The God Box

A question I usually confront myself with when assessing my religious views is, “What is my God box?” What is a God box? A God box is an individual’s current image of God and everything that God is.  For instance, a simple example would be a God in a toga, who looks like Zeus and lounges on top of a cloud throwing lightning bolts. This God answers your prayers and controls every facet of the universe. Many of us have shared this God box before.  Another God box would be “God is Love”.  In this image, God is more than just a concrete being. He transcends reality and becomes a concept as well. Depending on how you say “God is Love”, this could be seen as a more mature God box. These two examples are what I meant by  ”God box”.

My God box is constantly under evaluation, constantly evolving. Currently I see God as many things: He is the omnipotent father of all things, He is the historical/spiritual Jesus, and It is a spiritual entity that is nebulous in nature and can only be described by what It is not. This could be referred to as the Trinity. My God box is meshed with the concepts and realities of Allah and Buddha, not because I extract what I like from each religion to make my own “cafeteria-style” religion, but because I see how they are the same.  I say He is Love, but I don’t say it like others usually do. My image of God is One who does not do what you ask of Him. He helps you, but not in the way you often want. His will is beyond our will, implemented on behalf of not only our own sakes but everything else’s.

The best way to describe it is the will of a doctor and the will of a patient. We ask the doctor to cure us of our ailments. He cuts us up, he tears things out, he gives us pills. We go through all this invasive treatment with promise of feeling better… and at the end of the day we still feel nauseous and dizzy. Our sutures burn with pain, our insides are roiling inside of us, and the adverse effects of the medication makes us feel even worse. “How does this make me feel better?” the patient asks. The patient and the doctor shared the same goal in curing an ailment, but there was a difference in wills. The patient’s will was to be comfortable. To FEEL better. The doctor’s was to actually fix the problem. The patient was looking for instant gratification while the doctor was addressing the immediate medical priority AND the long term health of the patient. The doctor’s will may not be immediately inherent, but when you stand back and look at what all is going on and also realize that he is not just diagnosing you but hundreds of others don’t you think that what the doctor provided the patient was ultimately more beneficial than what was asked for? Trying to keep myself from writing a novel of a blog, this is the best I can describe what I see God as right now. There’s so much more to God than what I can describe at any point in time.

That’s what determines the scope of my God box: my ability to intuit God. My God box only exists to break God into digestible, bite-size pieces. It’s like a television, which is only capable of showing you what is able to fit onto film. What you see on the screen implies so much more, but you are not able to experience it in its entirety. As time passes, my God box seems to grow bigger and bigger to accomodate for my rapidly expanding image of God, and with each passing evaluation He becomes harder to contain into a box. My God box becomes more strained as I stretch it out. So what is going to happen when it reaches it’s limit? Is it going to halt in it’s tracks? Or is it going to split at the seams and bottom out? Is it going to be too much for me and I’ll just give up on it all? The problem becomes more than just being able to find out what God is. It also becomes an issue of preparing myself to experience more of what He is. It becomes an issue of my integrity as a vessel for God.

And after all that is said and done, after we have established a God box…what does it matter? What was it’s purpose? All we did was construct an image of Him, we never found Him. Wasn’t the God box constructed to help us see God in His entirety? How does it do that by cutting it into pieces? How does it help us see the big picture when all it is capable of doing is showing us a small window into what God is? How can we know who God is by making up our own idea of Him? One thing we must be aware of when constructing this God box is that what we see in it IS NOT GOD. It is our projections that we place onto what we believe God is. What we see in the God box we are more than willing to name God Himself. As DeMello said in Awareness, “people fall into idolatry because they think that where God is concerned, the word is the thing.” We construct a description of who we think God is then we fall into the rut of worshipping that, forgetting that it was only a guess at who He is. DeMello wrote about how he was confronted by a world-renowned scripture scholar. “It never struck me that I had been an idol worshipper all my life! My idol was not made of wood or metal; it was a mental idol.” DeMello reminded his readers that those that had constructed their own mental idol were the more dangerous idol worshippers because “they used a very subtle substance, the mind to produce their God.”

Maybe I was never meant to contain God in a box. Maybe I wasn’t meant to contain Him within me, this body serving as a Temple. How could all of what God is be within me? Maybe I’ve been using the wrong word this whole time. I’m not a vessel, I’m a conduit. I am a channel through which He flows through. Right now, the God box seems irrelevant. My experience and my ideas of God right now have surpassed any words that I am capable of expressing right now.  Right now it doesn’t feel like I could fit what I’m feeling inside a box and I’m all the better for it.

