originally written on 2-15-2010
Last Monday we had our BYO Spiritual Topic night, and someone brought up this question: “If God is everything, and God is good, is it all good?” What about the hurricanes, terrorism, famine, etc.? This is not the type of question that can be all neatly wrapped up in a nice answer package. It’s the kind of question that invites us into a chamber of other questions, like “Who or what is God?” and “My cat was attacked- it doesn’t look good to me,” and “What is the nature of good?” Is good defined as that which is pleasing or is it something else? I see good not as pleasing, or even my first conscious choice, but more of an indication of a balanced, aligned and orderly universe.
For those of us who strive and sometimes struggle to see everything as good, the longing is to be able to have a felt sense of that reality so we can move peaceably through our day- to have a deep knowing that everything is connected and never out of balance, so we can be relieved of the effort of convincing ourselves over and over. Having a felt sense of the order and believing it is good must bring us to a feeling of peacefulness and therefore change our reality.
As we prayed at the end of the evening, we were lifted up by knowing we can bring forth the deep and compelling questions and be engaged, supported, encouraged, and witnessed by the group without having to figure it all out. Staying in the question was as powerful as walking away with an answer. We don’t have to have the answers to participate in divine grace, or to experience the loving arms of that which created us as always around us. We don’t need the answers to know we have all that we need inside us to deepen our faith and belief that we live in a field of infinite possibility.
All things exist because we first have them as an idea. Just as starvation exists because we have the concept of it, so will world peace, unconditional love, and global forgiveness exist when we won’t see anything else.
There’s a Buddhist story where the teacher asks her students: “What does the master do when he meets the tiger on the path in the jungle?” One student says, “He pulls his sword and kills him.” Another answers, “He calmly walks away.” Another student answers, “He sits down and meditates.” The teacher says, “There is no tiger. The master would not have created one.”
How do we create the consciousness of knowing Oneness every day? Practice.
