God is . . .

God is omnipresent and all-powerful. If we believe that, we must believe that there is no other power and that God is everywhere. We may see a particular scene and interpret it as a sick person, a poverty stricken person, an evil person - but has God ever been sick, impoverished, or evil? Then we have a contradiction somewhere. It must be that our interpretation is in error. God never made a mistake, yet man blames God for an imperfect creation and petitions Him to correct it. What is really needed is for us to correct our thinking and see the creation as it is...a perfect reflection of a perfect God. That does not mean that the sick, impoverished, evil world does not exist. It does, but only as a product of the mind. It was not created by God. It was formed by human mentality. God, therefore, will not make it go away. The mind that formed it must unform it. All things were created by God in a six step process described in Genesis Chapter One, and all that was created was very good. This leaves no room for imperfection.

When we get to the second chapter, creation is finished so although there can be nothing new added, the changes we see are all projections of Adam’s mind. When I speak of Adam, I am referring to the Adamic nature that still symbolizes the human condition. God put him in charge of creation and with his authority, he could name anything, and that is what it would become. Adam is still doing this today. The world is an image of whatever Adam thinks it is. When Adam began naming animals and such, he was still a whole being. The creatures in his garden would have reflected wholeness. After he partook of the knowledge of good and evil, there was judgment in his voice and the world around him reflected the conflict in his perspective. God had nothing to do with this dualistic world. It was formed by Adam’s dualistic mind. It is the "fallen" state of man in which he divides his universe into good or evil conditions, and has lost his ability to see the perfection in him and around him. He has decided to avoid the evil side of his thinking, while desiring the good side. He is unaware that both sides are of the same fatal tree that caused his condition in the first place. In reality, good is no more desirable than evil. Health, no more desirable than sickness. All pairs of opposites must coexist. To be rid of disease, we must let go of health as well. To eliminate evil, you must cast out good with it. In the garden of Eden, there was neither extreme. There was perfection and balance with no pairs of opposites, and no desire one way or the other. To return to that state of perfection, we must undo the transgression where we acquired a knowledge of good and evil. We need an ignorance of good and evil and a knowledge of God. We need to let go of all desire for good and all desire to be rid of evil. After these many thousands of years of struggle, we should know that it’s a losing battle anyway. The church was engaged in the same futility, rebuking sin, condemning sinners, and setting up rules with which to measure our sins, and all it produced was more sin consciousness which in turn produced more sin.

Before Adam ate the fruit of judgment, his life was to walk with the Lord in the midst of perfection. When we forsake the pairs of opposites, we can walk with the Lord beholding the perfection that He is. Its not as easy to behold His creation as perfection. We have to look beyond the appearances. What we behold with our senses is the projection of the human mind. What we can perceive with our spirit is the underlying Godness of all things. When that perception manifests, the world will be an outpicturing of the perfection we see with our inner vision. This requires silencing the judgement of our mind and waiting on God to interpret His own creation. What we see as an enemy, might well be God’s friend. What we call an attack, might be our ticket to freedom. We must stick to our foundational truth: God is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. He said Himself He created the destroyer that we pray to be delivered from. Can a creation of God destroy God? All that is ever destroyed is that which is not God anyway. What can exist that is not the omnipresent God? Only an illusion. His word says that every kingdom that can be shaken will be shaken, and His kingdom is the one that will remain forever. If we are attached to a shakable domain, we can expect to be shaken with it. Whatever we lose in the shaking was not our true self, it was excess baggage that we would not want in the kingdom of God anyway. Let it go, praise Him for the lightened load and continue to pursue His kingdom and His righteousness.

Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire. 1 Cor 3:12-15 

Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. John 9:3-5

We have a choice to work using eternal substance, or that which is here today and gone tomorrow. Gold, silver and precious stones are treasures buried deep in the earth. They serve their purpose by their stability.They represent the foundation of the world, all that is eternal, all which was not created.To acquire them, one must dig for them and separate them from the worthless matter. He who seeks after God is always about the task of separating spirit from flesh, heaven from earth, and the kingdom from this world. Gold and silver are refined and made pure by fire. Precious stones are formed from carbon crystals under tremendous pressure. Overcoming fiery trials and temptations of this world, uncovers the beauty of holiness, the very nature of an eternal God.

