Brene Brown said “the other thing we do is we make everything that’s uncertain certain. Religion has gone from a belief in faith and mystery to certainty. I’m right, you’re wrong. Shut up. That’s it. Just certain.”
when we experience something we seek to define it, to find a name for it, to write it down, to take a picture of it and save it forever. there is something about the fleeting, the mysterious, the unknown, that as a species we try to grasp on to. one day as i was driving, the sun looked more beautiful than usual. the clouds covered the bright intensity but i could still see the orange-gray orb. there were wispy clouds floating by in an overcast and enchanting sky. for a moment it was just an experience, one that i cannot describe accurately in a thousand pages. and then i wanted to “capture it.” i wanted to share it with my friends, i wanted to keep it forever and i reached for my camera. i went from enjoying a blissful pure experience of magnificence to scrambling in my purse for my phone. i lost touch with the magnificence.
when human beings did not have language or symbolic consciousness, i would assume everything was just experience. yet at some point when the thunders roared or the seas rose, and when we had language, we started saying the gods are angry, that’s why there is thunder. we said the gods are happy, that’s why there is rain. and why wouldn’t we? clearly there is a mysterious force making things happen in our environment. it feels beyond our powers, it is unknowable, it can be fearful, it can also be merciful.
it is beyond the limits of my imagination because i can only imagine with the objects/characters that i already know of.
a beta fish born and raised in a fishbowl perhaps cannot know that there are cars and buildings and volcanoes and bottle openers and bubble tea out there. yet she probably knows hunger, and fear (if you tap the bowl), and anger (if you put another beta fish in there)… like that information is available to all, by instinct by design. a seed does not need to look at the parent plant to grow, the information it needs is already in its cells. there’s some intelligence there too, plants knowing to grow towards light, knowing to produce flowers if the conditions are right, knowing to fold its leaves when the sun sets.
the scientific approach describes it well… we have logic and hypotheses, never really immutable facts, but working definitions and theories about why things are the way they are. we become fascinated with what we don’t know and we try to define it and we try to build on it.
when we talk about faith, we refer to what is unknowable. having faith is like having hope, not knowing for sure, yet having a guiding light or direction. there is a deep desire to know and be closer to God. there is a potentiality to be closer and yet a humility or understanding that the world of forms cannot truly know God because God seems to defy form. perhaps real-izing God can only be done in brief glimpses. so we train our bodies and our minds to become more receptive to soul, we build holy places and sanctuaries, places where the limitations of form seem to drop away, and there are fewer obstructions to experiencing God. this is why Christian and Buddhist monks and Sufi dervishes and Hindu sadhus take refuge in nature, this is why those living the “regular life” pray in a clean place, unencumbered by disturbances.
yet religion is more about certainty. suddenly the experience of God and the numinous nature of what is experienced is solidified into an image, a book, a religion, with x number of tenets, and rules, and judgments, punishments and rewards. in religion, perhaps God becomes smaller than the experience of God. God becomes condensed into a representation that comprises of the justice system of the locale, the love and wrath of our parents, the promise of conditional reward and punishments, and an escape from the world because we want to all transcend. it seems to make more sense that God cannot be in this vile world, but is in the skies, and we must leave behind this earth to get a shot at living in God’s real kingdom.
it feels safe to have a rule book, to have a code to live by, to keep myself and others in line, to not have to struggle with thought and discourse, but to know for sure. on some level we never want to grow into adults and become self-reliant. a duality and thus separation is created between God and ourselves. and because we cannot imagine beyond what we have already experienced, we write our myths and stories, using what we already know. thunder seems to incite fear, just like when our parents are angry with us, it must mean the gods are angry with us. we feel loved and blessed when we get something good, it must mean the gods are happy and merciful.
can i sense God in the air i breathe, in the leaves fluttering in the wind, in the sunlight, in the red truck, in the asphalt, in the muddy pond, in my skin, and in every being? perhaps when my heart opens up into an expansive quality when i get out of my way, that i become closer to God. perhaps when i feel constricted and my heart becomes smaller and my experience becomes dull, i move away from God. perhaps… there’s something magical in this wondering and wandering quest.
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the paradox of being 