God
How to Connect with God?
Who created God? Where is God?
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God
This short article on God, will cover certain questions, Who is God, What is God, How to connect with God, How to see God, Who created God, Why god created us, How to surrender to God, Why God is not helping me in brief.
What is God?
Religions differ on ideologies, on the images of God etc. Yet when they talk about the qualities and nature of God, the answers are similar.
What is God?
The essence of religions is God is Omnipotent. God is all Powerful. God is not affected by anything that happens around. God is impartial. God will help anyone who asks for help.
This means that if I am not able to do what I want, if I need help then I look up to a higher power and that is called God.
What is the 'I' that wants - Seeks - Desires.
What I experience as 'I' is my memory, ideas about who I am ( name, degree, social status, position in my family etc.,) my body and my energy.
When I am not able to accomplish what I want with these tools I look up to a higher power called God. Is it now?
Rarely one thinks of God when things go well.
God is also looked up when one has fear of losing something he or she has, to protect.
So when all our known faculties of the mind, body and energy fails, when all our known knowledge fails we look at God. Is it not?
So God is a principle, a state the is beyond the form ( body we know of); Beyond the mind and Beyond our known energetic qualities.
God could thus be a state.
Who is God?
You cannot see God with the same eyes that you use to see other objects and beings. At the same time God exists as a quality. Let us take a practical example. If you make a list of people you like, and reflect on why you like them, you may realize that you like them for their qualities only. Even in a close relationship like parents, brother, sister, friends, spouse, manager, teacher, etc., what you like is only their quality. When people with whom you are involved personally, professionally, socially keep doing certain things that you do not like, you do not like them is it not. You may be forced to be with them out of certain compulsions, yet deep inside you do not want to be with them.
If you have been starving for a few days due to lack of food, then, the person who gives your food will become God. He or she who gives you food becomes your God, because there is a quality in him or her that gives you food.
What we seek as God could thus be a quality that will satisfy our needs magically continuously; especially when we need it most. Please reflect on this as we move forward. Find out if you are agree or disagree.
Why God is not helping me?
Seeking God's help by regular visits to places of worship, ritualistic practices, yoga, can give short term results but the deepest yearning to connect needs a different approach
Who created God?
You need something and you do not know how, but you need it somehow, What do you do?
You create God. You would not have even thought about God is you have got all that you wanted with a guarantee that you will be getting it continuously. Is it not?
if you have enough money you will not ask for money. If you are sure that you can have enough food for a life time, you will not ask God for food.
People start searching for God, when they want something they think they cannot get something that they badly want with their current knowledge and resources.
In a way doctors, teachers, priests, politicians, become God thus. Same with objects like medicines (pills). People and objects become God , when the need is more and someone else or something else can provide the same.
God is created when there is a driving need one does not know how to get it.
How can I see God?
God has no form. God is a quality. God is a state of existence.
God gets created when you badly need something, and you do not know how to get it. You need it somehow. You create God.
Anything that or anybody who satisfies your need becomes God. Maybe we can derive that though God has no form, he can manifest through a person or an object as a quality that can satisfy your need.
So, when you ask the question, How can I see God, the reverse question would be How open are you to see and experience God.
I did it all, Yet why God gives us pain!
Can you say, I went to school, yet I did not get my marks as expected? In any deep healing process, like Yoga, Psychotherapy, the, I will do as you say, give me guaranteed results, mindset, makes it all mechanical
The truth is all that has happened in your life, all that is happening in your life now is your making only. This statement seems to be overwhelming because you do not know how you are doing it. Since you do not know how it happens, to begin with a sense of abandon, yet will commitment and trust is key. Then you may know how you created all the pain like how you created all the joy..
How to Connect with God?
