God is within you

When people ask me if I am religious, I tell them I love God far too much to be religious. "Oh, then you must believe in God?" they inevitably ask. "Of course not," I reply with a smile, "does a fish believe in water?" For me, God is all there is. What's to believe?

Although all the world's major religions agree that God (however they define the term) is omnipresent, it seems that very few of their followers including their clerical hierarchy actually understand what omnipresence really means. And therein lies the source of the world's ills.

For a start, we take our relationship with God far too seriously. We bring so much solemnity to the way we view God awe, veneration, obedience, and the like that we end up creating distance between us and the object of our worship.

Expressions such as "God is my judge," "God forbid," and "God bless you" creep into our language, and consequently our thoughts. People are actually proud to call themselves God-fearing folk. For too many of us, God is somewhere out there, watching and judging us as we struggle through our imperfect lives.

And consider this: Some religions consider the name of God so holy that it is never pronounced. Instead they create a litany of substitute terms so they can talk about God without having to commit the blasphemy of actually using his name.

When practitioners of these religions write about their deity, they are instructed to omit the vowel: G-d. Other religions take the opposite tack. They encourage their devotees to chant or meditate on the name of God for hours at a time.

To their way of believing, focusing on God leads to a state of bliss that opens the door to transcendence and enlightenment. But if God is truly all that is, what can possibly make one of his names more powerful than any other?



For that matter, what is the purpose of naming him (or her or it) in the first place?

Naming anything creates a subject/object relationship between you and the thing named, and that in and of itself means a separation. Every name of God, no matter how holy, drives a wedge between the creator and the created which includes you and me.

This separation is the primal breeding ground for fear, for we then see ourselves as tiny beings, abandoned (or evicted from Paradise) and living on the fringe of an incomprehensibly huge cosmos.

But what if the phrase "God is all that is" were literally true? This is what R Buckminster Fuller must have understood when he said, "God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun." His words, when I first read them, lodged in my mind.

But I didn't get their full import until many years later, during my first visit to Findhorn, the renowned spiritual community in northeast Scotland.

It was there, sitting in a circle with my fellow newbies, that the penny dropped. One young man in our group, Peter, suddenly exclaimed, "Oh, wow, I finally see it. It is not that God is in all things; it's that God is all things."

His exclamation triggered two remarkable realisations for me. First, the obvious is obvious only to those who are sufficiently present to see it. The delivery of Peter's life-changing epiphany had virtually no effect on the rest of the group.



Our facilitator was so consumed by his orientation agenda that he missed the moment completely. Thanking Peter for his contribution, he simply asked the group if anyone else had anything to share.

Second, what Peter said is literally true. In an instant, Bucky's words became crystal clear. God is indeed a verb. He is not the creator. He is the ongoing unfoldment of creation itself. There is nothing that is not a part of this unfolding. Thus there can be nothing separate from God. God is infinite and infinity is One.

From that moment, everything in my life began to change. It wasn't immediate; it was rather like a giant oil tanker slowly making a U-turn. As if I were facing in a new direction, I looked at the world in a new way "How," I asked myself, "do we dupe ourselves so completely? How come so few people see what Bucky and Peter see? How could I myself have been so blind?"

When we perceive God as a noun, we envision him as the creator, the architect of, and therefore separate from, his creation.

Identifying ourselves as part of that creation, we see ourselves not only separate from our source but separate from each other and all other manifest things as well. This is the fatally flawed axiom underlying virtually all of the world's faiths.

Once I viewed God as a verb instead of a noun, my perception of life shifted. Everything around and its manifestation became God. There was only God. When someone spoke to me, it was with God's voice; when I listened, it was with God's heart. I invite you to try it.

The small shift from noun to verb may well be the antidote to the forbidden fruit that banished us from Eden. As you begin to view God not as the creator but as the constantly changing dance of creation itself, you'll discover him in everything you see including yourself.

Merry Christmas to all

• The best of all gifts around any christmas tree,
  THE PRESENCE OF A HAPPY FAMILY ALL WRAPPED UP IN EACH OTHER.

  
  
  

• Remember, if christmas isn't found in your heart,
  You won't find it under a tree.

  
  
  

• Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest thing in the world,
  STRONGER THAN HATE,
  STRONGER THAN EVIL,
  STRONGER THATN DEATH,
  And that the blessed life which began in Bethlehem 1900 years ago is the image and brightness of the Eternal LOVE?
  Then you can keep Christmas.

  
  
  
  
  

• Christmas eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl, but it warmed more than your body. It warmed
  your heart, filled it, too with melody that would last forever.

  
  
  
• Earth, strike up your music,
  Birds that sing and bells that ring,
  Heaven hath answering music,
  For all angels soon to sing,
  Earth, putput on your whitest Bridal robe of spotless snow;
  For christmas bringeth Jesus,
  Brought for us so low.
  
  
  
  
• The earth has grown old with its burden of care but at christmas it always is young,
  The heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair and its soul full of music breaks the air,
  When the song of angels is sung.
  
  
  

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Merry Christmas, Love you all

• At Christmas paly and make good cheer,
  For Christmas comes but once a year.
  
  
• Christmas is forever,
  Not for just one day,
  For loving, Sharing, Giving,
  Are not to put away like bells and lights and tinsel, in some box upon a shelf.
  The good you do for others is good you do yourself.
  
  
• We hear the beating of wings over Bethlehem and a light that is not for the sun or of the stars shines in the midnight sky.
  Let the beauty of the story take away all narrowness,
  All thought of formal creeds.
  Time and space and language lay no limitations upon human brotherhood.
  
  
• Christmas is the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall,
  The genial flame of charity in t he heart.
  
  
• Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childis days;
  That can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth;
  That can transpot the sailor and the traveller, Thousands of miles away, Back to his own fireside and his quiet home.
  
  
• There has been only one Christmas,
  The rest are anniversaries.
  
  
  
  
  
  

MY TWITTER.COM ACCOUNT
Rab Rakha

LOVE AND GOD

Everyone is searching for love!

We say,

we love to eat,

we love our pets,

we love to make money;

But that kind of love

doesn't last for long!!

There is yet another kind of love:

Love that comes from GOD!!

God's love lasts 4ever

God's love asks nothing but the truth!

He loves you the way you are!!!

So cherish your each n every moment,....

Ços it's a token of his love!!!