Excerpt from Awareness by Anthony deMello

A little boy was walking along the bank of a river. He sees a crocodile who is trapped in a net. The crocodile says, “Would you hae pity on me and release me? I may look ugly, but it isn’t my fault, you know. I was made this way. But whatever my external appearance, I have a mother’s heart. I came this morning in search of food for my young ones and got caught in this trap!” So the boy says, “Ah, if I were to help you out of that trap, you’d grab me and kill me.” The crocodile asks, “Do you think I would do that to my benefactor and liberator?” So the boy is persuaded to take the net off and the crocodile grabs him.As he is being forced between the jaws of the crocodile, he says, “So this is what I get for my good actions?” And the crocodile says , “Well, don’t take it personally, son, this is the way the world is, this is the law of life.” The boy disputes this, so the crocodile says, “Do you want to ask someone if it isn’t so?”

The boys sees a bird sitting on a branch and says, “Bird, is what the crocodile says right?” The bird says, “The crocodile is right. Look at me. I was coming home one day with food for my fledglings. Imaine my horror to see a snake crawling up the tree, making straigt for my nest. I was totally helpless. It kept devouring my young ones, one after the other. I kept screaming and shouting, but it was useless. The crocodile is right, this is the law of life, this is the way the world is.”

“See,” says the crocodile. But the boy says, “Let me ask someone else.” So the crocodile says, “Well, all right, go ahead.” There was an old donkey passing by on the bank of the river. “Donkey,” says the boy, “this is what the crocodile says. Is the crocoile right?” The donkey says, “The crocodile is quite right. Look at me. I’ve worked and slaved for my master all my life and he barely gave me enough to eat. Now that I’m old and useless, he has turned me loose, and here I am wandering in the jungle, waiting for some wild beast to pounce on me and put an end to my life. The crocodile is right, this is the law of life, this is the way the world is.”

“See,” says the crocodile, “Let’s go!” The boy says, “Give me one more chance, one last chance. Let me ask one other being. Remember how good I was to you?” So the crocodile says, ” All right, your last chance.” The boy sees a rabbit passing by, and he says, “Rabbit, is the crocodile right?” The rabbit sits on his haunches and says to the crocodile, “Did you say that to that boy? The crocodile says, “Yes, I did.” “Wait a minute,” says the rabbit, “We’ve got to discuss this.”

“Yes,” says the croodile. But the rabbit says, “How can we discuss it when you’ve got that boy in your mouth? Release him; he’s got to take part in the discussion, too.” The crocodile says, “You’re a clever one, you are. The moment I release him, he’ll run away.” The rabbit says, “I thought you had more sense than that. If he attempted to run away, one slash of your tail would kill him.”

“Fair enough,” says the crocodile, and he released the boy. The moment the boy s release, the rabbit says, “Run!” And the boy runs and escapes. Then the rabbit says to the boy, “Don’t you enjoy crocodile flesh? Wouldn’t the people in your village like a good meal? You didn’t really release that crocodile; most of his body is still caught in that net. Why don’t you go to the village and bring everybody and have a banquet.” That’s exactly what the boy does. He goes to the village and calls all the menfolk. The come with their axes and staves and spears and kill the crocodile. The boy’s dog comes, too, and when the dog sees the rabbit, he gives chase, catches hold of the rabbit, and throttles him. The boy comes on the scene too late, and as he watches the rabbit die, he says, “The crocodile was right, this is the way the world is, this is the law of life.”

Manhood Survey

So I finally read The Oracle, the university newspaper at TTU. The editorial editor wrote an article on manhood. I saw nothing that had to do with manhood, just a lot of blaming man for the horrible world we live in, making good vs. evil a black and white issue, and discriminating against homossexuals. Regardless, I think you guys should read it. I’ve provided a link here: The World Sucks, It Is Someone’s Fault.

What does “manhood” look like? What does it mean to be a “real” man? What does it mean to be a manly man or a man’s man?

Manhood looks different with each person, specific to each man, because it’s more about what he does and less about what he looks like to others. For this reason, I don’t like the terms “manly man” or “man’s man”. Those type of men are trying to find affirmation based upon the regards of other men. I think it’s mindless. A real man isn’t defined by how he interacts with others; he defines himself.

What are some of the key attributes or characteristics of a “real” man?

