I know the last post was kind of out there. I've been struggling with how to write what's in my head for weeks.
I've always looked at the God question like it was black and white. Either one believes or one does not. Of course there are those who question but don't completely deny, but that's not what I mean. What I'm trying to say is that believing isn't the end of the story. There are infinite levels of God.
I know my definition of God is not exactly mainstream. I think of God as everything. Our world and every other planet, the sun and every other star, every living thing and all matter and all the spaces in between, every breath of time and any other thing one can imagine and all the things we can't fathom. It is all God.
By my definition, God is as big as the universe and as small as the smallest speck. God isn't only all around us and within us. We are God, just as everything is.
I've been reading a lot of spiritual literature. Some of it is Eastern (Most recently, Buddhist) and some of it is Western (like the religions we are more familiar with in this country - from Judeism and Christianity to Islam). I have a hard time picking one philisophy -one path - because they all seem the same to me. I try to look beyond the rules, the various slants placed on the concepts by well-meaning individuals, as best as I can. When I take off the layer of bias I find the same thing written again and again.
I found God when I was very young. I didn't call it God - I'd never heard the word. No one told me about God or religion because it was my parents decision that we would be raised without any of it - that we would "figure it out on our own" and decide for ourselves.
I've often hated that decision. I felt so unconnected to other people, so isolated, because everyone else seemed to have some belief - even if it was atheism - and I had nothing. I so wanted to be part of it - to belong in a church or temple or somewhere....
I've come to appreciate my unique position on God. Because I was not told anything, I know God is real. I know it in a way I might not if it was only something I was told. This is because I really did figure it out on my own.
I was three or four years old. I was supposed to be taking a nap, but I wasn't sleepy. I was in the "nap room," a small room downstairs near where my mother watched TV in the afternoons. I was lying on the day bed and I was not to get up until my mother came to get me.
Wide awake, my mind was active and wandering and then
suddenly
something popped into my head. I don't know where it came from, or what led me to see it, but a pattern seemed to appear in my mind and somehow it seemed important. If I had known the word profound, that would have been a perfect description of how I felt about this simple pattern.
In my mind, the pattern wasn't attached to anything concrete. I have spent a lot of my life trying to make the pattern more explanable - to make it into something that could be seen or heard or understood - but it is really hard to put it into an image or music or words.
Regardless, I'm going to try to explain it.
Imagine that the pattern is just two things - black and white, for instance. The pattern would look like this:
black white white black
That's it. Just one thing, another thing, the second thing repeated and then the first again. That was what I saw in my head. Simple yes, but for some reason it felt profoundly important. I didn't understand why it seemed important, but right off the bat I loved the pattern because it was balanced. It wasn't immediately going from black to white, like walking from the left foot to the right foot, but it was still balanced in the end.
I thought about the pattern as I lay in that bed, and I thought - I could make it bigger:
black white white black
white black black white
white black black white
black white white black
I was delighted with this bigger pattern. I expanded it out another level
black white white black
white black black white
white black black white
black white white black
white black black white
black white white black
black white white black
white black black white
white black black white
black white white black
black white white black
white black black white
black white white black
white black black white
white black black white
black white white black
It took me a while to get it right. I kept losing my place as I tried to imagine the pattern moving from the first to the second thing and then switching it when it was supposed to. When I finally got it right I could almost see it in my mind. It was like a pattern of light and dark and it seemed perfect.
It was in that moment that I understood something else - the pattern could go on forever! I could keep expanding it, making it bigger and bigger and the tiniest portion would still be there, perfectly balanced, inside the bigger and bigger pattern, no matter how big it got. I had never heard the words "god" or "eternity" or "infinity" - but somehow, this pattern made me realize that everything can go on and on, that the universe is infinite and that all the things within it are also perfectly balanced and eternal.
