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The Name of GOD
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What do we call God, the source and the sustainer of all that is both seen and unseen, both manifested and un-manifested? What name do we use to make sure God hears us and is pleased with the name we use when calling on God to hear us in the time of our need or the time of our worship?
Some names spirit-humans have given to the Omnipresent Intelligence are God, Allah, Elohim, Adonai, Jehovah, Yahweh, El, El-Shaddai, Father, Mother, Father-Mother-God, Holy One, I AM, I AM THAT I AM, Immanuel, Jesus, King, Lord, Bhagwan, Ishvara, Parameshvara, Adi Purusha, Waheguru, Ek Onkar, Satnam, Nirankar, Shangdi, Shen of Shen, Great Spirit, Omnipresent One, Universal Spirit, AUM, Mazda, Ra, Odin, Zeus, Abba, Ba’al, Hadad, Creator. There are countless other names spirit-humans have used since spirit-humans started thinking about a God. Just Islam alone has one hundred names of God. You can learn the first ninety-nine names while you are alive on Earth and the one hundredth name of God you will learn after the death of your body.
Ancient spirit-people and even some modern spirit-people believe that if you know the name of God or the name of a spirit, this gives you some power and control over God or the spirit. It is like the God or the spirit can ignore you but if you call his or her name, he or she will be tempted to turn around and give you some attention – hopefully positive attention and not burn you alive just by looking at you. The more pleasing the name you use and the more respectful the way you used it could make the difference between God smiling at you or killing you right on the spot. This is why the name of God was so important and also why misusing the name of God was so unlucky for the one using the name of god in a negative way. A curse using the name of God meant that you were calling on God to fulfill the curse. Use the wrong name and the curse could back-fire and hit you instead.
Spirit-humans would call on God, Ra, Satan, Beelzebub or The Great Pie In The Sky to give them an edge over other spirit-humans. Looking for an edge, an advantage over other spirit-humans seems just the spirit-human thing to do. We know that it is easy to ignore someone if they do not use our name but it is almost impossible to ignore them if they call our name. It is like our brain jumps to attention and says to us, “Hey, someone is referring to me”. Our antennae go up and we become more alert to what follows the sound of our name. So it is natural that God would respond the same way.
Some believe that when Moses asked the God of the Jews, Christians and the Moslems for his name, that God purposefully did not tell him. Instead God told Moses that he was “I AM THAT I AM”. In other words, Moses was not going to get the name of that God in order to have any influence or control of him. No way.
Some have even named God the “Big Lie in the Sky After You Die”.
I have a dear Chinese friend who loves my writings. However, all she has to do is come to the word God and the word God is like a brick wall to her. It is like a river is smoothly, happily streaming along and all of a sudden it comes to a dam and cannot flow further. She finds it almost impossible to get past the word God, regardless of how inspiring and informative the words that follow it. If she passes the word God, the word is still stuck in her awareness and is impacting the rest of her reading. She was raised in China and was taught from birth that God does not exist. She was taught that the concept of God, and different religions, were made to control the people. God and religion were invented to make the purveyors of the religions rich and basically subjugate or suppress the masses and keep them from reaching their full potential. She was taught that the word God was like a disease. Even to think the word God might bring harm and misfortune to you and your family because it would lead your mind into illusion and self-deception. All the while, the preachers of the religion would be laughing all the way to the bank.
Out of respect to her and the hundreds of millions of spirit-humans who were raised in similar circumstances I decided I would think of a different name to use whenever I was referring to the Omnipresent Source of all that is – both manifested and un-manifested. I started using Great Spirit, Universal Spirit and Universal Self. I thought Universal Self was a good one because the initials of Universal Self are US. Since we are cells of God’s body, then God is the big “US” of which the little “us” are part. The small letters of Universal Spirit are “us’, and this is the term we use when we include ourselves in referencing a group of spirit-people. We say we are referring to “us”, and we are always including ourself in the "us" . Universal Self seemed perfect. Even she liked it. Universal Self and Universal Spirit is the BIG “US” that we are a part. All us, one and the same, whenever we were speaking of other self-aware cells of God's Universal Body. When I think "I", it is the same as when you think "I". The awareness of being aware and the referencing of "I" is the same whichever one of "us" is thinking "I".
