God Is….

By Magdalen Bowyer

Growing up there was a small calendar on our kitchen wall with daily tear away pages upon which were written Bible verse. Each morning my father would stand before the calendar which hung at his eye level for ease of reading, and he’d pause before the day ahead of him to contemplate the calendar’s teaching. His humble spiritual practice remains to this day.

I, too, have a humble spiritual practice that begins every day, and I wonder if the seed for it was planted unconsciously by watching my father.

Now many of you may stop reading at this point because to speak about the Bible or religion isn’t very fashionable these days. But I say let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water because the study of religion is nothing more or less than the study of human history. It’s a projection of our own evolution. It’s all story!

To not throw the baby out with the bath water would demand we capture the truth in any of these teachings because what is true is always true, not sometimes true. It is true today and will be true one thousand years from now. And at the level of truth, all truth is equal. This is where I’m suggesting we go — a restoration project to reclaim true power. (And yes there is a true power for those of you reading who don’t like my use of absolutes. True power is of the Divine.)

Human beings have been floating in an upside-down boat for a long while now and the time has come to turn right-side-up. The only way to do this is to anchor into truth. So let’s start with this: the Divine needs no religion, no holy book, no church, synagogue, mosque, or temple. The Divine simply is whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not.

Now a lot of folks these days don’t want to use the word God because it’s so loaded with dark human history it conjures up all kinds of horrors. I understand this. And I think it’s time to put the sacred back into our language so we might position ourselves correctly in relationship to all of life.

God is the energy of the universe as consciousness brought into manifestation through love. Therefore God is as all things.

To deny God exists, denies love. And herein lies the error and the horror of human beings. Denial of the Divine grants people permission to misbehave. Well, the good news is that Life Itself will teach human beings and eventually it’ll all get sorted out. But it doesn’t need to be as painful as many would have it be if the sacred was seen for what it is.

To see the Divine in all things would demand better behaviour, wiser stewardship, and kind acts from people. For even though human beings are complex, living life really isn’t that complicated. All beings need to eat, sleep, make, and move. That said, all beings emerge from family trees hidden in a wealth of diversity, and when we dig down deep enough, guess what happens? We come upon the same root of causal ground that predates race, which is a human invention, and all other social constructions that have come along the way. In other words, we are more than who we identify as and the more that we are is of God.

So now that we know where complexity lives, let us get back to basics, shall we? Let us remember all things are of the Divine, as the Divine, for the Divine in all things. Nobody or no thing is excluded. We never deny the pain and the suffering we have lived and are living to this day. We honour it and move beyond it in love. But to deny the Divine in anything or anyone is heresy.

 I dare you to take a walk in your neighbourhood or out along the countryside today, and intend to see God in all you encounter. Try it! You might meet the Judge in yourself, or the Negative Nellie, or the Fearful one, or the Entitled, Disobedient, Rebellious, Controlling one. Because you’re only every projecting your own self-assessment out onto the world you see. It’s all you! And it’s time to wake up. God is everywhere in everyone and you are as God. So the work at hand is to see God, and to be as God in love, in truth.

Welcome home.

Now be kind to yourself, and to all you meet.

Get your own version of my father’s calendar and pause before you greet the day you’ve been given. Humble yourself and hold your power so you might use it wisely. For whatever you do will indeed come back to you.

One day you’ll thank me for reminding you of the truth.

God is.