KOTO = Word TAMA = Power
I am not an atheist or an agnostic.
There is God.
Not “there is a God”.
God is not a thing; like “there is a bug,” “there is a sunset,” or “there is a deity” – not like that.
The way people speak of God is the way of a god created in the image and likeness of humankind.
God is Love
God is Just
God is Kind
God is Forgiving
God is Wise
God is Fatherly (seldom Motherly)
These are all human traits/characteristics projected onto the screen of consciousness, seen in the mirror of life. Looking at our own projections, we name and give value to what we can perceive and these projections/perceptions we proclaim to be reality.
Anais Nin: “We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are.”
We arrive at our speaking of “God” by our capacity to name existence, thus changing existence into named phenomena that we coat with humanness and then go looking for the culprit who started it all.
IT IS I
In the process of living, we are learning.
In the learning process, we are Beginners (apprentices), then Learners (journeymen), and finally Seniors (masters).
We are learning from and through each other, but the biggest impediment to our studies is the way we lie to ourselves.
The Apprentice thinks s/he is a learner, that is, competent.
The Journeyman thinks s/he is skilled, that is, knowledgeable.
The senior does not recognize that s/he is still a beginner.
This space of looking outside ourselves for validation—some people call it looking for God, I call it waiting for Godot.
This space of thinking we are further down the road than we really are represents the story of the Tower of Babel, the coming of the Second Civilization.
The Tower of Babel was built in Babylon. Babylon arose around 2300 BCE and collapsed about 100 CE. This was the era of separating God from Mankind. In Babylon, there arose the dominance of Military Might and the development of a 12-month calendar (no longer paying attention to the Moon, Sun, and Stars); this was when scientific weights and measures were developed, and writing developed that eventually influenced the development of the Bible and fortified left brain dominance. Babylon developed the first set of Laws – judgment was codified and projected onto individuals and society.
2000 years later, we no longer realize that we do not see things as they are. We see them as we are, and thus, we cannot see, so we look for symbols. Symbols, like symptoms, ‘are blind guides.’
The story of the Tower of Babel is our present-day predicament. Everyone is talking, but not too many people are communicating. We live in a worldwide society in which everyone is talking, but if you listen, you realize that people are saying words without any responsibility for them. Not just the politicians and soap sales speakers; even ourselves when we are just making sounds. We need to learn to listen. We must actually choose words carefully, be responsible to each other and to ourselves, and actually choose each word as we speak. Take ownership of words, of what and how we say whatever we say.
Watching yourself create ‘Reality.’
So today, we renew our pledge to our ancestors before the time of Babylon. We will communicate what we know while recognizing we are just Beginners. We will practice silence and attentive talk. We will stop calling what we see on the cosmic TV screen, ‘reality.’
God is not a thing and is nowhere, except within you.
And nowhere turns out to be Now Here, SU.
Within you.