About a year later, I was staying with my grandparents and they took me to church. As per my father's instructions, they did not talk to me about God or religion, even as they dragged me off with them that Sunday morning. It was what they did - attend church every Sunday - and so I had to go along, but they said nothing to me about it except, "Come on, we're going to church." Even when I asked, my questions were pushed aside.
I sat in the pew next to my grandmother and listened carefully to what the preacher was saying. It clicked. I understood that what they were calling "God" and "Jesus" was like my pattern. He must have said something like "never ending" and somehow I put it together.
Since no one was telling me anything, I assumed the God in that church was not for me. I wasn't supposed to know, that much I understood. It was their God. Their God was in that building and the books and the songs and the words the preacher was saying. That's why my grandparents went every week - so they could be connected with their God.
I decided the pattern my God. I didn't tell anyone about it because I didn't want it to be taken away from me. For some reason I was not suppose to know about God, but I did because of that pattern. My never ending pattern helped me understand God, but I kept it secret for most of my life, even as I tried to put the pattern into music and drawings and poetry.
When I would "disappear" into a dissociated state, it was my pattern I focused on. I could get completely lost in it when things were stressful. I would let my pattern take me away and keep me safe. I didn't call it God, but it was my God. It was my safety, my sanctuary, a place where I knew I would always exist no matter what.
Recently, I've had a new kind of spiritual opening. I wrote about my experience with the deer here. After that experience, I freaked out. I began to be very afraid of God because I suddenly understood it wasn't black and white at all. There were levels of "God" and it felt as if I was moving into a new level.
I began to think of what it had taken for me to understand God in the first place - all the pain of my childhood, all the awful things I had to endure - had brought me to the level of understanding I had up to now. I never would have understood it if I hadn't needed it so much.
So I began to wonder what would be required of me to move into this next "level of God"?
My logic was flawed here, but I didn't see it. I only saw my fear. I thought of what I'd given up as a child and then I began to ask myself what I was willing to give up now to attain this new kind of understanding. My life? Yes... I could do that. My health? That's harder, but I could do that if I had to. As I went down the line of those things I value most, I came to my children.
I am not willing to sacrifice anything to do with them. Not my relationship with them, not the health of any one of them or certainly not their lives.
I thought, NO! There are things I will not give up! If this is what I have to do then I don't want it.
I cut off all connection with God for over two weeks. I did not pray or meditate or look inward or do anything that might bring on the kind of stillness that would suddenly bring God back into focus. I was drinking a lot, and not sleeping much at all. My life was spinning out of control so fast that I couldn't even see it.
Then, a moment of stillness came from out of nowhere. In that moment - clearly and perfectly - I knew that I was safe. God isn't going to ask anything more of me in order for me to move into this new level. I'm already awake! I'm already on a path and it can only lead to one place. The things that happen in my children's lives are their lessons to learn. They will happen for reasons I can't know whether I turn towards God or turn away.
So I'm moving forward. I don't know where it will take me. I don't even know who out there will understand what I'm writing here - I hardly understand it myself. Gradually I've been unraveling this truth for the last week. I've spent a lot of time on images that try to bring this pattern into clarity - and I gave up for a day because it is not possible.
However, then I realized that even though I can't perfectly express this pattern in any two-dimensional drawing, it was bringing me closer to understanding in my mind with each drawing I did.
I could do them forever, but I decided to go ten levels and stop. It would be so easy to fall into it obsessively so I had to set a limit. I'm going to post the ten levels drawing here... for anyone who is following this and interested. Maybe now that I have this down here I can get back to living my life.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
It can go on infinitely. If they were really properly portrayed, they would get bigger left, right, up and down, exponentially. In addition, they would also expand in depth from one layer, to four, to sixteen - and so one.
Because I couldn't resist (and I really am going to stop now) I did an eleventh one. If the level one image is "4" (because it has four dots) the following image would be expressed with this number, according to my calculator; 1.04438888143152506691752710716E+1233 - and that's only if it stays a two-dimensional object! To get the real size you would have to multiply the above number by itself...
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