Religion is just a Language

"The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things."

From the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 1- Translated by Stephen Mitchell (1988)

I want to write about this today, because I am about to embark on a 40 day journey with friends and family through a book called May Cause Miracles, by Gabrielle Bernstein.  My biggest concern is that someone would stop reading it or following the course beceause Gabrielle tends to be God heavy in her talk.  But her message is universal and she is not excluding anyone who might not believe in the One True God or who doesn't necessarily pray or believe in "miracles" like Jesus' face on your breakfast toast.  

Over time I have been developing a theory.  How is it that so many different groups can believe so vehemently in their own god and be so sure that their god is the one and only real god?  Because they are right.  Their god is the real, true god and so is yours and if you don't believe in god, it's okay, because their god is the same as your nature, your peaceful calm, and your humanity.  It is all the same.

I believe that every religion is talking about the same things, just using different language.  One of the pitfalls of being a human being is that for us to think about something so abstract, we have to give it some kind of form.  You can't think about nothing.  Thus, over the centuries, different groups have named that feeling, that sense of universe and beginning so that they can think about it and talk to others about it.  How are you going to teach your children about it if you can't name it or describe it?  But as the Tao Te Ching so aptly states, the unnamable is the eternally real.  Naming is where we go wrong, where we divide and rage against each other.  

My background is growing up Catholic.  I love the feeling of being in church and being swept away by that feeling of togetherness, and the sound of the choir.  The reason I started to veer away from the Catholic church is that the Bible tends to personify god.  Our Catholic God tended to be seen as a white bearded male that was benevolent and loving or fierce and destructive. So much power is given to the written word.  And yet, our God is the same god as Yahweh, as Shiva, as the Moon and the Sun, as Nature, as the Universe, as Tao, as the Great Feminine and Masculine, as the Source of all Things.  We are all calling the same thing by different names.  As soon as we name it, we give it properties that it did not previously have.  As soon as we call it something, we have lost the true spirit of it.  Even now I struggle what to say.  As soon as I say we call "it" something, we lose the spirit of "it," I have named it and therefore have given properties to something that is perfectly perfect when left unnamed.  

Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, all the prophets spoke the same message.  Anyone who takes the time to read their stories with an open ear will hear the same things.  Love is the main message.  Acceptance, kindness, detachment from material things, detachment from ego.  They speak in riddles because words alone are not enough.  God, the Source of All Things, the Universe, the Tao, is both black and white, yin and yang.  Opposites are true at the same time.  

As I write this I worry about what my family will think.  I have been brought up to believe that Jesus is God and basically that what I am saying is a bit sacrilegious   I worry that my mother will say "You have forsaken Jesus!  Jesus is the Lord!"  And she's right that he is Lord.  As he said, that God is within us all.  He was God, as am I, as are you.  He is in Muhammad's God.  He is in Yahweh.  How could he not be?  Do we really believe that there are several gods out there? That my God is going to smite your God?  That because you believe in that God (which, by the way, just so happens to be my God) you are going to Hell?  How can we possibly say that God is not in the believer of that other God?  How can we not say that God is in that other God?  He is in everything, yes?  Than how is he not there?  

And I hear how when I talk about God, with a capital G, it becomes a he or she.  It becomes a being, that must have thoughts and feelings.  "He" must have a "plan." "She" must want this thing or that thing to happen. "He" must be responsible for things.  Creation then becomes a planned thing, where God sat down and decided that this and this should happen first, and that should happen second and homosexuality must be evil and women can't be priests.  And if you commit suicide you go to hell, as well as when you have sex before marriage or disagree with the Church (or do anything fun basically).  

In my meditations (same as prayers, people) I have decided not to give just one name.  It helps me from imagining some being somewhere listening to me like Santa Claus come Christmas time with a Naughty and Nice list.  It keeps me centered and focused on the message.  I tend to start my meditations/prayers with Dear God/Source/Universe/Tao/Me/You/Us.  If I'm in a hurry I go with GSU- God, Source, Universe.  It sounds complicated, but giving more names reinforces to me that I am speaking of the feeling, the soul inside of me, the energy field surrounding and within us all, the space where all things begin and end, reality, the present moment.  

