I've gotten this question a couple of times from people, asking me who I see God as now. As I go through my deconstruction, I went through a lot of time searching for meaning. Whether it was in Neo-Paganism, Hinduism, Buddhism or even Pantheism, I wanted to have something real in my life that I could hold onto. Where the church had failed me, I thought I could find meaning elsewhere.
I learned a lot, being away from Christianity. I learned about myself, my own ways of looking at God, and it changed me. It changed my outlook on life, on the Divine, and my philosophy of the world. Suddenly, I was opening doors to new ways of thinking, new ways of looking at the world. There were other choices out there, not just the one I had grown up with.
So, how do I see God now?
Well, about that. I suppose my way of seeing God falls into, not a pantheistic way of looking at the world, but a panentheistic way of looking at the world, where Deity is both immanent and transcendent.
In Wicca (my version, anyway), the Horned God represents the changing of the seasons. He "dies" in the fall and is "reborn" at the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, when things go from waning away to waxing. This is God in his "known" form. In Hinduism, it's known as Saguna Brahman; God with form. He is immanence. The Goddess is the one at the center of it all. She is Creatrix and Destroyer, and she is seen as the consort to the Horned God. She is God without form, or Nirguna Brahman, as they say in Hinduism. She is transcendence. Together, they are God, or the All.
My view of God is very nature-based. I think this comes from my love of nature and animals, my interest in herbs and growing things; I've always seen Deity being within things, such as the earth, the waters, the stars. God is close to us, not far away. God is here. Right with us. You could even say that God is so close to us, that God is us. We come from God, and can be seen as an extension of God. We come from God, the All, and we return to God. There is no separation. The Shaivites, a sect of Hinduism, say that the only thing God cannot do is remove himself from us. And I believe that wholeheartedly; God is unable to separate from us, because he is us. It's something that I find to be so, so beautiful. I was taught from a young age that God was separated from us by sin. That we cannot known him without Jesus, and even then, some sects of Christianity teach that, even with Jesus, the Father is still unknowble. But now? not only can I know God, I can know that I am God. That's an indescribable feeling, especially on bad days when I am feeling the pangs of a depressive episode.
So now that I have shared my outlook on life with you, I'm curious...where do you fall? Do you still believe in God or Gods? Are you an atheist? If you are comfortable with sharing, please let me know in the comment section below!