A real man should always be searching, always looking for ways to better himself. He shouldn’t be afraid of being wrong, and should recognize when he is. Women are not beneath him, nor are they above him. He should not objectify women, either. Most importantly, a man should have his own values and be his own person. Sir Richard Francis
Burton put it perfectly: “Do what thy manhood bids thee do,/ From none but self expect applause;/ He noblest lives and noblest dies /Who makes and keeps his self-made laws.”

What does true manhood look like in the home and at work? What is the proper role of a man in the home, at work, and in the community?

I think a man should never make expectations of others that he wouldn’t fulfill himself. He should help out his own family and, while holding his family to a high standard, he should hold himself to a higher standard. That being said, housework isn’t something to be delegated to wives only. HELP HER OUT A LITTLE!  If he’s letting society determine what is right for him to do or not do, then he’s not thinking for himself. Work is not life, it’s just an aspect of it. It shouldn’t keep a man from spending time with his family or work on his own goals. However, work shouldn’t be seen as a vehicle for making money. He should apply himself to his work. Same with the community: he should apply himself for the benefit of others, not himself. The key here is balancing all these aspects of life.

When does a boy crossover and become a man? Is there a particular age or set of events that mark him as a man?

Manhood is relative to each individual, I’d say, so there is no specific age range or set of events that mark him as a man. Nor do I think it’s a singular event where one minute you’re a boy then BAM you’re a man. It’s a progression that lasts until a man dies. I do think, however, there is a landmark along the way from which it’s almost impossible to regress from. It’s seen as a series of intuitive leaps and personal experiences. He finds something he’s passionate about and he acts upon it. His vocabulary increases dramatically, he suddenly finds the right words to describe precisely how he feels, and he becomes more in touch with himself, distinguishing his neuroses from his true thoughts. He becomes a man because he becomes himself, finally knowing who that person is for the first time.

What events and/or people have shaped your thinking on this subject? If there is a particular person or two that have shaped your thinking, what was it about them that left an impression on you?

A close friend of mine from home, Bethany Herron, asked me one night what church I went to. I didn’t go to one at that time. I considered myself a Christian, but along with not going to church I didn’t do anything else with my Christianity. I was stagnant, content with where I was, content with saying I believed in Him and leaving it at that. That called me to get up and do something about it. It also made me look at other aspects of my life where I was content. Was I stagnant in other parts of my life? If I considered myself to be a man, what was I doing to establish and improve myself as a man?

I’m not saying Christianity is what makes someone a man.I’m not even saying religion makes someone a man. I’m saying Christianity is what helped make ME a man. Allah, Buddha, or lack thereof are just as capable at doing this. Ultimately, the man is responsible for making himself a man.

Are there any essays, books or other literature you’ve read that give you insight or clarity?
Currently reading Awareness by Anthony DeMello, which helps you observe yourself and how you look at others

Emerson’s The American Scholar. The thinking man vs. Man Thinking is something I believe every man should be aware of.

Beyond that, it’s what you’re most passionate about that determines what literature can serve as a gateway to insight. Mine was The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis.

On Religious Differences

Why do people who believe they are religiously right hate people of other religions? Shouldn’t that feeling be pity, or sadness instead of hate?

Mmm, I’m not to fond of saying that they should feel pity or sadness, either. To feel those would imply that something is wrong. Is there something wrong for them having different beliefs? Wouldn’t that be the tiniest bit presumptuous of us to think it was pitiable that they didn’t think what we thought? That would suggest we’re right if we pitied them, wouldn’t it? We’d pity them for having misled beliefs.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s laudable, but I think it would be more appropriate to say it is worthy of my appreciation. It’s a new perspective that can teach us about their values or more about our own.

I’m reading a book by Thich Nhat Hanh right now called Living Buddha, Living Christ and in the third chapter he talks about how he was confronted during a meal at a religious conference. A minister asked him “Are you a grateful person?” He said yes. “If you are really grateful, how can you not believe in God? God has created everything we enjoy, including the food we eat. Since you do not believe in God, you are not grateful for anything.”

But was Thich Naht Hahn ungrateful? A common Buddhist practice is to be mindful. It is to be in the present moment and appreciate the “suchness” of things. To appreciate the air we breathe, to be mindful of the food we eat, bringing us nourishment with each chew we take. It’s an awareness of what we have rather than what we have lost or what we do not have. I would like to call that gratefulness.

