About 7 years ago I started I started opening up to what was really important to me and I became interested in life questions like: what does really matter to me? Is there more than what we can perceive with our five senses? What is my goal in life? And of course: is there a God?
So I started doing yoga, reading about spirituality and going to workshops about personal development. I started to meditate too. I wasn't very good at meditating because I am the kind of person who often has something on his mind. But I tried it anyway. In my meditation I asked for guidance: I asked what my goal in life was and I even addressed God. So I said (in my mind because my children are normally around and I am a kind of shy) something like:
"Dear God. Are you there? Please give me a sign!"
I never got an answer. This could mean one of two things:
1) God doesn't exist
2) God exists but doesn't talk to me directly
ad 1) God doesn't exist
I was baptized but my upbringing was without any form of religion. Still I developed some fear of God. For some reason I had the idea that God was an older Caucasian man with a beard that would judge me when I died. Or even more scary, while I was still alive. This fear always arised when I entered a church. I felt like a fool but I made sure to make the Sign of the Cross, just to be sure that I was save.
My intuition always told me that I really wasn't a better person if I would make the Sign of the Cross. I started to think and read about God and I came up with the following:
I do believe there is more in life than we can perceive with our five senses. This "more" you can call God, life or energy. After thinking about it for a while, I concluded that I really don't believe in the bearded man that will judge me. I concluded that God exists, but not in the way certain religious books tell us.
God = Life
So everything is God, all life, including myself, and including you.
ad 2) God exists but doesn't talk to me
That left me with option 2: God doesn't talk to me. But after concluding that God is Life and I am alive I understood that Life, or God is talking to me all the time. Every form of Life is a "God" and this Life, in the form of people around me, is talking to me. I am talking to myself a lot too. So God is talking to me too, only not through the voice in my head that I was hoping for.
I can see clearly now
By adopting this mindset, God is Life, I started to see clearly. The discussion about whose God is the real God, and the reason many wars are being fought, becomes completely redundant. Is there only one God, what Catholicism and the Islam are preaching, or are there many "little Gods" like the Shintoistic religion in Japan says? It is both true! Yes, you could say that there is only one God (or Life) called the Universe. But are there many Gods, or lives? Yes, also true!
God exists, as Life exists.
God is Life
What is your idea of God? Please enlighten me!
If you feel this article can help somebody else, please forward it. They may be grateful. I sure would be!!