This post is one in a string of essays about spirituality. It may make sense to start with the first entry in the series.

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Whoops. I forgot that many people out there don’t need language to find ‘God.’ They feel its presence in their heart. I just returned from a Friends (Quaker) meeting, where several people reminded me of this basic truth. When in the company of someone who is spiritually centered, you don’t know it because they spin a good argument, you simply feel their love, acceptance, wisdom, and serenity: LAWS. Those are qualities to embrace. It humbled me, once again, to realize that my words are only words. They will not bring anyone to ‘God.’ My only hope is that my writing will help others knock down the barriers in their path toward peace.

A person at the meeting opened me to an interesting way to view ‘God.’ She told me someone once likened it to music: perhaps humans elaborate God much like they create melodies. Before people evolved, the potential for music existed, but the music itself did not. Songs and symphonies were beauty the universe contained in its future, but had not yet actualized. Before humans, it may well be that universal consciousness did not exist to the same extent as it does now. In that view, the availability of electrically responsive cells in highly structured matrices (i.e., brains) gave the spirit of the universe the tools it needed to achieve awareness. Before, there was presence. Now that presence may be aware, through us.

It’s just one way of looking at things, and I may be carrying the analogy beyond its original intent. But it strikes me as an interesting viewpoint.

Last night, in bed, I thought that our way of using cognition to understand ‘God’ is a bit like sailing. We are on a boat and feel the strong winds of reason. They seem to blow in only one direction, away from anything mystical. There appears to be only one compass point toward which to travel. However, with skill we can use the sails, keel, ballast, and rudder to make progress toward the source of the wind. We cannot move directly into it, but we can approach it obliquely. Reason can help us attain essential truths in just that way.

On the other hand, the heart can swim in the waters below the level of logical thought. Rather like a dolphin, it can reach the source in a more direct way.

If we use words, we are restricted to analogies. If we use feelings, we can get to ‘God’ without as much fuss. But the ego/rational mind balks at things it doesn’t understand. It tends to dismiss possibilities it either can’t see or can’t explain. I write to gently coax the ‘left brain’ into allowing the ‘right brain’ to do its thing. Perhaps if we persuade the rational mind that spirituality could be more than an illusion, it will allow the nonverbal mind greater freedom. Maybe it will step out of the way, and let us enjoy faith.

***Click here for the next entry in this series.

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