Immediately after my divorce, I felt I had lost my way. To get back on track I took a couple of courses at our local “Center for Spiritual Living” church. I knew it would be a safe place to clear up the negative emotions and replace them with higher minded thinking. One of the assignments was to write an essay on “Who is God”. I didn’t want to write the kind of answers (omnipresent, intelligent source, love, etc.), that seemed obvious but too generic.
I sat down at my computer and found that I couldn’t think of anything. Really, “Who is God”, I thought. It took me three days to write the following essay. This was in between a lot of reflection and sobbing. Trying to explain my perception of who I thought God to be was quite difficult. But in the process of doing it, it clarified my realization that God (Allah, Krishna etc.) is never further than the breath I breathe.
GOD (to me)
God is the Compassion that allowed me to forgive my ex-husband long before my ‘Lucy’ personality had been ready. I was adamant that I wanted him to suffer as I had, after years of inflicting mental and emotional abuse upon me. Even after my ex acknowledged the errors of his ways, I was still too angry and resentful to let him off the hook; it was just six months that the divorce had been finalized when the apologies began.
Then the news came that he had an enlarged heart and blocked arteries and had to return to Italy to receive treatment. The day before he left, he stood in front of me sobbing, asking for my forgiveness. With every fiber of my being, I wanted him to suffer for, oh let’s say ten years. But as I stood, coldly staring at him, the thought came to me that nobody, not even him, should go to his or her deathbed (if that were to be) with guilt in his heart. The only way to free him was to tell him that I forgave him. I realized however, that I could not do this alone. Inside of myself I asked God, “ Please give me the strength just to say the words that D. needs to hear so that he will be at peace”.
I grabbed his hands in mine, “Ti perdona” (which means ‘ I pardon you’ or ‘ I forgive you’, in Italian). Not a nano second later, the burden of carrying the weight of all the anger, pain, and resentment I had been holding on to was immediately lifted from my body and heart. In that moment I realized what the power of forgiveness really meant. My intention had been to help D. heal and be free of his past mistakes, and by helping him, I was healed and freed.
God’s power still frightens me because of the immediate effect it had upon me, it was so beyond my control. Yes, I know, control is an illusion, but the human side of us still likes to believe we have somewhat control of our affairs. I mean, God doesn’t balance my checkbooks.
To me, God cannot be defined by words but through experiences. When I was twenty-two years old, my friend went into cardiac arrest as a result of dieting. I tried administering CPR, but was not successful in reviving her. I learned then who was really in control, and it certainly was not me. Going through that intense experience at such a young age changed my perspective of life. I began to embrace life to the fullest, to live every moment of every day with gratitude and awe as I watched God’s Plan play out.
Because my view of the world had changed, my relationships with people also changed. I was able to recognize others whose lives had been dramatically shifted by circumstances beyond their control and that had surrendered themselves to a Higher Power. The details of our human traumas may have come in different forms but the result was the same. Stripped of the illusion of control, we all seemed to arrive at the same conclusion. LOVE is to be realized and expressed because we are each an individualized creation from the Mind of God.
Who is God? God cannot be confined to words alone. God is the energy that binds things, seen and unseen, into a cohesive unity. God is absolutely ev-er-y-thing. God is the salty tears of joy and pain. God is the comfort that removes the pain and doubt from our human limited vantage. God is the question, and the answer. God is the Knowing. God is the reason why a female trout instinctively releases her eggs after being reeled in by the fisherman. God is continuation; perpetual motion, flow, expansion.
God is the transparency of two lover’s hearts; conscious emotion expressed in the physical human form, shared and experienced in the awareness of pure intentional love. An extraordinary, rare and precious gift for surrendering to truth, honesty, and Life Itself.
To each person, God is something different; yet God is Everything. It is our own limitations that confine or define the essence of God. As we grow in consciousness, our awareness of God will undoubtedly change. This Creative Intelligence, which manifests and brings to form and animation All of Life, is changeless and timeless.
God is Love. God is Now. God IS.
Live Purposely,
Lucy
