God - Out of Touch.....Out of Reach

I stole this...yes I did .........from a blog that I really enjoyed this write from...am sure you guys would like it too....its deep and thought provocating....

When you hear the word GOD...what comes to your mind?? here are some common images...

1. A guy nailed to a cross or his invisible dad

2. A guy or girl with an un-necessary multitude of arms and legs which are always full, dressed in garish clothes and looking like they ran out of the nearest marwadi wedding

3. A big black box in the center of a big white marble circle, which aids in nothing but further mystifying and shrouding the meaning of GOD

4. A book wrapped in shiny garishly colored cloth which is constantly being fanned by turbaned men

5. A fire which is being tended to constantly so as to keep it from extinguishing itself and a whole host of others...

when you read the above lines what comes to your mind?..GOD or RELIGION??..or BOTH??When did the lines between GOD and RELIGION get blurred and is that a good thing or a bad thing??Let me start with my personal concepts and beliefs....and then you can take it from there in your comments

GOD - To me god is not an image, god is a state of mind and it exists within all of us, I don't believe that god has a gender or belongs to a specific community or speaks a specific language like Sanskrit/Hebrew/Arabic etc God is omnipresent...often heard statement...I'd like to modify it to also say the following

God is transient

God is relative

God is creative

God is karma

Given the above thoughts try and imagine not a person not an image but a state of mind that encompasses the above ideas........if you do this you will notice that the first 3 qualities apply to almost any state of mind and the last one is not so easily applicable to all ...let me explain....lets try replacing the word God with Happiness in the above lines

Happiness is transient - True - Transient means something that is not constant...something that is transitory..so happiness falls under that category??

Happiness is relative - True - Of course this is true...self explanatory

Happiness is creative - True - when people are happy they are at their creative best (this also applies to abject frustration/depression). It could be creating anything from baking a cake to building a house.....

Happiness is Karma - The simplest way to explain the concept of karma is this "as you sow, so shall you reap" or still simpler "one good deed begets another and vice versa"...so in the case of happiness...if you make somebody happy the happiness spreads and eventually touches you as well...do you accept that?

So you see I have not only proved my substitution theory for the first 3 qualities but also for the last one!!

Now coming back to GOD ....lets look at GOD in the current context of my theory..over the long period of time that we humans have existed on this planet, we have elevated god to such a high pedestal that we have taken it out of our lives and created it as a separate entity...we have learnt to revere god, worship god, fear god and in some cases like the bhakti movement and sufi traditions, also love god..........but most of all we have failed to emulate god.

Emulation is not an easy thing to do, to emulate someone or something, you first need to accept it and acceptance is impossible without questioning. But like I mentioned earlier, GOD has been elevated to a position out of reach, and to ensure that it stays there...out of reach....humans have created an un-necessary intermediate layer called RELIGION...religion ensure that god is out of reach and therefore unquestionable.Now one is left with no choice but to either unconditionally accept GOD or be branded an atheist, this is a trick situation...note its a TRICK situation not a tricky situation....the trick here is if you accept GOD unconditionally then you also accept RELIGION and if you don't accept GOD under these conditions then you are a victim of religious bullshit, thereby you have sealed your fate in society by letting yourself be branded an atheist.The only alternative to this whole quagmire is to circumvent the whole religion thing, venture out on your own, question GOD, don't go out and question an image of god, don't ask why the Christians worship a tortured dying man, don't ask why the Hindus worship multi armed, multi headed, alien-like images, don't ask why the Muslims worship a building....the question to ask is...is GOD just a building, alien or a dying man, or is god an emotion, a state of mind or the result of actions good or bad. Should GOD be worshipped from a distance or accepted and assimilated into ones own being and life? Should one be GOD FEARING or GOD LOVING? ask all these questions and more...some have answers readily available, other have answers buried deep under the ages of religious bullshit...have the patience to dig through it and sift through the dust to find the answer you are looking for.Understanding GOD is a bit like archaeology...you can dig in any place, and you may find something, but if you dig in the right places and deep enough then you WILL find something of value, once you find that thing of value, treasure it but don't hoard it...share it...because if all archaeologists decided to hoard and hide their findings we may never have known where we came from.The foundations of our past lie buried deep within the earth and the foundations of our future lie buried deep within our minds and brains, uncover it gradually with the spade of knowledge and sift through the debris with a sieve of logic and reasoning, pick up right away whatever stays on top of the sieve, don't throw away what slips through the sieve, filter it using the eyes of perception and you will find GOD..not as a dying man or an alien-like being or a building...but as a state of mind...

Like a great little man once said.....MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU!!!