How do we find God?

God.

Is this not something we have all thought about? Probably all of us, even if it was just briefly, had the thought of "Who is God?" or "How do I find God?"

For the word "God" we can use other words too, to suit all audiences. We can replace God with Ram, Brahman, The Divine, Allah, Buddha Nature, Krishna, Shiva, or whatever feels good for us.

In this article, we shall use a different approach to 'find' God. Instead of asking who or what is God, let's take another viewpoint. Let's ask, what is our concept of God? 

How do we see or understand the concept of God? We may ask different people who or what God is, and we shall definitely find different answers, because of different mindsets, different conditioning. It is very simple and clear to illustrate how our ideas all differ according to our conditioning and through dogmatic beliefs. What is meant by this? Let's use an example.

Think of the word 'shoe'. Now, the thought 'shoe' is not the shoe itself, is it? It is just an idea. Now, consider the following; If we ask different people to think of the word 'shoe', which idea will pop up in their minds?

Well, when the idea of a shoe is proposed, the following ideas may appear in the minds of these examples;

A ballet dancer may think of a ballet shoe.
A factory worker may think of a safety boot.
A person living in cold areas may think of a warm boot.
A sporty person may think of a sports shoe or a running shoe.

These are very simple examples, but they are there to create an illustration. We can even put this to test. Think of a shoe, before reading the next line...

....and? What idea came up?

The author's idea of a shoe is a blue and white sneaker, and probably very different to the idea other readers had.

We can even share our ideas of a shoe in the comments section, where we can use a real example to see how our ideas differ.

Yet, does this make one idea 'wrong' and another idea 'right'? No, all our ideas of a shoe are right. They are right, in accordance with our understandings. Nevertheless, we can see that there is no fixed idea of what a shoe is or should be like.

Another idea

With this analogy, we can see that ideas differ through conditioning or understanding. Now comes the more serious question.

When we think of the concept of God, what do we think of? Again, due to conditioning, we shall have different ideas. An old man with a white beard, a ball of bright, clear energy, a dark female figure with many arms, a statue of an animal, or even something else. However, it is understandable that we all have different ideas.

Here comes a very important question we need to ask ourselves. We need to check up now, be real and honest with ourselves when answering this question.

What is 'God' to us? Is God an idea, a thought? Are we just having ideas of what we think the image of God is? Thus, is God merely existing in our minds? Let's consider this... in the end, when we say that we are devoted to God, are we actually just devoted to our minds? To an idea? Are we praising and loving an idea?

Considering this, we may come to the conclusion that all along we have only been having ideas of God. Maybe. And, living in fear or in awe of these ideas. 

Some months ago, the author was in a church for his grandfather's funeral. He went to the children's section, where he used to attend Sunday school as a child. On the walls, there were pictures for the children with the following messages: God knows what we say, God knows what we think, God knows our hearts, God knows what we do, God knows everything.

Does this sound familiar? We have this idea of an all-knowing God. We cannot do anything in secret, because God is always there? As a child, the author remembers drinking alcohol secretly with friends, and afterward, his mind bothered him because he was thinking about this "God sees everything" verse!

Followed by guilt, shame, and regret. We all probably have similar stories to share. 

The Ultimate Witness

Anyways, let's get serious for a moment and reflect on the following. What is the one and only 'thing' that is always aware of our actions? The one 'thing' that is always present? That is always here, witnessing our actions, thoughts, even dreams, etc?

In the presence of absolutely everything and anything, is awareness. Everything we know, think, see, do, happens in the presence of awareness. Is this not true? Consider this before reading further...

Awareness is the Ultimate Witness to absolutely everything. Throughout our entire lives, we have this one 'thing' that is always there, the same, even when things around it are changing. This is awareness.
Without awareness, no experience is possible, because there is nothing to be 'aware' of anything.

Awareness is the Subject, in and to which all objects appear.

Then, being reminded of the Sunday school area - God sees, knows, hears everything.... always present, always there... just like awareness?

Unlike everything else we know, awareness is non-dual, non-discriminating. Always the same. Awareness. Awareness!

Awareness is simply aware. It is witnessing the body and ideas, but it is not the body or ideas. Even our memories, as far as we can remember, we have just always 'been here' - we can not remember a time when we were not here, can we? As far as we know, we have just always existed. Our minds change, yes, our bodies change, yes, our surroundings change, yes, because this is bound to impermanence. However, the one solid observer, this has always been there. Awareness!

Logic within awareness

Now some of us may ask, what about before we were born? Were we not aware then? Well, maybe we were aware, but we simply have no memory of it. Can we remember what we were eating exactly one year ago? No, there is no memory of it, but it still happened. Okay, maybe due to social media like Facebook or Instagram we may go and look at posts of our food! 

Even when we go back to our memory, we do this in the presence of awareness. Nothing can be experienced without it being in the presence of awareness. Not even thinking. We can also use an example of where we may confuse memory or logic with awareness.

When we wake up in the morning, we may see that there is snow lying outside. We can then assume that it snowed, but snowing was never our experience. How do we assume that it snowed? We can conclude, due to past memory and logical thinking that it was snowing during the night, but we did not experience snowing, did we? 

Further, we may reflect on the time that we are in deep sleep and do not remember anything, where there is just a solid blank or 'blackout'. Awareness is there too. Let's explain.

As we said, awareness is aware of what is happening, actions of the mind, speech, etc. When we dream, awareness is aware of the dream happening in the mind. When we just sleep deep, well... ...then there is an absence of events happening in the mind. The mind 'sleeps', but there is still awareness. Awareness of the absence of the mind. Awareness of absence of mental activity.

The minds project the realities we have, as discussed in previous articles. Therefore, if there is no mental activity, we are not experiencing anything, and we are just aware of the absence of mental activity.

Nothing separate from awareness

At this point, we have said a lot of complicated things, and some readers may be confused. We started off by asking who God is, and now we are talking about awareness.

Let's conclude. By reading the above, we can understand that awareness is at the base of everything as we know it. Awareness lies at the basis of absolutely anything.

Further, at the basis of ourselves, the most basic fundamental aspect for us to exist, what is this? It is awareness. We do not exist outside of awareness. In fact, does anything exist outside of awareness? When we investigate, the answer is simple. Nothing exists separate from awareness. 

We have taken a lot of information and condensed it into a very short and simple article here. This is a lot to comprehend, and our understandings of what 'awareness' is, again may differ from person to person. We may call it awareness, consciousness, 'aliveness' or 'being awake' - whatever we label it, is not important. It is the understanding and the experiencing of it that is important.

There are very deep and detailed discussions into this, but it would be way too long for one article. What we want to discuss here, is just to check up on this idea we have on what or who 'God' is and how we understand it.

As far as awareness goes, there are ways we can experience this, to simply be awareness, or to 'rest' in awareness, which we shall discuss in future articles.

The intention of this article is not to doubt our faith in God, to debate whether God exists or what the name of God is, it is merely an opportunity for us to check up, see if we are running after illusions of the mind.

The idea of God for Nefertiti and her family in Ancient Egypt around 1300BC.
Photo taken at the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection, 2018.