On Nonduality

I was rereading Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hahn with my philosophy group when a friend of mine posted to our email listserv about her confusion over the concept of self-compassion in nonduality in response to Hahn’s quote, “If you cannot be compassionate to yourself, you will not be able to be compassionate to others.”  Here was what she had to say:

To me, compassion requires a separate entity that acts as the object receiving the compassion.  I looked up the definition, and compassion is ’sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.’    Compassion comes from compati, meaning ‘to suffer with.’  But if there are not two, there can be no ‘with,’ there is only one ‘nondual’ thing, and that is everything; therefore compassion and sympathy are impossible.

And here was my response:

I think you saw compassion as distancing because the definition used the word “sympathy” as opposed to “empathy”. Whereas empathy is where you feel what the other person is feeling, investing themselves in you, sympathy implies at least some degree of objectiveness or disinterestedness. It is my impression that the accuracy of words is something that is important to you right now. I.e. there is a difference between the words “beautiful” and ”pretty”. If my supposition is true, then that could be a big factor as to why you can’t fully make the concept of nonduality your own. Here we have a concept called nonduality claiming that we only perceive that there are dichotomies, and we are working on dichotomizing the building blocks of communication: words.

Even though I don’t fully grok nonduality, myself, I’ll try to explain what I can understand about it. I think what the concept of nonduality is trying to say is that we are not different from each other, we are not separate. However, we do not exist as one being. We are all connected. We are part of a cycle. Each individual is not separate; he is part of something bigger. He is part of a circuit that could not exist without him. He can not exist as his own separate entity, because if the circuit cannot exist without him, likewise he cannot exist without the circuit. So we do not exactly exist as one; we exist in relation to each other and all compose a sum greater than its parts.

In terms of an analogy, a picture I get of the compassion/nonduality complex is like the body. The heart pumps oxygenated blood to the extremities of the body. From the cor of the body to the fingertips and toes. Like compassion, the heart is affecting something beyond itself. It is supplying oxygen rich blood to the limbs. However, it must also supply oxygen to itself (coronary arteries). If it cannot supply oxygen to itself, how can it supply oxygen to something distal to itself? You must start at the center before you can radiate out. This applies to both the heart and compassion. Furthermore, on the theme of “oneness”, the heart and limb vascularity are both apart of the same system, connected in a continuous loop….I’m not too happy with my own analogy but I think it does its job well enough.

On another, complementary level the dichotomy of self/nonself does not exist in the concept of nonduality. Having said that, reevaluate what TNH said: “”If you cannot be compassionate to yourself, you will not be able to be compassionate to others.” Also, with the concept of nonduality, does the dichotomy of duality/nonduality exist?

Personally, I just can’t make this concept mine at this time, and I’m fine with that. I think I resent the concept for reasons I’d have to sit down and think about, and I’m not about to make something I resent a fundament of my life. I’m not going to try to make it mine because Thich Nhat Hahn said I should. I might never make it mine, but if I do one day, I will make it mine because I chose to, not because a monk, regardless of his wisdom, told me to do so.

What is Truth and What is Theory?

Ok, I lied. I forgot I had a couple of journals saved as drafts. This one is from about two weeks ago.  ***WARNING: Amber Spyglass Spoiler*** You have been warned.

The funny thing about fact is that it’s only accurate when it comes to wordly things, but how many facts do we know when it comes to spirituality? I can’t think of any off the top of my head. Yes, we share similar experiences, but similar experiences are correlations. They do not prove causation.

The Amber Spyglass by Robert Pullman

I’m writing this because I just finished reading the Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman. There is a part where the ghosts of the dead are all sent to limbo instead of heaven. Heaven exists, but there is a power struggle happening and pretty much nobody is making it past the “pearly gates”. One of teh main characters possesses a knife that can cut into other alternate universes. He cuts into the land of the dead and crosses the river Styx. He then opens up a portal back to the land of the living on the other side. Ghosts that pass back into the land of the living disintegrate into particles and become part of everything else: the trees, the grass, the air, the ocean. They feel everything at once.

It was a lot like my current definition of nirvana. The best way to explain my definition is through analogy. The traditional idea of nirvana is to snuff out the flame of the candle of your soul. My definition is to have the candle consumed in a conflagration of fire. Better put, it’s like saying that your soul was a shot glass full of water. If you dumped that shot glass into a fish tank full of water, the water molecules that you were composed of would still be there, but now they’re a part of the entire fish tank. They are part of everything else now.

