We in the U.S. are about to decide who is ‘in charge’ here, by electing our next president in just a few weeks. But who is ‘in charge’ here on the whole earth? Is it God?
That is the question I have asked in this space in the aftermath of two calamities in one 7-day period: Hurricane Ike and the financial crisis on Wall Street.
Is all of this God’s Will?
I believe not. Not in the classic sense that people understand the use of that term “God’s Will.” In the larger sense of the term, it IS God’s Will…because God’s Will is our will — that is, the will of humanity, expressed collectively and individually through all of our thoughts, words, and actions.
I believe that there is no separation between Divinity and Humanity; that God and we are One. I believe that we are all Divine, and that some of us do not know it, do not experience it, do not believe it, do not accept it.
So how does that make it ‘true’ that we humans ‘created’ Hurricane Ike, and all its devastation, and the deaths it caused? How does that make it ‘true’ that we humans created the economic crisis now hitting Wall Street?
I believe it is like this: Certainly no one could claim that we are doing all this to ourselves deliberately. So we can eliminate from this discussion any idea that this is a conscious creation. It must, therefore, be an unconscious creation. It is something we are doing without knowing we are doing it, without being aware of the consequences of our thoughts, words, and actions.
To make the case regarding Ike, I believe — and weather experts are now telling us — that the ever-increasing savagry and power of our earth’s tropical storms is the direct result of global warming, which, the experts tell us, has raised the temperature of the more shallow waters on the earth (such as along the Gulf Coast of the U.S.), which, in turn, increases the whirl of storm winds moving over these areas, turning them into hurricanes of incredible, and increasingly greater, force.
Climatologists tell us that we can expect stronger and stronger, more violent tropical storms on the earth from now on because of this thermal effect.
This is one outcome — and only one — of global warming. And who created global warming? I believe that we did. Unconsciously, to be sure. Unwittingly, for certain. Innocently, absolutely. But in any event most certainly.
Now half the human race is in denial of this point — which is exactly how we created the situation to begin with. It is like tobacco smokers who deny, deny, deny that their smoking has any damaging effect on their bodies whatsoever — and then come down with lung cancer. I have known such people who, even as they are dying of the cancer, sit in their bedrooms smoking.
In my mind there is no question that our human activities upon the earth have created the global warming crisis. In our arrogance we declare that we’ve had nothing to do with it. We haven’t even contributed to it. We have had nothing to do with it at all.
This is the statement of many human beings today. We cannot and will not take responsibility for our own actions and choices. And that is too bad. That is remarkably sad. I can only hope that Al Gore and others on the same mission can wake up humanity fast enough for us to do something about all of this.
Similarly, it is greed, and nothing less, that has produced the crisis on Wall Street. Says USAToday in the lead story of today’s edition written by reporter John Waggoner: “In staggering succession, some of Wall Street’s biggest and oldest firms have been seized, failed outright, or merged into other companies.” The paper then quotes Steve Romick, manager of FPA Crescent Fund, as saying, “It’s the worst news out of Wall Street since I’ve been alive.”
The choice to do whatever it took to optimize profits is what led to this collapse — and that choice is the free-will manifestation of human beings.
Yet if God does not ‘want’ hurricanes to fly or financial institutions to collapse, and people’s lives to be disrupted and destroyed in the process, why does God allow it? If God is the creator of our reality, why is God creating it like this?
The New Spirituality says that we are creating our own reality. It says that we and God are One, and that, as an aspect of Divinity, we have the power and the ability to produce and manifest outcomes in the physical world — and are doing so every day.
We do this, we are told, with our thoughts, our words, and our deeds. We are able to do this because we are gods. We are Individuations, or aspects, of the Divine. Our word is Law. Our word is God’s Word.
I understand that to some, this very thought is blasphemy. Fair enough. We each have the freedom to believe what we choose to believe. And I don’t mean to offend anyone here by stating what I believe. Yet if what I believe is mistaken, if our word is not God’s Word, but God is separate from us and has the final word on everything, then my original question stands: Why is God doing this to us? Or, if God is not doing this to us, why is God standing by, doing nothing, allowing us to do this to ourselves?
What IS God’s role in our lives?
I believe that God’s role is, has been, and always will be to empower us to create our own reality. I believe that God has given us the ability to do this both individually and collectively. In our next post, we will look at how this power works, and how we can use it in our daily lives.
For now, I would like to share that I believe — and I believe strongly — that prayer works. Because prayer is a statement of what we wish and of what we desire and of what we seek to experience, it uses the Power of God precisely as it was intended to be used; exactly as it was designed.
So, today, perhaps we might join in prayer.