We have already logically established that God cannot be seen with your normal tool of seeing, eyes; God cannot be heard with your ears, cannot be felt using your skin or smelt or tasted. At the same time, all that we know of, have become known to us through these tools of perception. All of that we have known through these tools have their imprints on the mind and the brain. It is from the mind and brain we have thoughts, emotions; they manifest as beliefs, ideas, strategies, opinions etc. Since God cannot be perceived by either the routine tools of perception or by the mind-brain complex connecting with God becomes a complex affair.
You may question how? Yes, all we know of have been acquired by these tools. All the knowledge have been gained by these tools. All the success, happiness, joy you have got is by using these tools. These tools have made me who I think I am. To even digest the idea that none of these would help sometimes become unacceptable.
At the same time we can use same tools to know God when we know how to use them differently. Getting Closer to God, actually means getting closer to the state of God is the promise of Samkhya and Yoga. We will explore the tool in the next article.
What is not Surrendering to God?
One should Realize this soon, 'God is not my pet dog to come whenever I call his name even if I forget him when I think I have other important work to do'
Surrendering to God
What does surrendering to God mean. We should first explore what is not Surrender.
This has to be clarified because there are many of us who do many spiritual processes like going to a temple or church or a mosque regularly; chanting the name of God repeatedly; practicing Yoga, meditation, etc. Some of these could be the right processes to connect with God. Yet the primal existential challenges like fear, insecurity, incompleteness, dissatisfaction remain.
When a person is ill, running a high temperature and not been able to eat food for a few days now. He goes to a doctor. Doctor gives a pill and dietary restrictions for a week. He follows it week for two days. Temperature comes down. He is able to sit up. The patient then relaxes the diet. He takes food that are tasty to the palate. If nothing negative happens, he starts eating as usual before. If anyone asks him to continue the diet the doctor has told he rebels. What is evident?
The degree to which the pain is intense, to the same degree surrender happens. Here the patient surrendered to all that the doctor told when the pain was intense. When the pain reduced he went back to his old methods.
Returning back to old ways of living becomes the primary objective. Which means that the surrendering is need based.
This does not work. The main reason why the so called life style diseases are called so and persist for a life time is because, people seek solutions which can help them return to their old habits. They forget that it was their habits and life style that created the disease they have now. They are unhappy with Yoga Therapy or any other natural way that can bring them back to health because of this one need - ' I need my old life back'.
The truth is that that will not happen. The more one tries to get back to the past more complicated it becomes.
Many healing modalities like psychotherapy, Hypnotherapy, Past life regression therapy work, when one is ready to move forward.
Taking concrete steps to bring about this change in mindset brings about a transformation. This in one reason as to why it is told that, God helps those who help themselves. By adapting to a new lifestyle you help yourself.
Same happens in Surrendering to God.
How to surrender to God?
Why do we pray to God? Basically most prayers are to use God for a purpose.
I pray or do my practice when I have time, Then I continue with my work as usual forgetting about God.
I pray more rigorously when i am in deep trouble. Yes, I may get some benefits here and there but not the real benefit. But I should know that this is not surrender to God.
Even if I pray or practice Yoga or meditation for just a few minutes, can I do it with full involvement?
Second can I carry the essence of my prayer and practice to every aspect of my life?
Prayer, Yoga, pranayama, meditation can be practiced as a physical form can be practiced for a few minutes or hours. Yet, carrying the essence of the practice to every aspect of life is key.
This could be one reason why Yoga begins with Yama and Niyama first. Yama and Niyama may lay the foundations of surrender. The foundation to the answer, How to Connect with God!
If God is a state of existence, then God is in you.
Vedanta Says "You are God - How?'
Imagine a time you were doing a certain work very efficiently?
Reflect on how efficient you are in certain aspects of your life, certain skills etc.
When you perform those skills your body, mind, emotions are in a certain state.
In that state you do certain things which others are not able to do as you do. They think you are doing this like magic.
Certain musicians, sports personalities, business men are considered to be God is it not?
If you can access that state of mind, in any action that you undertake then actually you can become efficient in most of the things that you do. Then you move more closer to the state of God.
The goal is thus to get access that state or be in the state for continuous periods of time.