“In a sense we are like fish in the ocean, who experience the ocean, and gain our life from the ocean, but are not capable of understanding the ocean”
Human beings are driven by our physical, emotional and mental needs.
Our needs are met, first by our parents or caregivers, and we become accustomed to our needs being fulfilled from OUTSIDE our physical body. But as we grow, and our needs shift from physical needs to emotional and mental needs (Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs), OUTSIDE sources of satisfaction often begin to fail us.
The ultimate fact we find is, that nothing OUTSIDE ourselves can get rid of our sense of dis-satisfaction in our lives (or our inner sense of illegitimacy, etc). All attempts to do so will be ultimately met with disappointment and disillusionment in the outside sources we sought our “safe haven” in.
So, i am proposing that humans are “built” such that when our needs shift to emotional and mental needs, we must begin to reach inside….. to shift our search for emotional and mental satitation from OUTSIDE sources to INSIDE sources.
i believe this is built into our DNA framework.
i am therefore also proposing that “our connection point with “God” is within us in the center of our being.” *1 If we are made this way: that nothing outside us can truly satisfy our emotional and mental needs, then this assumption would be correct. i have come to the conclusion that we “mis-experience” what happens when we have a religious experience (feel completed, or washed clean etc) as being due to an outside source (eg. a God in the sky)….
Rather, it is an inner thing, with an inner catalyst.
For myself, this means, “God” is already there in our inner being…. built-in to our “total being” which we received as “our DNA package”.
This is not so much a belief in something different, as it is “seeing correctly what is taking place inside us”.
This is NOT a new religious outlook, but rather bringing truth home to roost.
IT is a reinterpreting of the real experiences which we have misunderstood.
So then an issue like “sin” would come from blocking that connection with “God” INSIDE us, and when we stop blocking it, it is there just as it always was, ……. if we block it again, same thing happens, and if we unblock it, it is still there. (“I will never leave you nor forsake you”)
The religious concept, that “God” punishes us for wrongdoing, then gets flipped on its head, revealing the truth that “we humans create our own suffering with our guilt, and then blame it on the Creator punishing us”. Guilt can be seen as the “taught” social instrument it is, and that repentance simply removes the block in the inner connection that has been there available to us all along.
This speaks to the Zen Buddhist “Verse of Atonement” *2 which says:
“i did this, i created the separation, i atone for it, and i return to the original connected place i was in before i caused the separation.”
*1 – How this thing we call “God” is experienced inside ourselves is very complicated and is a combination of “What it truly is” with “our life’s environment”. It runs as a deep ocean inside us, which we experience, but do not understand. In a sense we are fish in the ocean, who experience the ocean, and gain our life from the ocean, but are not capable of understanding the ocean. Because this experiencing is so personal, the concept becomes twisted and unusable when it is “institutionalized” and built into a standard doctrine format.
*2 All Harmful words thoughts and acts
Ever committed by me since of old
On account of beginningless greed anger and ignorance
Born of my body, mouth and mind
Now i atone for them all.
Reality is Dharma 