Joy and Purpose

The reason for all creation is the joy of creation itself. To create and know the joy of sharing divine unconditional love with the creation; creation so that love can be expanded within the created form, this is the purpose of all existence. Consciousness, existence, is meant to be unfettered joy, it is meant to be love beyond love. What, then, has created this particular reality where we experience many things which seem to be the opposite of unfettered joy and love? Why do we suffer in this universe based on joy? Consciousness can choose any experience, including the experience of being unconscious (meaning unaware of its own nature). It chooses that in order to expand and discover more about itself. Just as light expands into darkness and the darkness must scatter, so consciousness expands into unconsciousness.  The problem, is that many have become ‘stuck’ in unconsciousness. We are like light which has forgotten it is light and does not realize it can make the darkness scatter simply by virtue of its nature, as light. We think we need to be something else, we think we need something, or someone, outside ourselves in order to be ‘saved’ or in order to ‘see the light’. In actuality, all we need to do is be who we really are and the darkness will scatter.

How do we remember and become who we really are? By following our joy. Find what gives you joy and focus on that. The reason this is hard for many of us is that we have been trained out of this. When we were children we followed our joy quite naturally, but at some point we were made to think that doing this was wrong. You were told to do your homework instead of doing what made you happy in the moment, so you began to put aside your joy in order to fit in with the rest of the world. This is why sometimes we have to go back into our child self in order to find our joy again. There may be things that gave you immense joy in your childhood that you put aside and forgot about. Sometimes you need to search through your childhood memories to find that again and bring it back into your reality of now. Perhaps you loved to sing, or to dance, or to watch fish, or to do flips on the trampoline. So when you remember that, then what? If I loved to sing do I quit my job and put everything into singing? Maybe, but in most cases that is not necessary. Just begin singing again, maybe just in the shower, or maybe join a choir, then see where it leads you. It could take you places you never expected, and if you are following your joy and allowing your joy, it will not lead you astray. Once you line up with your own joy, you will find your purpose unfolding, and be forewarned it may not be what you expect, but it will always feel good, and right. This is why allowing is important, if you set up too many expectations or ideas about how it should or shouldn’t look in this process, then you are getting in your own way. Forget about how it should or shouldn’t look and just follow your joy. Your joy and your purpose are the same thing. Let me say that once again: your joy and your purpose are the same thing. When you find your joy, you have found your purpose. Joy is the purpose of the universe, it is the purpose of consciousness and therefore is your purpose.

Blessings on the journey,

Rhea Jamil

Questions You Can’t Ask in Sunday School: Where did God Come From?

This would have been a blasphemous question at one time, and there is always part of me that loves these kinds of questions.  If it was once blasphemous, and it still can’t be asked in Sunday school, then it must be onto something.  Growing up in a traditional religious fashion, this was one of my earliest questions – if God created everything, then who or what created God?  I remember hearing a story once about a culture of people who believed that the earth rested on the back of a giant turtle.  When an anthropologist asked what the turtle was standing on, the reply was – ‘that’s easy, it’s turtles all the way down.’  I’m not even sure this is a true story but is illustrates my point – the elephant in the room of all thinking about any God, or turtles holding up the earth – is where did they come from in the first place?  What creates them?  What is the origin?  Then, as I grew spiritually and begin to see God as consciousness itself, as consciousness which is the creative force behind all things and is also in all things including me and you, the question of where did God come from also becomes the question of where did we come from, where did everything come from?  What was the original impetus that created all there is?  Just as scientists struggle to explain the beginning of the universe, we begin to realize it is all the same question.  How did the Universe, or God, come into being in the first place, and why?

So, what does science tell us about where it all came from?  We know there was the big bang, but where did the energy for the big bang come from?  The answer is (drum roll please…) from nothing.  From nothing, came everything.  The truth is, scientists don’t really understand what banged or what caused it to bang, and all the evidence suggests that before there was everything, there was nothing.  The big bang was the creation of time itself, of matter, energy and space, none of which existed before the big bang.  So, as we grabble with the scientific explanation, let’s turn to religion to see what it has to say.  I’m no biblical scholar and I rarely quote the Bible (for me the truest scripture is within), but there are some gems in there and I always liked the first line of the book of John which describes the beginning of creation – it says – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  Everything was made through Him and without Him was not anything made.”  The “Word,” used in this sense, is the essence of creation itself.  It is the impetus, the vibration that has awakened consciousness and existence.  The Word is with God and is God.  “With” God implies outside of God – as something that is with something else is separate from it, even though it is with it.  But the Word also is God.  So God is simultaneously along side of creation (“with” it) and creation itself, and creation itself happens at the beginning – which must be the beginning of time.  God is both the subject and object of creation.

