Over the years of illness, God became the closest one to me. Without God, I now do not live at all. He is the only one that keeps me on this planet. Yes, of course, caring for my children keeps me going. But I wouldnt be myself if I didnt have God.
I have realized that I wouldnt live without Him.
Throughout my illness, all these years, I have been coping with life only in connection with God. He makes sense even of the most difficult days and gives lots of hope. The more so His help. This is the real miracle! And I believe that miracles happen to everyone, I just can see them, because a body part of mine (its not clear which one) is set to catch signs and notice miracles. It might be intuition. But these signs help me live. Thats for sure.
For me, God is alive. And I believe in a personal God.
The Shape of God
In every religion, the existence of God takes its own form. The word «form is very important. The fact is that it does not necessarily stand for the material form, it is also a spiritual form. God exists in a form that can be understood by people. This is my concept. And at this point, I do not see alternatives to it. My mind is also part of our system that describes the world, so I cannot say that my concept is absolutely correct, because it still exists within the given form. Of course, the truth can be completely different, incommunicable, unknowable. But for myself, in my mind, everything I do and think corresponds with my concept. It makes my life easier. And what is it really like?
The peculiarity of Christianity is that God is separated from a man. A father and his sons and daughters. We stand apart from God. He acts as a person in this world. And in this world, this concept is normal. It has the right to exist. God is separate from a man. On the other hand, He is actually separate, because He is a «non-emptiness, and we do not feel like that. A man is separated from the «non-emptiness.
God is not existence, neither it is goodness, God becomes visible in creation. God manifests Himself in creation. This is how He manifests Himself and becomes visible. Thus, a small part of Him becomes visible in creation, in the material world. But what He is like, what He is, we cannot say.
God can be approached through ecstasy in prayer, liturgy, and other sacraments of religious service. Anyway, we have no other way. But it is crucial that we constantly try to approach God. If you are lucky, you will succeed a little. Therefore, the word «approach is used for this process, that means approximately, partially become closer.
Surely we cannot get into a better contact with God, at least in our life, in our material world. Maybe in another world, in another spiritual dimension, we will do it? Having overcome the wheel of samsara, lets say, unite with Him again. People are looking for different ways to feel the approach: through prayer, ecstasy, LSD, yoga. We are trying to get closer all the time. This desire is naturally inherent in us.
And for me, Christianity is not a philosophy, it is a process of communication with the living God. Many perceive Christianity as a religion, as a certain code. In fact, true Christianity has no rules at all. It may simply be in a persons soul. That is, you can be a Christian without observing any rules. If you are a Christian in your heart, then you are fundamentally Christian.
«Every soul is a Christian, said Quintus Tertullian, one of the outstanding early Christian writers and theologians, hundreds of years ago. In the emerging theology, Tertullian first expressed the doctrine of the Trinity. He laid the foundation for Latin patristics and Church Latin the language of medieval Western ideas.
Apparently, not every soul is a Christian, but in essence, yes, the words are true. The soul is a Christian in its striving for God, in its desire to help others. It is only important that these impulses, these movements, be sincere.
In terms of soul, Orthodoxy is closer to me than other Christianity. It is the most mystical religion, closer even to Buddhism and Judaism than to Catholicism or Protestantism. Of course, it is very canonical, everything in it is according to the rules. Christian mystics say that God is one and only, and there are no material things or events. Exactly what Buddhism tells us about. Subject and object are not different, they are the same.
In Buddhism, man is God. He also exists, He is also there. There is the God, and there is a man. I tend to support this idea God and man are one. Everything is one, because everything is interconnected. Is a man separated from this one unity? From the world? From the universe? Of course not. He is right there. He cannot be separated. He is also God, only a small one, a very simple one. But he is also God. I believe that this «non-emptiness applies to absolutely everything. That is why it all links together when we try to explain synchronicities. We understand them as something that we ourselves create.
