After a successful day at the ‘Day Club’ helping all those ‘old people’, I told Ulf that God would be very happy with him and appreciates the help. Ulf said, you really think so? What’s God’s last name so I can look up his phone number and call him? I said God is not like a person with an office but is everywhere. Ulf had a hard time with that one, saying “like in the air?”.
In talking with my friend Fay Richards about Ulf’s comments, she shared a story about her daughter. I quote: “When Vali, was about 3 years old, she had heard about something called “god”. Since I don’t do religion, I’d told her God was what lives inside of everything that is. She asked, “Can we see it?” I said, “Perhaps, if you really look for it”. Later, she came running into the house and with breathless excitement announced, “I just found where God lives!” We raced to our sunny Florida back yard and she pointed to a young banana plant. “Here, look!” Truly, there was, at the base of the concentric leaves, a magical golden-green light that glowed when viewed from above. “Yes,” I said, “that’s what God can look like”.
We often use words automatically without realizing what the real meaning is for us. Especially words like God, death, love, Heaven, Hell, eternity, plus lots of other words that have been used to try and explain something we don’t remotely understand. We know when we die, we are not ‘alive’ and don’t move around any more. We know that love seems to come and go. We are told about pearly gates and flaming furnaces. In some religious culture, God is judgmental, punitive, vengeful and demanding our allegiance. He is described as a man with a long gray beard who is all powerful. In other cultures the sun represented that power. The Greeks had their mythological gods. Every culture has had a symbol that represents something more powerful than humans. Probably because we can look up at the sky and at the horizon and figure out that there is something going on that is larger than we are. In fact as human beings, we often use our bodies to create the illusion of power that can result in the age old conflict of opposition to others either individually or collectively in war. The degree of opposition is irrelevant. It all has the same purpose. That creation of a false power, or ‘god’, is what can block our experience of a gentle, loving God. A Course in Miracles (acim.org) says, “The memory of God comes to the quiet mind. It cannot come where there is conflict, for a mind at war against itself remembers not eternal gentleness.”
Now try to imagine someone like Ulf, who might as well have just arrived on this planet, trying to understand any non-physical, abstract concept like ‘God’. This has really gotten my attention as I have tried to explain the concept of ‘God’ to Ulf, who is still not understanding why he can’t just phone him. I also have enlist ‘God’ to travel with me on this journey. My concept, however, is probably more the ‘other dimensional’ variety that I don’t put a face to, which would denote a human being, something familiar. As I have told Ulf, God is the loving feeling you have that you want to share with others. That’s what happens when you invite God’s energy to join your energy. Ulf sort of gets that one because it is a direct experience of feeling.
The fact that Ulf, in this twist of fate, has become a stranger to himself, is a reminder to all of us of the impermanence of our identity and the confusion that follows as our perception of our self changes. So now it’s not only, “Who is God” but “Who am I”. Whatever prior relationship Ulf had with God has changed because he has changed and this has created conflict and struggling with “who is in charge”!
So I guess it all comes down to belief. I can believe anything is true but that may not make it true for you. For instance, if I had a ‘Near Death’ experience or was beamed up onto a space ship and someone told me that didn’t happen, I think I’d be more than a little put off. We can have a direct experience that reinforces the belief in what is truth for us. Belief, whether conscious or unconscious, positive or negative can determine our experience. We are all on a learning, or as the Course describes, an unlearning process in which we are invited to change our ‘mind’ ie belief, about who and what we are in this reality. The Course says, in God’s vision we are all One, Joined and Connected. Isn’t this just all about ‘reconnecting’ with something we only imagined we were ever disconnected. Hey, I think I’m on to something! Maybe I should tell Ulf that God’s last name is Hamilton and they are somehow related!!!
God Hamilton
Copyright 2010 Beverly Hamilton
Tags: A Course in Miracles, Adult Senility, Dementia, Memory Loss, talking to God
March 24, 2010 at 9:01 pm |
I’m so glad to hear that I am related to God!
Another wonderful post. Thank you for the thoughtful insights in Dad’s journey.
March 24, 2010 at 11:24 pm |
I’m wondering if my “feeling” as if I am a part of the Bev/Ulf clan gets me into that inner circle…….God knows I guess!!!!
Wonderful blog Bev. The story about Ulf not understanding about God felt so poignant and real. For a few minutes the Pacific wasn’t between us and I was present, listening to your insights from a comfy position on your couch in the living room.
March 25, 2010 at 12:43 am |
Oh, if only Ulf could see that he doesn’t need to ring God – he’s already with God, because he never left. On one level I see the process that Ulf’s going through as ‘proof’ that ‘we’ are not who we think we are. We give such meaning to things of this world and the prospect of ‘losing’ what we believe was our ‘special’ personality/identity can be petrifying – yet it is all just an illusion. We never were that person with that job/career/skill/specialty – we never left our Home in God – but generally we don’t have that tested – we have the ‘luxury’ of being able to pretend that we are this person, with this personality and this background/education/profession/skills/talents/whatever – and yes perhaps eventually we all lose our ‘marbles’ – but we still believe that what we thought we ‘were’ really did exist.
Because of the experience I had which brought me to your blog, I was forced to face the prospect of ‘losing my identity’ and I can tell you it was scary, as you know – particularly seeing the fear/confusion/pity in others’ eyes – or was that just a reflection of my own? However, at some level it made me ask the questions that I’d been confronting whilst studying The Course – and although I appear to have ‘normalised’ in terms of my memory etc, it has ‘helped’ me to confront the question of ‘who am I?’ – again!! Of course there is no ‘I’ – and whilst no doubt I may ‘know it’s true’ but am not be able to ‘believe it’ because of the resistence that we all have to letting go of our belief in the illusion that we really are a ‘special’ person – yet when I read of Ulf I feel such a longing for him to ‘know’ that ‘he’ is who he always was – and what he thinks he’s losing was only ever an illusion.
From Lesson 182 of The Course:
“This world you seem to live in is not home to you. And somewhere in your mind you know that this is true. A memory of home keeps haunting you, as if there were a place that called you to return, although you do not recognize the voice, nor what it is the voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel an alien here, from somewhere all unknown. Nothing so definite that you could say with certainty you are an exile here. Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not more than a tiny throb, at other times hardly remembered, actively dismissed, but surely to return to mind again.
No one but knows whereof we speak. Yet some try to put by their suffering in games they play to occupy their time, and keep their sadness from them. Others will deny that they are sad, and do not recognize their tears at all. Still others will maintain that what we speak of is illusion, not to be considered more than but a dream. Yet who, in simple honesty, without defensiveness and self-deception, would deny he understands the words we speak?”