How to Find God
One's spiritual life is a very subjective business, and I don't think anyone can tell you what's right for you. You have to find that out for yourself.
All I can do is share my own experience and tell you what has worked for me. I cannot say for sure that it will work for you; only you can determine that! With that said, I trust I can proceed and we understand each other a little better.
First let's be clear about one thing. God does not need finding. It is not lost. If anyone is lost, it is you and I.
What I have found, and I trust this will not be news to most of you, is that we do not have to find God because we are a spark of the Divine ourselves. This is why the process of finding God is traditionally called Self and God-realization.
We don't find God, we realize our intrinsic Divinity. Thus it doesn't take 600 words to tell how, I can quote a great Spiritual Master who did it in two: "Just Be!"
In essence we are Soul. Soul is that spark of God. To properly adjust the perspective, there must be a paradigm shift. We don't have a Soul; we are Soul in a human body. This is a subtle but important understanding. You are Soul having a human experience.
How you go about realizing that is secondary to just doing it consistently. In other words, there are hundreds, no thousands of techniques that you can use to help you along to greater Self-realization and God-realization. Just remember that the techniques themselves are just tools, a means to an end, so don't get hung up on technique. Experiment and find what works for you; find the techniques that suit your individuality.
As mentioned in the two-word quote, this process is more about being than doing. In other words, when it comes to finding God, the way to do is to Be.
The classic technique used by mankind for millennia is just to sit quietly and do nothing. That's right! What we need to do to realize God is to stop doing for awhile, just sit quietly and do nothing.
This is why meditation is so popular on the spiritual path. I have found though that meditation can lead to a passive state. In order truly to reach the highest states of consciousness, it is necessary to not only leave the body behind but also the mind.
That's right. The body and mind are very useful tools for an incarnated Soul, but in order to experience Soul in its purity you need to leave the body and emotions and memories and mind behind.
Ok, enough talk already! How do we do it? A classic method used for eons is by chanting sacred words or sounds. What this does is it aligns us with the level of consciousness of that particular sound.
Some of those words and sounds that you are probably familiar with are the names of your spiritual guide, or the words Alleluia or Om.
The word that I like to sing is an ancient name for God: HU. This is sung like the man's name, Hugh. It is the most uplifting sound, and I sing this wonderful love song to God many times every day, sometimes aloud and often silently.
.You know the wonderful saying from the Chinese, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." You have already taken many steps on the path to Self and God-realization. What will your next step be?
Published by Stan Schultz
I am a 66 year old grandpa, semi-retired. A minister in Eckankar (www.eckankar.org) and a widower, I spend some working hours watching my grandsons while my daughter works. The rest of the time I focus on wr... View profile
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24 Comments
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This makes a lot of sense. God isn't lost, those in search are the ones who are lost. More profound is the fact that we don't have a soul - we are a soul in a human body. Nice job on this.
Nothing about God's response back. Many who "find God" put their faith into action in one form or another. People search for God for a reason and hopefully once the singing session of "HU" passes, one's actions will be worthy of God being able to respond positively.
Hitler told me that I should bathe regularly. It was good advice, so I did, despite that the source was not so good. A dry rock reminded me to remind myself that I should drink more water; it wasn't wet, but, the absence of wetness reminded me of my own. A man on AC with unknown motives wrote an article of moderate, coherent and rationally presented thoughts on finding God. What, now, do I do with this? If I condemn it, he is no wiser, nor am I. If I learn from it somehow, I am perhaps wiser, and can only hope the writer is as well. Food for thought!
If you look hard enough, you can find 'anything'. Whether it exists or not is irrelevant. You'll simply find what you want to find.
As above so below... As within so without... This is why it is important to realize that almost everything is just one. We are one with God and with humanity.
Interesting article Stan. I'm glad you covered the part about God not being lost, lol.
Wow, thanks for all the comments! The response to this article has been so great that I wrote a part 2. AC offered me such a paltry sum for it that I decided to just publish it on my blog, so it you are interested, check out: http://whatnowgrasshopper.blogspot.com/ Thanks again to everyone that has contributed to this dialogue!
Dean, truth is not what it appears to be. According to https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print/xx.html earth presently has a population of 6,525,170,264 (July 2006 est.) Of those billions, it lists Christians 33.03% (of which Roman Catholics 17.33%, Protestants 5.8%, Orthodox 3.42%, Anglicans 1.23%), Muslims 20.12%, Hindus 13.34%, Buddhists 5.89%, Sikhs 0.39%, Jews 0.23%, other religions 12.61%, non-religious 12.03%, atheists 2.36% (2004 est.) I think that perhaps given the statistics, it might make sense to find out if you're truly an antagonist of this religion or are you simply non-religious or athiest. At least that truth would be a good starting point for you!
Joyce, may I suggest you follow this link and rethink your comments? http://www.associatedcontent.com/religion/index.html?all=1#view_all You might be surprised at the number of articles presented on this web site under the catagory of religion and spirituality. My guess is that you likely and subjectively will disagree with most of what you find under this heading.