The God Within And Without

By James Donahue

I recently received a letter from a practitioner of Pale Mayombe, a religion based on voodoo black magic that had its origins in the African Congo. The letter, in a strange way, sent me into a mental awareness of the broad array of groups in the world that are seeking spiritual pathways by following both conventional and unconventional religious instruction.

We recommend a documentary titled "Wake Up" which is about Jonas Elrod a man that woke up one day with his third eye open, and then having to deal with a new ability to see and even communicate with entities from the spirit world.

After visiting Christian, Buddhist, Native American and numerous other spiritual advisors, Elrod came to the same conclusion my late wife and I reached some years ago. That is that all spiritual pathways are pointing in the same direction. It does not seem to matter which one we follow, we will all discover in the end that the god we seek exists both within and without.

My revelation has been a slow process. It is extremely difficult to describe or explain to readers now that I am trying to put it down in words. It has been something that suddenly and unexpectedly becomes crystal clear to me, but only lasts for a fleeting moment before disappearing in a myriad of the mind clutter that dominates our daily existence.

There is a common phrase passed among the spiritual thinkers. They say "we are all one." And this is profound, even though most people who say it really don’t understand its true meaning.

We also like to say that the god we seek is within us. And here again, the understanding is somewhat vague, yet perhaps a little closer to the truth.

My vision, when it comes to me, is that we are all part of the Creator. The God is so massive that it IS the universe. We are all parts of the whole. And the whole is so vast it encompasses more space, both outward and inward, than we can imagine.

As scientists invent and build larger and more powerful instruments to peer as far as we can see out into space, all we see is more galaxies filled with suns, planets and moons, all in constant motion. We sometimes assume that there is an outside edge of the universe, but we cannot seem to prove this. And I have a feeling that if we could someday find a way to look that far, what we would see is another universe, just like our own, operating beyond our own. In fact, the concept of parallel universes has been growing in our psyche now for some time.

The thing that strikes me is that science also is actively looking farther and farther into our internal universe. The experiments going on at the Large Hadron Collider, or particle accelerator located at the CERN facilities near the Swiss Border is allowing us to peer farther and farther into the smallness of our universe.

There we are discovering that molecules are composed of atoms. It takes molecules to create matter, which is the stuff that we and all of the things we use on this planet is made of. But when researchers look through extremely high-powered microscopes, they find that there is a whole new world in there called particle physics. Atoms resemble our solar system. They are mostly space with a core of energy known as the nucleus in the center, with electrons swirling around it.

That core in the center of the atom is comprised of protons and neutrons. Scientists used to think there could be nothing smaller than protons and neutrons, but now that they can split these minute energies, they have discovered them filled with even smaller particles that they are calling quarks.

The experiments going on at CERN are involving quarks. Researchers want to know what their function is and especially how a particular quark, known as the Higgs Boson, works as a glue to create mass out of a cluster of atoms.

We have a strange feeling that if and when researchers find a way to look even farther into the particles of that inner space, they will find even more surprises. Our universe may continue indefinitely in that direction as well.

Since the atoms that comprise everything, even the human body, are mostly space, with particles of energy actively operating inside, it gives us an eerie sense that our bodies are no more than an imaginary substance of our minds. And if this is so, then it means that our very existence is something we have fabricated from our minds.

Notice that all parts of our known universes are in constant motion. The parts of the atom are moving. The planets in our solar system are moving constantly around the sun. Our solar system, part of the constellation called the Milky Way is in constant motion. All of the suns and planets and moons in this galaxy and ever other galaxy we know of are also in constant motion.

This is pure energy in motion. It exists everywhere we look. What more proof do we need to confirm that we exist as part of the whole of the Creator. We are but a wee spec of the body of the god that put us here. But I have a feeling that we are not insignificant. We have an uncanny power of the mind that can make our own existence possible, and even change the world we live on, either for the better or drive us all into our own destruction.

Since we have the gift of free choice, it is our decision. The Creator appears to be somewhat indifferent to whatever it is we choose to do.