The Earth is divided into east and west as our psyche is divided into left and right. Within and upon both hemispheres are systems of beliefs, modes of thinking and biological functions that are required to work in unison in order for the human being to be a healthy, integrated, functioning person. When a person's brain is functioning too much in one hemisphere or the other, biological misfunction takes place and they are left with finding ways to sort out how to heal themselves. The same principal applies to humanity. For the last few hundred years because of the schism between east and west, we have seen upon this planet a time of great strife, violence in unfathomable proportions, a dying off of animal species and a murdering of nature. However, we are now, in this glorious time, sharing cultural ideals from both east and west and through this unison forming spiritual systems that are helping to heal the collective psyche of humankind and the planet itself.
The Pope went to Cuba. The Tibetan Buddhists have come to America. Species are being taken off the endangered list. Women are reclaiming their historical and psychological identities. Men are coming to terms with their feminine natures and being more active fathers, husbands. There is hope and there is change. As a collective whole, humanity is coming of age and we are working toward something that is profound and holy. We are alive during a time when we are allowed to seek answers without fear of persecution or death. We are so very lucky.
God can be personal or impersonal depending upon your religious origin. Most of all, God can be both. God can be alive in a man, Jesus, who found the Christos within and he can also be alive in us. At the same time and within the same soul, Buddha is alive along with Zeus, Hera, Adonis, Psyche, Isis, Osiris and Mithra. The personification of God will vary depending upon many factors but it is, has always been and will always be our longing to know him/her which makes God real in our lives. Regardless of whether or not we are here naming, knowing, preaching about or fighting over God, he/she will exist in spite of us- eternally. Because of this fundamental principle, no one person, religion, spirituality or mythology can claim sole ownership of an understanding of God- it is inherently impossible within the idea of God itself.
It is no accident that symbols, archetypes, dreams, and rituals are present in cultures across the globe. This fact is a unifying force which is a reminder of our humanity and our desire to reach through dogma to get to the source of things- the One. It is in our aloneness, all - oneness, that we come to know this source and we come to it in birth and return to it at death. Because of this cosmic aloneness which is the paradoxical all-oneness we must believe that which our soul lives through. Also because of this we must have compassion and open-mindedness towards the beliefs of others. They too are experiencing God in their own terms, their own way.
The most important aspect of transcendent experience is to remain open-minded and open-hearted. God can come at any time, through any avenue. The mythologists will tell you this and ask you to keep your gates ajar so that the pulse of the universe can beat through you. By closing one's self to other beliefs or feeling that one's experience is more elevated than another's is truly, at its core, a self-inflicted injury. Sadly, this injury is born from fear caused by ingrained, rigid principles that although a protection can also be the weapons of soul-destruction.
Each person must learn in his/her own way, in his/her own time who or what God is. Knowing God is a growth process. First, one embraces an image that connects him/her to the ultimate mystery but then, they must step past that image to understand the true source that lies behind it. They will always love and identify with the image that brought them to God just as one loves his/her mother for bringing them into this world. But ultimately, as one leaves the mother to grow the self, one must leave the image to grow the soul. All the growth that occurs will not destroy the image or mother but instead will enhance them, make them radiant and provide a deeper connection because one has experienced the mystery for oneself. The soul has been here all along.
© Copyright Paula Vaughan
Not to be reprinted without permission.
Resources for further study
Human wholeness is the ultimate expresson of myth.
John F. Priest from Myths, Dreams and Religion: Eleven Visions of Connection