Your God or mine?

Years ago I happened to meet the mother of a childhood classmate. We hit it off immediately, and sometimes we enjoyed coffee together. The lady was a Christian, and we had wonderful conversations. We understood each other, and the discussions we had steadily became deeper and more profound.

Until, one day, she looked very sternly at me while eating her cookie, and said: “Marja, you are from the devil!” I almost choked on my coffee, and stared at her, not believing what I had just heard. I thought she had made a joke. But no …gone was the good feeling. The lady almost snatched the coffee cup from my hands. “Yes, because you do not believe that Jesus is the only way.” And that was the end of our dialogues. The cookies were finished, too.

And then there were the great discussions I had with a woman who worshipped Krishna. We had such a lot in common, and we were floating blissfully together on billowing waves of spirituality, until she pointed a threatening finger at me and said: “You have to see Krishna as God, else there’s something very wrong with your spirituality!”

I became acquainted with all sorts of schools of thought and religious denominations: the one prohibited sex and onions, the other proscribed eating meat on Fridays. Yet another ordered the refrigerator-light to be covered with tape on Saturdays. According to reports, God told the one that he had to bow to the East during prayer. The other, however, was ordered to meditate, not pray. Some had to do this five times a day, and others had to do it three times daily. Some were not allowed to shake a woman’s hand, while others were ordered to do so.

Once two Buddhist lady friends looked at me pityingly, and said that regretfully, I hadn’t progressed very far on the spiritual path, because I had not let go of God. So what must one do then? What is actually the truth?

Imagine this: you finally arrive home after this life, and stand before The Lord God. He looks angrily at you and snarls: “On March 2, 1988, you ate an onion!” Or: “You have not covered the refrigerator-light with tape on February 3, 2004!”  “You had sex on Saturday, December 10! Shame on you!”

“You bowed too much to the South on March 2, 2005, and you believed in me until the very end, while you actually had to let me go long before that!”

Within and outside of all these movements I encounter people who are not so fussy about these rules and regulations, and who keep their hearts wide open.

Genuine warmth radiates from them. I see atheists who emanate the same warmth and love, helping fellow souls in the most terrible and inhospitable regions. I meet perfectly ordinary people who, while just relaxing on a bench in the park, pass on to others the most wonderful pearls of life’s wisdom, not ordinarily found in books. People who, having been baptized or circumcised or not at all, spread around love and light nevertheless.

Rules, regulations ands rituals are just ways and means to experience the connection with The Creator. If, however, they are allowed to become the principal part, they will become a blockade.

I know people who are terrified after they have broken a rule. And there is always someone who sets himself up as the stern and enraged judge, God’s representative on earth. If we are hurt “in the name of God” it is actually our own ego that has been hurt. We then use God as a kind of tool within our own inner strife, making Him a caricature of our own wounded ego. In reality, God cannot be insulted if we happen to violate a rule or if we make fun of Him.

Muslims are offended because of certain cartoons, and others are just as offended because the Muslims won’t put up with it. So we are all being offended together, and believe that we alone have the most right to claim victimhood.

God or Allah, The Source, or whatever you choose to call Him or Her, is Love. Fear blocks the experience of love. That love and that power are always there for us…we may just allow it to flow through us, and we may utilize it, and pass it on to others. This process goes on eternally. Sometimes we forget, and don’t quite remember where the door is anymore. The door, if we find it again, we have just to knock. And how exactly to knock …well, that up to us entirely.

There is a wonderful Sufi-story, which touches me deeply every time I hear or read it: a guru gives his disciple a mantra, and then sends him off to an unpopulated island.  Twenty years afterwards, the guru boards a small boat, and rows to the island to find out how his disciple is coming along. He finds the monk sitting in front of a cave, repeating his mantra over and over again. “Oh, no,” the guru exclaims shocked. “You’re saying the mantra all wrong!” “Oh my goodness,” replies the monk, “What was the mantra again?” The guru then gives the correct mantra, and orders his disciple to start all over again from the beginning. In a state of dejection, the guru boards his boat and rows away from the island. After quite some time, he hears a sound behind him … “Splash, splash!” The guru turns around, only to see the monk running to him over the waves, shouting: “Say, what was that mantra again?”

I once saw a picture, on which God is shown as a bright sun, radiating his love and light in every direction. Human beings are pulling at him with long ropes from all sides while shouting: “He belongs to us!” “No, he’s ours!”. God doesn’t pay any attention to the commotion and calmly continues to project his rays to all around. Without any exception!

Translation: Ramon Vermij