We ourselves create these synchronicities by coming into contact with «non-emptiness. We create all these signs ourselves, therefore they do not show up to people who do not believe in them. Because when we believe in something, we create it by the power of faith. Atheists essentially never wonder: «What is the world?» Surprisingly enough, they are not interested in the world and the way it works. They evade this question. They pretend that the question does not exist at all. But it does. People ask it every day. We live on a beautiful planet without asking ourselves how our planet was formed. In my opinion, atheism equals laziness. It represents the reluctance and fear, among other things, to try to find answers to your questions. This is scary. Atheists are afraid to know the truth, even to come closer to this truth. I feel sorry for atheists they dont ask themselves questions because theyre afraid of answers. After all, no one knows for sure what the truth is. And the process of searching is eternal. We will never answer all our questions, because it is simply not an option. But I am sad to realize that there are atheists who lock themselves only in the material world.
Gods Names
There is a God, and He appears in many different forms and faces. We see only our world one of the billions of faces. We do not see the rest, because we are not ready for the rest. Its like the many names of God in Judaism. My respect for Judaism has grown stronger, because it goes deeper. Different names of God are a good idea. Of course, Judaism speaks a worldly language, and speaking of different names for God, it means different incarnations of God, different religions Christianity, Islam, and so on. But when I say «names of God, I want to go even deeper. God can have names that we dont even have an idea of. He can embody a completely different way of living. Moreover, God is unknowable, He has no name. Therefore, in Hinduism, it is forbidden to call God by name. There is neither a word nor a thought to express the Gods name. It is an amazing concept that God cannot even be thought of. God is described in negation, through enumeration of what He is not. There is even such a thing as negative theology. There is no need to think about God, for He is unknowable anyway. What a deep thought we have here. Thuswise we are reminded that God is the unknowable. And there is no point even trying to know Him. No one, of course, says that it is impossible to know Him. It is not prohibited. Still, it is impossible to know Him truly. Only the path of knowledge, like mine, is possible but look, Hinduism warns me and other seekers that our search will get us nowhere. At least in this lifetime.
Different Religions
In every duality there is a hidden reserve. We operate on a binary system. Zeros and ones is a programming language. Computer technologies are built on zeroes and ones, on duality. That is, one thing is «yes, the other thing is «no. We certainly live in duality, we live in a binary system. All our actions and events exist in the binary system: black and white, good and evil, God and devil, up and down. Buddhism has is an absolutely categorical concept duality is always one and endowed with hidden qualities, like two sides of the same coin.
Until recently, I had the impression that Christianity was beautiful, its parables were wise and wonderful. If I go deeper into Zen Buddhism, what do I do with Christianity? As if you can only choose one thing. I imagined Christianity at the bottom in the foundation of everything. I saw Zen Buddhism at the top. Visually, I imagined two religions like that. And then in my head, Christianity and Buddhism could coexist simultaneously, they ceased to contradict each other, because one is below and the other is above, they complement one another.
Why do I have Christianity at the bottom and not at the top? Because it is about our worldly life. All Christian parables tell stories of material world, real events. And Zen Buddhism claims there is no reality, so I ended up with it at the top. One religion does not continue another, they go in parallel, like two sides of the same coin.
The same can be said about other religions: Islam, Hinduism. They are all at the bottom because they are talking about material things. Islam is practically Christianity with a few changes. Hinduism, of course, hovers above Christianity a little. It is passionate. Its like, lets say, a fabulous religion. Various branches of Christianity also show us, tell us about life in the material world.
Different religions, each telling in its own way about material life prove to me that the world is one. There cannot be a hundred religions and a hundred worlds. But when, for example, the orthodox say that their faith is the truth, it stirs up my resentment. This seems untrue to me. Their faith reflects the picture of the world as their community sees it. These are all cultural aspects that reduce everyone to one single world, and people tell about it under the influence of cultural differences. There can only be one world. At least the other world is not shown to us yet.