I am hoping that more people in the world will begin to see this.  It doesn't matter if you believe in the good old GSU or not.  "It" is there (and nowhere) whether we call it by Yahweh or God or nothing at all.  Thoughts on this?  Love to hear them.  

Chapter 2013, Page 1 of 365

I saw this picture on Facebook.  I can't take credit, but I don't know who to give credit to either.  If this is yours, let me know so I can give you your dues!

While perusing Facebook I saw this picture on a friends page and it called to me.  I wish I could give the artist credit, but I don't know where it came from.  Anyway, the caption, "Chapter 2013, Page 1 of 365..." perfectly describes how I am feeling about this New Year.  Today is an opportunity for many to make changes in their lives, it is a symbolic turning of a new page, a new chapter.  The rest is still all there, the previous chapters are a foundation on which this new one is built, but anything can happen!
Today is New Year's Day.  I began my celebration last night by continuing a family ritual of hiding a silver dollar (a quarter for us) outside to be found the next day.  I'm still working on getting the explanation of why we did that, I can't remember, but we did it anyway.  The quarters are now safely tucked away, the first of many to be saved in the coming years.  We did our best to stay up until midnight, I continued reading the Tao Te Ching, and my husband watched TV until we both fell asleep at about 9:30pm.  Oh well, we're not night owls.  We woke up for the fireworks at midnight, calmed down my dog, who hates them with a passion and went back to sleep.  This morning I continued the celebration with a massive breakfast of bacon and eggs.  I read some more of the Tao Te Ching and went to a workout class at noon.  It was intense, anyone who does Crossfit will know what I mean when I say we did Fran.  For everyone else, I lifted weights and did tons of pullups in a sprint, go as fast as you can workout, and finished in 5:47.  Then walked outside to calm down my stomach and hold my arms which were vibrating and inoperable.  After my body regained it's abilities I went home and took a bath.  If me talking about taking a bath is tmi for some of you more squeamish folks, skip to the next paragraph. Kitty Cavalier's New Year Seduction Ritual kickstarted the idea.  I gathered epsom salt, candles, scented oil, and a stone found on one of my hikes.  I stated my intentions before adding each ingredient and soaked for a while.  My body definitely thanked me.  I love to meditate in the bathtub.
Today's meditation was brought on by something Kyle Cease calls Kylego.  I can't find his explanation of it, he does a lot of his work via video, but basically he was talking about how he prepared for a comedy show he was about to do by pretending that it was already over and that it was amazing.  He had a dialogue about how fabulous the show was, the reaction of the audience and the positive reviews it was getting.  So my meditation used that general idea.  I pretended that it was New Year's Day 2014 and I was taking a bath and reviewing how amazing 2013 was.  I went through some of the events I know I have coming up.  I was thinking about how nervous I was for the first "Lunch and Learn" class I did at the Y and how much more comfortable I had become with practice over the next couple of months.  I thought about the new job with the ginormous salary I got in March that gave me a lot of freedom to schedule my day and do more that I wanted to be doing.  And how that allowed me to really get into my private practice that I started after I passed the MFT exam (with flying colors, by the way.)  I thought about how cool it was that I got to go to Amanda's wedding as well as Jeremy's because I had made so much more money and it wasn't as big of a deal to fly back and forth to the mainland anymore.
Not only did this exercise give me a sense of calm and satisfaction, but it brought up little flashes of insight along the way.  Just a quick example is that I could totally see myself just finishing this stellar talk that uplifted my audience.  They were so excited that they wanted to grab my business card so they could check me out online and see what else I was doing that they could be a part of.  Guess I should make sure I have business cards, right?  How else will they be able to find me?
This was a very insightful exercise and I encourage you to try it.  It sounds weird, but it's super useful.  What did you do to celebrate the first day in the next chapter of your life?