People who ‘’believe’’ have only ‘’belief’’, because they don’t know.
People who have ‘’faith’’ have only ‘’faith because they don’t know.
People who don’t know turn to religion, thinking that if they have enough ‘’faith’’ and ‘’belief’’ in the tenets of the religion that they turn to, they will finally know.
People turn away from religion because even though they think that they have enough ‘’faith’’ and ‘’belief’’ in the tenets of the religion that they selected, they still don’t know.
People who don’t know, don’t know because they don’t experience connectedness to God.
People who experience connectedness to God don’t ever feel any compulsion to talk about faith and/or belief, because they know God exists with a certainty that exceeds most humans’ abilities to understand how that could be.
The reason people don’t know that God exists with a certainty that exceeds most humans’ abilities to understand how that could be, is because they’ve listened to too many other people’s conceptualizations and hair-brained ideas about what God should be for them.
People need to understand that finding God is a unique and personal and individual experience.
God does not reach down and touch people and then say to them that they are connected.
Only some humanly conceptualized anthropomorphic, anthropocentric, omnibenevolent God that does not exist within the universe would reach down and touch people and then say to them that they are connected. Connectedness just doesn’t work that way.
I’m going to paraphrase an old zen koan:
Chop wood, carry water,
experience enlightenment,
Chop wood, carry water.
Here is my paraphrase:
Chop wood, carry water,
experience enlightenment…no, experience connectedness with God,
You still go out and chop wood, you still go out and carry water,
but henceforth, now you know.
And that makes all the difference.
Kirby 12–20–22
I think all I’ve got is a notion I’d like to share.
Pay more attention to your perceptive than you do to your perspective.
Kirby 6–16–22