Furthermore, and here’s the kicker for me – “…without God was not anything made”.  It is the term “without” that strikes me here.  “Without” implying the lack of existence of God.  So, without God, there was nothing, with God, there was everything.  So, from nothing, came everything.  Sounding familiar?  This is what the science tells us as well, as strange as it is – everything came from nothing.  This first sentence in the Bible is not implying that God existed before creation, but that God was, and is, creation itself.  God is the big bang.  God is everything that exists.  God is the word, the word is creation, creation is God, and so on in an eternal loop.  There are others who will interpret this differently, but I believe this is a valid interpretation that is in harmony with what science tells us – that nothing, not even time, or God, existed “before” the moment of creation, and that everything, including time, and God, existed and was created at the moment of creation or what we call the big bang.  God popped into existence out of nothing.  God is creator and the creation itself.  The beginning and the end.  Ultimately, neither science nor the Bible give any specific cause for creation.  It seems that it simply happened.  The Universe has no cause.  But really this is not a surprise, after all the concept of ‘God’ would be the one who has no cause, but is the cause itself.  It appears the last turtle is standing on itself, and thus it is, in fact, turtles all the way down.

This is something I was spurred to write in response to Seven Hawking’s assertion that there is no God because there was nothing before the moment of creation – there was no energy, matter, space or time before the big bang, so there could not be a God.  He’s both right and wrong in my opinion, and much of it hinges on your perception of God.  Since I see God and creation as one, I see no conflict between the science of the big bang and the philosophy of God as creation itself and the creative force within creation.

Love and light

Rhea Jamil

Related articles

• A nice little video on the origin of the Universe (thisconjecture.wordpress.com)

The Sum Total of Creation

A single and separate omnipotent being is how many envision God. However, on the mystical path one’s view of God expands and it becomes apparent that the creative power of the universe is shared, not controlled by one being. All things in existence have a piece of the universal power – from the smallest bee visiting a flower to the largest of celestial bodies, to all the divine and mortal beings in between. Creation is not limited to a separate omnipotent being. A bee visiting a flower is an act of creation. All life is capable of creation, and in that way the divine creates itself over and over, every second of every day. Creation is not something that happened one day in the distant past, it is something that is inherent in every moment of this experience we call life. All beings are cut from the same divine, eternal cloth. We are all one, and all our energies together are the sum of the whole universal creative omnipotence.

Rhea Jamil

Child of the Universe

The impetus of creation was the universe’s desire to know itself, to create itself and live through many different forms. When you think about it, it is somewhat like having a child. One of the reasons people have children, though not the only reason, is that they have the opportunity to live through them, to re-experience childhood. Suddenly Disney World is fun again because you get to experience it through your children’s eyes. It awakens a remembering of the magic you experienced in your childhood, so in a certain way you are living vicariously through your children. This is not a perfect analogy, but it is similar to how the universe creates you in order to experience itself from another perspective, to see itself through new eyes. However, as we know with children, they also have free will. At some point, they may turn and say “screw you mom and dad” and go their own way. Then, you will have to watch them as they make bad decisions and suffer the consequences of those bad decisions. And though you are always there willing to guide them, if they do not want to be guided there is not much you can do. In the end, you have to let them learn through the experience because you cannot control them (no matter how much you might want to). At some point, if they begin to realize the mistakes they’ve made, they may come back to you, at which most parents will be there with open arms. A parent capable of unconditional love will understand that the bad decisions they made were part of their growing process and necessary to help them find wisdom, rather a personal insult to the parent’s world view. For this parent, welcoming the “prodigal son” back home is a no-brainer, it is as natural as breathing. The bible and other Judeo-Christian texts are full of “parent child” analogies to God and self, to the point that God is commonly referred to as “father.” This analogy works to a point because it is very reflective of this relationship. We do have free will and can turn from our source. When we do, we learn lessons which then bring us back to that source, which could be seen as a parent. The downfall of the parent-child analogy of God and self is that it also can make God into an authority figure, one who punishes, when in actuality God and self are equals. The difference is that “self” has free will, but no matter how far “self” strays into the illusion of separateness, God is always waiting with open arms, and will always be there for guidance, as a quiet voice within.

-Rhea Jamil