However, I was raised Christian and whenever I called on the Universal Spirit to help me, I always used the word GOD. Never did I really use any other label to refer to Omnipresence when I spoke to it. The word and name God referenced none other than the Omnipresent source and sustainer of all creation.
If I would have been raised Moslem, I would most likely use the word Allah whenever I needed God to save me from something life-threatening.
Spirit-Humans from what we call India would usually use the name Brahma, Vishnu or Shiva or the supreme Cosmic Spirit called Brahman.
Ancient Egyptians would have used the name Ra, or even Osiris if they wanted a good seat in the afterlife.
The ancient Egyptians believed in one God. They gave the different aspects of God different labels and symbols but all these labels and symbols began as just references to different aspects of the Omnipresent God. These labels and symbols came to be considered the names of the aspects of God. What misled the ancient Egyptians is that they started believing that the different aspects and symbols of God had powers and intelligence of their own, separate from Omnipresent God. Then they started worshiping these aspects and symbols of God as gods in their own right. Another word for this is idolatry, or worship of a created image of a reality which is always beyond the image.
The symbol or image is not and never can be that which it only refers to, points to or suggests. Look at all the different images of God that have been the cause of many wars and misunderstandings. Idolatry is worship of an image, a person, a place or a thing. Some religions have outlawed images but even they have what they call "sacred" objects or sacred "imageless" paintings which remind them of the Omnipresent One or remind them of different aspects of the Omnipresent One.
Regardless of what you call God when you call on God to help you, the meaning in your heart is what counts. You are calling on the Intelligent force that is the source and the sustainer of all that we are aware and not aware.
In my writings, I use God or the Great Spirit more than anything else. Anything else does not feel right to me. I could say Wholly Spirit or Whole Spirit, but then I would get emails telling me that I misspelled Holy Spirit, when Wholly Spirit is more descriptive. I could say Essence of All, but then it seems to be getting too complicated and hung up on words. Actually, I like Essence of All, but it does not seem like a name…..smile.
As much as my Chinese spirit-human friend finds the word God a stumbling block to her spiritual growth, I find that NOT using the word God when I am calling on God to help me is almost impossible. Ah, the wonders and frustrations of cultural and familial conditioning. Let us see where this missive takes me from here.
We have first and foremost, the Omnipresence of God. If god is Omnipresent, then there is no place nor space where God is absent. All that we see are manifestations of God within God - including what we think we are. Then we have the part of Omnipresence, or God, that we speak to in our prayers or call out to when we are in trouble. This is the part of God I call the Self-Awareness of Omnipresence.
Your hair is not part of your self-awareness. Each strand of hair is composed of cells that are part of your body but are not part of your self-awareness. If you cut your hair, you would not feel anything other than the hands of the person cutting your hair and this same person pulling on your hair. Your hair would have absolutely no self-awareness that it is being cut.
A rock traveling through space is part of the body of God but is not part of the Self-Awareness of God.
If a rock is traveling through the air towards our head, the rock is not aware of where it is going nor of where it has come from. It is not even aware that it is not aware. God will be aware of the rock through our eyes, through the eyes of the one who threw it, or through the eyes of anyone who happens to see the rock traveling through the air, but God will not be aware of being the rock. Since God is Omnipresent, God sees through all who have eyes to see, hears through all who have hears to hear and feels through all who have the ability to feel. God's self-awareness is the totality of self-awareness through all who have self-awareness. God sees what all who have eyes to see are seeing at the same time.
