, people have been living in dysfunctional fairytales since the caveman days.    Those illusions have produced behaviors that, due to the gross, human overpopulation, are, today,  literally destroying the Earth's capacity to support human life.   

         God is the ultimate mystery of life and yet the leaders in most major religions keep telling their followers about what God is, how God functions and what God wants everyone to do.   They've made up divisive, dysfunctional stories***ps-12-4  and claim them to be the absolute truth, then set out to damage, destroy, or even kill those who don't believe the story.    Even the Christian Bible clearly states the humans cannot know how God functions.***ps-12-5

         Then they proclaim themselves to be right and declare that because they are right, everyone else is wrong.    

T.L.C.   Are you saying that their claim of exclusive access to the truth is amplifying the environmental problems?

Big D    Definitely yes!   That's classic dysfunctional, black or white, either/or thinking.   They say,   "We are right, therefore you are wrong;."     

         Because someone is right that does not mean that others are wrong.    That’s like the two kids who argued over what constitutes a million dollars.   One said it’s a thousand thousand and the other said no, it’s ten hundred thousand.   

T.L.C.   Seeing the truth in your example  is easy.   They were using different words to describe the same thing, so they were both right. 

Big D    Exactly.   The same principle applies to the children in adult bodies talking about God.  

T.L.C.   By "children in adult bodies" do you mean spiritually immature adults?

Big D    Yes, I'm referring to adults with childish beliefs about God.   The adult perspective is that everybody’s always right within their own limited perspective.   The problem lies in the denial that others, who view the same thing from a different vantage point, could also be right.   

T.L.C.   So the issue is one of perspective?  

Big D    Yes, and also one of allowing.   It’s an issue of perspective, in that everybody sees only a part of the world, and they see that portion from their own unique location and within their own belief system.***ps-12-5a   Their perspective is also heavily influenced by their personal experiences.   All this together, creates a personal point of view. 

         And, it’s an issue of allowing, since fighting over whether the glass is half full or half empty is, to say the least, rather pointless. 

T.L.C.   But sameness is not always that obvious.  

Big D    All the more reason to allow others their differences.   Now, getting back to your statement that if church leaders acknowledged a God-within that doing so would deny their present God.   

         The answer to that it absolutely would not!   It would change their perspective of who or what God is, but it certainly would not deny the existence of God.   What it would do is shine new light on some present beliefs about God.   I’ll give you an example from human life to use as an analogy.   

         Suppose you meet a woman from another part of the world and together you develop an intimate, loving relationship.   After two years of being together, you decide to fly half way around the world to meet her family and to see the culture she grew up in.   During your visit, you learn many new things about your beloved.   Does this new-to-you information deny who she is now? 

T.L.C.   No, of course not. 

Big D    In this example, the new information rounds out your view of her character; it gives you a bigger picture of who and what she is.   Well, the same thing applies to meeting the God-within.   You get a bigger picture of God, in this case, a bigger picture of who and what you are. 

         And, another thing.    Where do Christians go to meet God?   

T.L.C.   To church, or into their closets, I guess.   I hadn’t really ever given any thought to that question.   

Big D    Well, I have.   If God is, as the Christians says He is, all-knowing, all-powerful and all-present, then God is everything and everywhere, so how could it possibly matter where you go to connect to Him?   

T.L.C.   Well, if you look at it that way, I guess it doesn’t. 

Big D    What looking within has to offer is simply an additional view of God. 

There’s only one, infinite, ultimate Source.   Humans call that source God.   There are thousands, if not millions of way to connect to God.   Since each of you is an aspect of God in physical form, you could easily say there are billions of ways to connect to God. 

         Adding a new piece of information to what you presently know as reality does not make your old ways wrong.   It does not make any present religions wrong either.   It merely adds a new dimension to them.   It makes the picture bigger, brighter, and more joyful.   It adds another piece of truth to human consciousness.   It invites re-evaluation of the pieces that aren’t presently working very well.***ps-12-4^  It offers great potential to see and experience a clearer connection to God.   It's actually the key to human survival.   

T.L.C.   Why do you say that?   

Big D    Because life as humans presently know it is not sustainable.***ps-12-3^   To continue the present behavior is guaranteed to produce disastrous, deadly consequences.

         Let me ask you this, “Who among you does not want a clearer connection to God?”***ps-12-6       

T.L.C.   Nobody that I know of. 

Big D    But, unfortunately, few will see clearly enough to choose God over glitter. 

T.L.C.   Why’s that? 

Big D    Because most people have the ability to see only what is or what was.   To look at what can be is usually rather frightening. 

T.L.C.   Why? 

Big D    Because to grasp what can be, you must let go of what is.   It actually takes great courage, or great foolhardiness, to willingly let go of what is and step into the unknown.   Most people believe anything unknown will almost always be worse than what is.   Because that’s what they believe and expect, that’s what they get. 

T.L.C.   It sounds like you’re making these people wrong for being who they are.   

Big D    They are definitely not wrong.   Saying someone else is right or wrong is a finger-pointing, subjective judgment about his or her beliefs or actions.   In the greater reality, nothing is right or wrong.   Decisions are simply choices that result in either joyful or painful consequences.   

         In seeking God, the anti-abortionists are definitely on the right track; however, the missing pieces in their belief system bring them partial truths which they simply proclaim to be whole truth.***ps-12-7   

         These unexamined, partial truths lead to rather inaccurate assumptions and misleading conclusions, and these self-proclaimed conclusions are the bases upon which they oppose sex and abortion rights.***ps-12-8     

         Later, I’ll share with you the steps required to reach a goal.   For now, I’ll just say that one of those steps is to analyze the consequences of one’s actions and then, when necessary, to make a mid-course correction.   That’s the piece the anti-abortionists are missing.***ps-12-9      

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The Story Continues in Chapter Thirteen`    

Interview with The Devil  --  Table of Contents`