When I wrote yesterday, I was astonished to find that the universe and god felt so different. The universe I connect to when I imagine the creative love that becomes the universe, is what I really believe is the REAL universe. But obviously that belief hasn’t gotten very deep in my psyche. I’ve been imagining the universe and god being roughly equivalent, and now I find that they aren’t at all.
The different ideas of god and the universe, and the differing experiences of god and the universe. Sometimes when you change your thinking, your experience changes as well. I think of the time when these words came out of my mouth: “If I get a PhD in geology, I will be so threatening that no man will want to marry me and my life will be wasted.” That was so clearly not true that I went out the next day and registered for a geology class. Sometimes it takes longer. Thinking of the universe as creative and supportive, is very different from experiencing the support. My experience is that the universe is huge and impersonal. But at least my thinking is very solid. I know that the truth about the universe is that it is unimaginably creative, that it is headed in a positive direction. But whether or not the universe actually supports me is a little more difficult. That’s not embodied experience yet.
Then there’s my image of god which has changed from the punitive father god to “capricious, malicious, and willful,” to the god who flew out of the gates of heaven to welcome me. That image was a surprise. I had no idea that my knowing about god had changed so radically. Of course I matter to that god. But that god also feels small and local, the god of the solar system and the nearer stars, but not god of the galaxies scattered through the enormous distances of space.
I think that the time between changing the thought, and finding that the embodied experience has changed, is related to how deep and old the wound is. Newer woundings heal very quickly. Old wounds can take a long time. I still struggle with the belief that it’s not OK to feel good about myself, and the belief that I have to prove I deserve to live.
Previous blog posts on these topics
capricious, malicious and willful
I will be so threatening
at home in the universe
friendly universe
meditation on god and universe