A dragon fly has over 30,000 facets in its compound eye. It sees over 30,000 different aspects of what is in front of it at the same time. These aspects are slightly overlapping each other. When the 30,000 images are sent to the part of the dragon fly's brain that is responsible for interpreting what the fly is seeing, all 30,000 images are seen as one image. In the same way, God sees all that is seen by all that have eyes to see - AND God is seeing it all as ONE image - at the SAME moment.
The problem with calling God by the name God, Allah, Jehoshaphat, or any of the names we call God is the tendency to feel we are speaking to some reality, some awareness OUTSIDE of ourselves. Like there is God and there is us. We hope God is hearing us and is listening to us and decides to do something to help us. All the time, it feels like there is us and there is God. God close to us, closer than we can imagine but still only close to us and not us. We are praying TO God.
If God is Omnipresent, there is only US, the Universal Self. The One Self behind all selfs. Each of us has self-awareness and the totality of self-awareness of all who have self-awareness is the self-awareness of God.
Therefore, I feel like we should give Gods' Self-Awareness the name of "Universal Self". However, just use the initials of the name Universal Self. The initials are US. However, do not say the name US like we do when we say the word us. Use the long vowel pronunciation of the letter U. It will sound like YOUSE. Say the letter U like it sounds when you say it alone. Then add the S like it sounds when we say the letter "s" by itself. "Youse". When we ask "What use is that object", the sound of the word "use" is the same sound of God's name when we spell it "US"
Confusing yet? The profundity is in the simplicity - it is simply "US".
The Self-Awareness of God is the big US of the little us. It is impossible to use the word us without including our self in the statement. Whenever we refer to "us", we are part of us and we cannot take our self out of us when we use the word us. Like the dragon fly with its 30,000 compound eye facets that sees one picture wherever it develops the picture, God has millions of trillions of "selfs" which are always part of the Self-awareness of Omnipresence - at each and every moment in the eternality of beingness.
Since God is Omnipresent, we can never take either God or ourselves out of any consideration of who God is and who we are. We are US. We are wholly a part of the Universal Self and we are part of the Universal Self-Awareness of God.
When you speak of Omnipresence or the ALL that is both manifested and unmanifested, both visible and invisible, call it Omnipresence. When you speak to or refer to the universal Self-Awareness of God, call it US. This way, you are always included in the name. You are always included in the reference. You and God are together on this one. Remember, if God is Omnipresent, then you are forever included in the Omnipresent reality you call God. You cannot separate yourself in fact, therefore do not separate yourself in words. Just remember you are a self-aware cell of the body of God - you are not the WHOLE body of God. You are one with the Mother-Father God, but not the Mother-Father.
There is an Universal Intelligence, an Universal Self-Awareness, that we are part of, live in, move in and is hte source of our very being. We are brain cells of the Infinite Body of this Omnipresent Intelligence. We are part of the self-awareness of this Omnipresent Intelligence. We are the US of the Universal Self.
What name do we use to make sure God hears us and is pleased with the name we use when calling on God to hear us in the time of our need or the time of our worship?
Call this Omnipresent Intelligence ANY name that to you expresses your total mind, body and soulful intent to communicate with this Omnipresence, this Universal Self. Any name that is not limited in any way. Any name that does not conjur up images of a bearded man who pees behind a tree somewhere in a field in a galaxy far, far away. Call the Self-Awareness of God whatever you want but be careful that you do not limit it with whatever name you use. Be careful that whatever you call God does not conjure up ANY image of God in your mind. The moment you have any image of God, you are committing idolatry. You are conjuring up an image that might be part of Omnipresence but can never BE Omnipresence.. You cannot limit God and still be referring to God. God is all images and yet NO image.
Call the source of your reality and the source of your self-awareness whatever feels right to you. Just make sure that what you call God is referencing the Omnipresent God of which you are wholly a part. Any name is just a label of reference. Don’t give any label of reference, or symbol, the power it only symbolizes and references. Don’t dance with idolatry. If you do, God help you – you will need it. And don't tell others what to call God unless they ask you for your opinion. That is between God and them.