I was going “Yes!” the whole time. “Ahh! This is so beautiful! How can something so profound be a work of fiction!?” And then I realize: how can something so profound as what I believe in NOT be a work of fiction? Pullman came to the same conclusion in a young adult book that I’ve been working at in real life. It brought to light the possibility that I can’t really prove that anything I believe is right.It could merely be a work of fiction. There is no incontrovertible evidence for what I believe in, yet there seems to be a right and wrong in religion.

Christianity, for example, has “facts” to prove its own legitimacy. There is an “authority” that we can refer to in Christianity itself: the Bible. There are doctrines, creeds, historical evidence. Using these as sources of reference, we can establish accepted standards in Christianity. But really, what sound basis are these facts built upon? One has to exercise at least a little bit of faith for those facts to be  legitimized. You have to trust that what the Bible tells you is true. I was under the impression that facts should be able to stand on their own.

I’m not trying to attack Christianity, but I’m bringing this up because I find a lot of Christians that are so cocksure of themselves, of how Chrisitanity, how religion is supposed to be. My most recent example of this was the Lutheran Bible Study. They seem to have all the answers. We were given a list of guided questions at the study, but it really irked me that the vicar had a list of answers. “The Bible says so, so it is true”. “The Bible told us to, so we must do it.” That really gets under my skin.

I want to figure things out, I really do, but I don’t really believe that all my searching will actually direct me to a concrete answer. All I can do is better define what it is I’m searching for. All I can really do is refine my results. Right now I don’t think the truth I’m looking for is attainable, but I’m fine with that. I’m fine with having to answer my own questions. I’m fine not knowing whether those answers are right. Continuing the search gives me something to do with my life.

A Disagreement with DeMello’s Awareness

So now that I’m finally DONE with finals for this semester, I’m able to pick up DeMello’s book, Awareness. It took me six hours to read 15 pages, not because it was boring, but because it was so chock-full of information and I couldn’t stop taking notes! Plus…I was working. To write about what I think about it so far would take pages, so I’ll settle with my biggest disagreement and my biggest agreement with his book so far (the latter will be in a later journal).

In his chapter Our Illusion About Others he talked about a man who came to him to complain about his girlfriend. ”What are you complaining about?” he said, “Did you expect any better? Expect the worst, you’re dealing with selfish people. You’re the idiot – you glorified her, didn’t you?” He went on to say “Drop your false ideas. See through people. If you see through yourself then you’ll see through everyone. Don’t grapple with your wrong notions of them.” 

This rubbed off on me as unnecessarily cold and not quite the way I would handle the situation. I still feel I reserve the right to be angry if affronted. I have the right to express my feelings, as long as I don’t harbor those negative feelings forever. Whatever the offense, it still warrants forgiveness as long as they are sorry, in my opinion. 

 

Example: my former girlfriend broke up with me so it wouldn’t technically be cheating when she went out with somebody later that day. It hurt, of course. Like a motherfucker. Still does when I think about it. So I had wrong notions of her; I thought that she would be faithful to me under all conditions. I misjudged that one aspect of her integrity. Does that mean I got what was coming to me because I was being idealistic? Maybe, but it does not mean I don’t have the right to be hurt and angry.   

There is still a legitimate feeling there that needs to be felt. It needs to be communicated across, not intellectualized away. Besides, she didn’t do it to hurt me. She did it because she was selfish, because she was confused, because she had conflicting views on what she wanted and chose one (him) in lieu of another (me). Did that make her a bad person? Maybe to me, at least, but it can be taken from a different perspective and I could end up being portrayed as the selfish one. I would even go so far to say her action didn’t need to be corrected. It needed to be understood and forgiven/forgotten and that’s exactly what I did. We’re still good friends. In fact, I attended her birthday party last month. No ill feelings between us. All was forgotten (the harm, not the action). 

The reason I partially disagree with DeMello’s theory is that it’s a cynical view and applied across people as a whole. It doesn’t take into account each person as an individual, particularly the opposing side (the offender). It calls for the same ends, but not via the same means as I do. It doesn’t really allow for the processing, I think. It’s just: “You saw this coming. Just drop it. Move on and get over it.” 

 

Instead of looking through it, passing on through it, you should let it pass through you. That way, you can process it as it comes through. Just passing on through the situation like DeMello suggests doesn’t help you to see everything that went on there. It addresses the issue of my being offended, but it does not take into account why my former girlfriend did what she did. She had her own wants in this situation, her own aspirations. Were those an illusion? What I’m calling for is a true understanding, which takes into account all sides to fully realize. I hope somebody gets what I mean by that, or was I just talking in circles?