Wood, hay and stubble represent temporal form which serves its purpose by being consumed. It’s alright to use the temporal things, providing we recognize them as servants and not as masters. When the temporary is consumed, we will still remain, but our attachment to the temporary will be revealed by the magnitude of our loss. When one who is called out of this world is totally unattached to form, he doesn’t suffer any loss when the corruptible is consumed. All that matters to him is the eternal Spirit, the gold, silver and precious stones. The beauty of these are made manifest by fire and pressure.

Paul and Jesus both referred to working the day-shift in the above scriptures. The daytime is when a man’s work shall be made manifest...and the day is the only time we may work. We are still in that day. Our work of separating the precious from the corrupt is still going on. We will continue to do the works of our Father, as Jesus did, til we all reveal our perfection. Then, the night will come. Do not fear the night. There are no ghosts or goblins when God turns out the lights. This will be a time of rest. The lights are out because no one needs them. We will walk in the light which is a lamp unto our own feet. Our work will be done. The wood, hay and stubble will be behind us. We will realize we are eternal Spirit. We are the light of the world, as long as there is a world.

And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all. 1 Cor 15:28

God changes not, so He cannot become the All in all, He must be the All in all...all the time. The above verse does not point to some future event. All things are already under His feet, and God does not depend on anyone’s actions to make Him the All in all. The only thing lacking is the realization that...yes, God is the All in all...and yes, all things are under His feet. It’s similar to being locked out of your car for hours, only to realize the keys had been in your jacket all along. You don’t merely realize you now have access to the car, you realize you were never locked out. When we walk our walk on the realization that God is the All in all, then we will identify all that we see before us to be "God appearing as"______, and we will refrain from judging the appearance and behold God as He is.

Either God is omnipresent or He is not God. Somewhere, a bad seed was planted that certain parts of the universe are something un-Godly. Perhaps we were led astray by the image of God in the form of a man. The old guy with the long white beard is still etched in my mind. The concept, no matter how symbolic, paints a finite picture of an infinite Being. It would have been better if painting an image of God had always been illegal, punishable by death. But there He stands in His white robe and facial hair looking like the Ancient of Days, or somebody’s grandfather. And there, all around Him and outside Him is an entire universe. The next step down Fantasy Lane was to imagine God looking down, coming down, or reaching down from wherever He lives to wherever we live. The earth was far from God, while hell was really far from God. Now this separated picture of a man called God is etched in our minds so, we have a difficult time ridding our mind of it. Like saying the word Zebra without seeing stripes in our mind. The truth still remains that there is no separation from God except as an error in our thinking. We can choose to entertain the error, as we would monsters under the bed, and to us the monsters, or monstrous errors, would be real.

I have had some measure of success comprehending a God that is too big to see in any image. It may seem sacrilegious to some, but it will set you free to the degree that you grasp the truth of it. God is too big to be contained. Person is a container. Father is a container. He is a container. We’ve made these concepts in our image and likeness and we need to abandon them. Everytime you think of a zebra, you will see stripes. Change your concept of God. Elevate Him above the things which do appear. Author Richard Bach referred to God as "the perfect invisible Principle of all life". Not a bad statement, for a seagull. God introduced Himself to Moses as Iam, but we still tend to see that as a name rather than a Truth. Another word for "I am" is Consciousness. No, you don’t have to be a guru to use the word. Consciousness has all the God-qualities...no beginning or end ...omnipresent ...all knowing ...infinite ...pure ...holy ...and it’s not an old man with a white beard! When nothing else exists - Consciousness still is. The name Jehovah means Self-existing One. One who is Self-sustaining. God doesn’t require anything else to cause Him to exist, and neither does Consciousness.What was here before anything was created? Before form, before energy, before time and space, before thought? In the eternal nothingness of an empty void, one Is-ness filled all of eternity: the uncreated I AM. Although it would not be accurate to put a time perspective on all this, I believe we could say without error that all the creation we are now enjoying unfolded from the eternal I AM. However, the original perfection of I AM has never changed. What appears as creation is an image in the likeness of the original uncreated Is-ness. Pure, holy, Is-ness.

