You are god
What if everything you're seeking is in you, and all of us?
Before I get started, I should make the point that this corner of the internet is for spiritual seekers and people who are open-minded about the big questions of the universe, or at least open to other people having beliefs that differ from their own. If you have strong beliefs already and dislike hearing about alternatives, I’m SO happy that you’ve found something that nourishes you and brings you greater connection with yourself and the wider world, and I wish you well - but this space probably isn’t for you.
Never one to ease in gently, I’m dropping straight into this new iteration of this space with the big question: what if there is no god? Or goddess. Or sentient universal force pulling the strings.
What if the deity you’ve been seeking is… you?
And me. And everyone else. And the animals, plants, trees and varied lifeforms that we share this universe with?
I’ve always had trouble with the idea of a deity. The idea that there’s a being sitting up on a cloud, watching this shitshow unfold and going, “Ok, genocide, rape, murder, war, pain, suffering, injustice… No, no, it’s cool, it’s all part of a plan!” Hmm, sorry, what the fuck, dude?
It’s pretty easy to say that your god/dess / the Universe has a plan when you’re a relatively privileged person in a country that offers you a safety net when the bottom falls out of your world, and to see the learning opportunity in everything that hurts when there’s someone, or at least space, to help you heal. But you’ve got to wonder why some people seem to get SO MANY more learning opportunities than others…
And if it’s all part of a plan and it’s important, then how come we can supposedly pray or manifest it away?
What’s the point in taking any learnings from these opportunities if there is a plan that’s going to unfold regardless?
It’s never added up for me. It just doesn’t seem like the point of life should be to be jerked around like a puppet by some “greater” being.
And yeah, you don’t get to choose how the universe is ordered just on what feels good to you, but my modus operandi is to constantly ask, “why, though?”, and the absence of any good reason why it would be this way means I just can’t get behind it.
But the universe is pretty miraculous. The fact that any of us exist, at all, is miraculous. There is some magic in all of that. There is a force at work that’s so much bigger than us, or than anything that we can comprehend.
For me, that force is energy. Energy is pretty magical, when you think about it. It cannot be created or destroyed. So where did it come from?! That energy explosion that caused the Big Bang and brought our known universe into being seems to me to be the ultimate expression of divinity. That burst of something that cannot come out of nowhere and yet, somehow, did come out of nowhere. A force bringing worlds into being, containing within it the essence of life and creation. What’s god if not that?
And that force is in all of us. It’s in everything. Every living being - from a blade of grass to a tree; from an amoeba to a whale; from humans to any other life forms on other planets; from this planet to the sun and stars, and other planets and galaxies beyond us - energy powers everything.
It’s that spark of pure energy, sustaining us and powering us through life, that I think of as the soul. A light that landed from the stars, grew from the earth, breathed into us from the air when we first opened our lungs to receive oxygen.
Where does that light go when we die? Energy cannot be destroyed, so maybe it is released back into the universe. Perhaps to power a new flower, or tree, or animal, or star, or another human.
Recognising the divinity in ourselves gives us back some of the power that has historically been hoarded by those claiming to speak for, and stand in the way of, the universal power. Perhaps we don’t have to constantly look outside ourselves for answers, and guidance, and validation. Perhaps we are, within ourselves, worthy, and valuable, and enough. Yet with great power comes great responsibility, and we have to consider what kind of deity we wish to be.
It also forces us to recognise that, if we are god, then so is everyone else. And so is everything else. We owe respect and care and appreciation to every other being on this, and any other, planet, and to the planet itself.
This is why, for me, caring for nature is a religious practice. The earth, the oceans, the air, the stars, the animals… all of it is sacred.
So honour yourself - you are divine. You contain worlds within you. You are magic and power personified. And honour everything else around you. The ground you tread on is holy - treat it with the reverence which is its due.