“We live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a Reality. We are that reality. When you understand this, you see that you are nothing, and being nothing, you are everything. That is all.” (Karma-Ran-Byun, Tibetan writer)

            I once believed that anything outside of Christianity was not only bad for me but was also the devil, evil, trying to take a hold on my life. Ideas like those found in modern spirituality were as foreign to my conditioning as tolerance is to Donald Trump. It was throughout more than twenty years of study and analysis that I slowly realized how silly that ignorance really was. The entire gamut of Religion itself began to leave a bitter taste in my mouth. I slowly started to realize that exposure to other theologies wasn't evil, rather as much futility as looking for Jesus ever had been. The God that this reality clings to has never really existed. I could not find Him. It was fruitless exploration, the senseless wasting of much precious time. I had once surrendered myself, giving all of me to a greater cause. I chose to follow, abandoning reason and letting God lead the way or, to say the least, what I believed was the way. I had to assume, I had to trust, that in asking to be taken to a place, I am where I am supposed to be.

            I firmly believe that when it comes to God, there is no truth. There is nothing we can possibly know for sure. We can weave guesswork, thousands of years of it, melded together in cascades of exogesis and isogesis and every interpretation along the way. We personify the things we don't understand so that we can understand them, at least from our mortal vantage point. We have created an anthropomorphic version of ourselves. It comes with all the demons, all the human traits but much less compassion than you would think a God would have. Even though I had wandered away from my birth religion, I spent great time and resources studying other religions, other ideas on the Holy. In the end, they were all the same: projected ideas from the reality we are familiar with. They are laced with guilt and a sense of obligation. So many souls, each one searching, but finding only what they can comprehend through their own experience. We are conditioned to think the way we do. We are told how not to behave but never why our feeble lives are important enough for us to behave.  Doesn't anyone else see that the God we worship, the gods of this world, we have made far too human?

            I am not an atheist.  I still believe in one true God. I no longer believe that the

religious paths men take have any validity outside their own experience. We all believe the same and yet at the very same time, we all believe differently. The variables are written in who we are and how we think. I have every reason in the world not to believe in all this religious fluff, but I remain constant in my affirmation that I do believe in God, just not your God. It's ironic. The very same character I was drawn to as a child, stands as the closest thing to what I indulge in spiritually as an adult. The road I have travelled seems to have come full circle. The innocence I once had as a very young boy has not returned to me. The moments of emptiness I once knew no longer haunt my very being. I am free, but I am drawn to it. I am pulled into thinking that everything will be okay. I view through rose coloured glasses, harkening on how things used to be for me. The distance I have always known with God is now unbendingly clear. I was on my own from the start. We create our gods, then worship that which is not there.

"I believe that the only true religion consists of having a good heart." (Dalai Lama)

            Discovering that the God of my birth faith did not exist was an evolution in my spiritual thinking. Realizing there was nothing there at all just made it all make sense somehow. I had been preaching to the choir as no one listened. At first, this new emptiness left me cold and afraid. The consequence of worshipping a mortal-like deity is always guilt and shame and a state of unrighteousness. Deserting my Christianity cut me to the very core. I was left with no choice. My awareness increased but so did my conviction. Letting go made me feel like I had betrayed Jesus. I found myself floating in the very void I was trying to flee. It's a difficult thing having to explain to yourself that God is doing you no good. Leaving the idea of heaven behind did not sit well either. Everything I knew had to be abandoned. All those words and ideas and conjecture were all just noise. Fruitless and broken men flay about, praising a creation they know nothing of. I finally surrendered to the nothing. I gave in despite much doubt and no formal invitation. It is not that there is nothing there, rather our human limitations strain us, restrict us from recognizing that which we cannot know. All that we do know is really just illusion. In the end, religion is not of God but rather of man.

            There is great emancipation, a freedom in my ignorance. In recognizing that nothing is real, I have gained a sense of wonder and much faith. Understanding the truth has not separated me from the Holy. In fact, my newly reconstructed respect, and humble admiration, has also restored my trust and optimism. I am whole and healed for the first time. I still believe. I still hope. I still have awe and wonder. I am no longer bound to the anthropomorphic interpretations man has manifested through religion. In a sense, God is now an otherland, a place to go but you create it all on your own. You pull from this experience and that belief, constantly growing, constantly shifting, rethinking your approach. Everything that is, is, but it is a virtual reality we create for ourselves.  

As with the Lord, each definition, each manifestation is pure reflection. We see what we want when we venture this way. We determine how the world works for us. What we hold on to, we become. I had to let it all go. When you recognize the truth, you cannot go on denying the lie. You cannot depend on others. You must see it all on your own. You must save yourself. No one can swim to shore for you.  

"Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others." (Gautama Buddha)

            Let me get this straight. Everything is nothing. I am part of everything and so I too am nothing. Nothing is everything and everything is nothing. All we know of nothing is that nothing is everything and everything is really nothing.  I sense an echo. I am witness to a paradox. Everything that passes before us as we dwell in matter is relative to our perspective and a unique, and very subjective, interpretation. We grow into our reality, each moment of our lives gathering like the rest and mixing in with the absence of anything truly tangible. There is a list for who we think we are. We know what we are taught. We know what we experience. We know what we conclude, based entirely on the previous two. We can only hope to understand the futility of anything filtered through a mortal man. We are corrupt from the get-go. We are biased, basing our entirety on who we think we really are. The spectrum of mankind's existence is illusion, the creation of what we think into a perceived reality, which in no way makes it real.

            It's not all lies. It's not all wishful thinking. If everything is nothing then nothing itself is something. We are not bound to know but we can bet that there is much more to the nothing than nothing at all. On this I think I can rebuild. I can remake me. It is better for me to reconstruct my Faith on not knowing than to believe that I do know. I cannot give any answers. There is no icon to praise, no deity to bow down to. There is no guessing, no question to throw. There is nothing there to answer, nothing there to give one a clue. I still find myself thankful, praying in my way and how I have come to be with God. There is a still, small voice I can see in the starshine, hear in a child's laugh and feel on an Indian summer's day. It is with me, but there is no one to know. In the emptiness and all the darkness, I can still feel it. It is here although it has never been with me. The familiar sense of longing that I experienced as a child has come to me again. It ignites my soul and sends me reeling, In the silence, and the absence, there is something calling, waiting, joining the universe in a glorious display.

"The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing." (Socrates)

            When it comes to knowing God, there is no truth. Speculation rather than dogma, trusting the unknown rather than doctrine, these are as close as I can get. Subjective, reflective and sometimes mass hallucination, all for naught, all for naught. Somehow in this distance, in the space between before and soon, I find myself. I find myself facing the unknowable, still, I often succumb. I still put human traits on God. I still talk like someone is listening. I still search with the hope that I will be able to see, or at least see more clearly. I am waiting for nothing.   

"Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those

 who have not seen and yet have believed." (John 20:29, NIV)

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