It is likely that all this is shocking to you. No doubt, it is confusing at first. You knew that God was not "a thing", but to cross the fine line over to "no thing", seems sacrilegious. It may help you to meditate on the idea that "everything" and "nothing" are the same. We favor formed things, believing that something has more substance, more value than no-thing. Just the reverse is true. The unformed thing (Spirit?) is the Father of all formed things. Spirit is the Master, Form is the servant. The servant cannot be greater than the Master. God has always exhorted us not to worship any created thing. Sherlock Holmes would tell you that however illogical, we must conclude that He meant for us to worship an uncreated non-thing. Didn’t Jesus the Christ become nothing, that He might become exalted above all things? When Peter exhalted himself, was he not immediately brought to nothing? The scripture also states that when you empty yourself, I AM can fill you with glory.

And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God, and from his power; and no man was able to enter into the temple . . .Rev 15:8 Man is the temple of God, but so is an atom, a solar system and the entire universe. If the universe were empty, it would still be filled with the glory of the Great I AM, the eternal Isness.

The present realm we are existing in is that of cause and effect. We can’t say if we’ll be subject to cause and effect eternally, but we are definitely in that school for the moment. What we need to learn here is that chasing after the effects will get us nowhere. Let’s say we decide we want to have a million dollars. In that desire our soul is crying out for money, but our spirit wants what money represents: independence, peace, and happiness. Money is an effect and so cannot cause us to have peace. That’s why you can have chaos and strife even with money. Another person may dream about owning a home. What is it that a home represents? Security? Stability? Whatever it is, that’s what they’re really seeking. Owning a home cannot cause these things. It is another effect. However, if one finds peace, security and stability by grasping that which causes these things to be, it doesn’t matter if they own a home or have great wealth. I’ll illustrate this using a firecracker. What is the effect of a firecracker? The bang. What is the cause of the bang? Gunpowder wrapped in paper, set afire. Someone hears a bang, and desires to have bangs of their own. They visit all kinds of stores asking, "Do you have a bang?" The answer is invariably, "No", and they soon become frustrated. "Can you believe this town doesn’t have a single bang?" Suddenly, they hear another bang. Rushing to the scene they ask, "Where did that bang come from?" Why, from a firecracker, is the answer. Now they are able to seek out that which causes the bang and produce bangs as often as they light firecrackers.

What is the cause, or source of all the effects we would see manifest as our life?

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace. James 3:17,18 The wisdom whose effect is peace, has only one source, that pure and holy ground, the unfathomable I Am. From the perfect uncreated Isness (cause), flows peace, gentleness, mercy and goodness (effect). God Itself is the cause of all things. Stop giving credit to or blaming effects for other effects. Most of the futility of our existance can be traced to manipulating effects, in order to achieve another effect. If the only real cause is God, and God cannot be manipulated, then we find pure wisdom when we stop manipulating and rest in the God that already is perfect. Then we can produce peace.

We ourselves are a peaceable effect when we live, move and have our being in holy Isness, (See Acts 17:24-29). We cannot represent pure holiness unless we are in a state of rest where our total effect is "God-appearing-as-us". If we add or subtract anything from that purity by our input or control, error will enter into our expression, and the effect will be chaotic and not peaceful.

If we are to hold fast to our God as all-powerful and omnipresent, then the whole universe, seen and unseen, must be within God, and so then must you be in God. Anything perceived to be outside of God, can only be fantasy and vain imagination, illusion and shadow. Call it sin, call it the devil, call it what you want. It is simply erroneous thinking. When Jesus told the religious leaders of Israel that the devil was their father, He said that he was a liar from the beginning. A lie is believing something is, when the truth says, it is not. Believing we are apart from God is a lie. The truth says, God is one, how then can there be two? We fear that idea because our tradition tells us that we cannot be God. Have no fear that you will ever become God. God already is. Nothing can become God. That’s another way of stating the same lie that something isn’t God but can become God. What God is, It always has been and ever will be. All I’m asking you to do is include yourself in God. There’s really nowhere else you can be. No other place exists. Include me in God too. You and I are one as God is one. We are also free to live and move and have our being in this infinite universe, provided we let go of every thought that has held us back. We are as unlimited as we want to be. Go ahead and flex your wings.