Just like about a struggle for power, I am sceptical about the disagreement between the conceptual Orthodox and Catholics, Catholics and Protestants, Muslims and Christians. We all live in the only common world. We all turn to God, albeit calling it by different names, different words. How many people enthusiastically delve into the word sense? Etymology is an extremely interesting field, it tells us where certain words come from, what they mean. Take, for example, the word «Lord. This word has another meaning ruler. We perceive God as ruler. In our language, God is a ruler. And the ruler is the one whom people obey and serve. But this is actually a lie. God gives us so many freedoms! Therefore, for myself, I gave up on the word «Lord. I feel God as my friend, I listen to him, but I do not want to obey God like a slave, meekly, without understanding. Here is another phrase «servant of God which I stay off.
I do not consider myself equal to God, God is above everything. I believe in God, I firmly believe that there is Something that leads us through life. This is my religion, it may be wrong. But God should be called by some other word, which shows if not particularly equal, but good neighbourly relations. Or some word that shows that God is not our ruler, that He leads us, helps us. But He is not our lord. Thats what I think.
What Do I Think of When I Look at the Mother of God?
Countless times have you seen a woman holding the body of her murdered son in her arms. We look at her in hushed silence and feel all the heaviness of the weight in her hands. She devotes herself to him a mother mourns her son. Still, we look at icons, frescoes, statues, and we know that She is the Mother of God. She has the King of Heaven in her arms. She is the Queen of Heaven. On any icons, even the most ancient ones, you will not find Her look otherwise than royal. She is always young and queenlike. He is always young and kinglike.
However, not long ago, I saw this scene in a very different way. I saw and understood for the first time with all my soul that the Mother of God is, first of all, a mother. She was his mom. And her son was killed. He died in terrible suffering, before her eyes. I saw that this well-known story is a real tragedy. I looked at the Virgin Mary and saw a woman, a mother whose son had died. Her child, her boy was killed. This struck me to the core.
I felt the human maternal pain of the Mother of God. I involuntarily imagined what a nightmare it would be if this happened to me. What a terrible thought.
Who Was Jesus?
It is believed that Jesus got his cosmic consciousness by way of trial. And here I am asking a question: was He a man, that is, a human with special powers, or was He a different essence? It is known that for thirty-three years, Jesus stayed in the form of a man and possessed powers and abilities. Because He, for example, could feed five thousand people with five barley loaves and two fishes. That is what a parable from the Gospel of John tells us. But, on the other hand, all His abilities may turn out to be a myth, a metaphor. Or they may not. We dont know. And well never know it because it happened a long time ago. We can only trust the Bible and say that since it is written in the book, it really was the case.
But is it really so?
I understand the story of Jesus not as a myth. I might be wrong. But when I read the Bible, I have the feeling that if He was a man, He was very different from how they describe Him. Or is Jesus a spiritual person? The God? British philosopher, writer and lecturer Alan Watts believes that Jesus was a man who actually lived. That is, it is not a myth. At the same time, Alan Watts is not a Christian believer. The main thing, in my opinion, is that Jesus gave humanity a lot. All the parables about Jesus are amazing, brilliant. It doesnt matter who made them up. It is important that parables exist, that they are absolutely right and help us live.
When I come to confession, I always say the same thing about my week faith, and how sceptical I am. Weak faith is my ordeal. I dont truly believe in Jesus Christ the way He is described in the Bible, in the three-day resurrection. The concept of resurrection confuses me. I dont believe that He rose on the third day. But, on the other hand, maybe we are talking here about reincarnation? Maybe this is the way the Bible introduces us to reincarnation?
When I say «week faith, Im talking about the lack of faith in the Christian sense; I dont believe enough in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and in His existence. I have doubts. When I confess my lack of faith, priests always answer me: «Thats okay. Almost everyone has doubts, because no one knows the truth, no one has seen how it really was.