Where is God?

I spent a wonderful evening with a good friend of mine the other night and the conversation turned to the challenges we see in the world today, the economy, the high unemployment, the seemingly endless challenges of life today. The question of God surfaced, and he mentioned that his perception of God was someone in heaven, an outside force, separate from the human race.

How many of us think the same way. We we were taught that God is this all powerful, omnipotent force that casts judgement on sinners and saints. That God is in heaven watching us, and evaluating our performances. When we're good we go to heaven and when we're bad we go to hell.

But is that really the relationship God wants to have with us. A separate relationship based on fear, or reward and punishment, on judgement. Like any other healthy relationship, the relationship is not separate but mutual, united, ONE based on love, trust, caring, nurturing, kindness, and communication. There a many other qualities that go into a good relationship but those qualities don't include fear, retribution, or judgement. If so, the relationship fails. God want to be best friends with us.

Our relationship with God is the same way. We need to love, trust, care, and communicate our needs, wants, and desires. We need to have a love affair with God, to be in love with God. For when we do this, what we are really expressing is a love, trust, kindness, and joy in ourselves, our uniqueness, talents and our divine nature. And we can more readily share ourselves with our family, friends, and the world.

God is not separate from us but within us, part of us. We are one.

Many of us know this or were taught this, but there are also plenty of us that have no idea. How can we be sure that we are part of God, and that God is part of us? Well, God is love. The easy way to think of it is in terms of the "human spirit" or the other higher energy qualities of  Love, Joy, Kindness, Gratitude, Empathy, Compassion, Service, etc. These emotions or forces can't be touched or examined by our senses like a body part, but we know they exist, we can feel them, and we can express them, and most importantly we KNOW when they are in our lives. We all know what it's like to feel loved, to feel kindness, to be thankful.

When we feel or express these emotions, we are expressing God, we are exercising our Divinity, we are one with God. When we wallow in the emotions of hate, anger, jealousy, loneliness, envy, anxiety, and fear we break the communication from God. We turn down and even silence our divine volume. We disconnect from Spirit/God. Hence, the term "broken" spirit. When this happens we experience difficulties in life, life appears to be a struggle, joyless, miserable.

Part of the human condition is to experience the range of emotions in life. We all feel sadness, regret, hurt, and lower energies at times but it's important not to linger there. We need to stick with the higher energies of love, caring, kindness, joyfulness, gratitude, etc. We can learn and train ourselves to spend the vast majority of our time in these higher energies for when we do we are again expressing God or our divinity.

One thought about the word "God". There are many expressions for God from different religions and cultures. And Atheists don't believe in God, and may refer to this as nature, science, the universe, the mind, soul, life force, or any other concept. The important thing is not the name used to define God, but in the connecting, the acknowledging, and most importantly the getting to know this energy.  When we recognize and realize that we are one with God, that God is within us, and wants what's best for us. We can smile and know that we are not alone, all is well, and that we can accomplish all we set out to do.

Remember, God wants us to be happy.

With Love,

Coach K
Tom Kaufmann
tkaufmanncoaching.com