Imagine if God was the most beautiful woman you’ve ever
seen. Not only that, but she was the most loving woman you’ve ever known. And
as a goddess, she could do anything. She could feed you. She could have fun with
you. She could make love to you. She could let your head rest in her lap while
you sleep, and hold you close to her when you cry.
This goddess would respect free will, and wouldn’t live in the realm of “right” and “wrong.” As such, she would never punish you. If you asked her whether she ever sent people to hell, she would reply, “Sometimes people turn away from me or get angry at me, and when they do that they have the experience of being in hell. I let them make those decisions, but they can’t really leave me because there is nowhere else to be.”
Imagine this goddess was the Earth itself, and her elements- air, fire, water, and earth- were your tools to create with. Your body and mind would be the ultimate tools—the tools with which you use all other tools. The purpose of all tools would be to create an experience, the specifics of which are of your choosing.
Depending on what you want to experience with her, this goddess could be like your mother, a lover, your best friend, a queen, or just a perfect stranger. On the other hand, you might regard her as evil, tyrannical, merciless, cold, or just plain non-existent. You always retain the option to connect with her directly or to shy away from her, but no matter what you do you are always with her, because she is everything—she is all of it.
You cannot be separate from the goddess, nor were you ever. You don’t have to make a hardy, lifelong effort to “get back to her,” because you’re already there. Whatever you consider to be the truth about life, whatever you contemplate doing next, the goddess is already there, holding you in her arms. The question is not whether she is there, but whether you know this to be so.
In the Image of Our Choosing
Just as man is made in the image of God, God is made in the image of man: we are one. Because you can choose who you are, you can also choose to imagine God being any way that you want. There is no requirement that your god must be the tyrannical, angry murderer found in the world’s major religions. Your god can be the complete opposite of that, loving you and providing for you and respecting your free will, instead of constantly threatening to punish you and leading you to imagine that depriving yourself is somehow noble.
What if your god really did want you to be joyful? What if God never took issue with your choices? What if God wanted nothing but for you to celebrate everything that is available to you? Or what if God wanted nothing at all, and he left you to do the wanting and the choosing, and he simply made tools available to you with which you could implement your choices?
If you could consciously decide what God was to be like, would your ideas about God change? Would you be more open to ideas of a spiritual nature, such as that your consciousness continues to exist, in some manner, after your body dies? Would you be more open to having faith in the divine? Would you be more open to considering your own divinity?
You make God just as much as God makes you. Even if you don’t believe that a God exists, you still have beliefs about God. Where did those beliefs come from? Did you choose them consciously? Are you happy with those beliefs, or do you secretly wish they could be something different? What if they could be something different, and all you have to do is choose differently?
I find it empowering to think of the Earth entire as a goddess, and to regard God as consciousness itself. I’ve held this particular view of God for quite some time now, but this view of Earth is fairly new for me.
Thinking of the Earth in this way is steadily weakening my view of nature as a neutral, merciless force that we have to struggle with in order to survive, and it doesn’t really care whether we live or die. Instead I sometimes like to converse with the Earth, in my mind, and I’m finding it more natural to be grateful for all of her gifts. Consequently my low-level fears of nature are diminishing, and I’m actually finding things like being outside in the cold much easier. Yesterday I went running in weather that caused blocks of ice to form on my eyelashes, which partially blinded me (temporarily). I had a lot of fun. J
Overall this subtle mindset shift is leading me to feel like the Earth is a loving mother who can hold me close to her whenever I feel sad, scared, or alone, if only I remember to connect. When I consider that I can befriend the Earth itself, thoughts of loneliness barely come to mind—no matter what my present social circumstances are like. When God is spirit and the Earth is a goddess, there are friends to be found everywhere.
Explore Freely
Just as you can change your ideas about God, you can change your ideas about spirit in general, too. You can regard us as spiritual beings having a human experience. You can view this reality as being a dream world, whereby the physical world is contained within consciousness (rather than consciousness being just a function of the brain).
You can consider that there is an entire spirit world, which you can communicate with if you are simply open to doing so. Likewise, there can be spirits that hang out in this physical realm, and they influence processes such as the growth of plants and the flow of rivers. Perhaps you have a guardian angel who steers you away from danger. For all you know you have an entire troupe of spirits at your disposal who can attend to any request you make of them, if only you connect and ask.
I’m not telling you what is so—I’m encouraging you to decide what is so for you. Even then, you don’t have to have one answer that is set in stone for all time. You can explore. You can explore what it’s like to have spirit guides. You can explore what it’s like to be protected by angels. You can explore what it’s like to have multiple gods and goddesses. You can explore what it’s like to have no god and no trace of a sixth sense at all, instead taking a materialist-reductionist view of reality and believing that we are nothing more than temporary meat-bodies that somehow evolved consciousness (which definitely doesn’t go on after we die, because when we’re dead, we’re dead).
All of these possibilities are available unto you. No one is keeping you from exploring them except yourself. You can only effectively explore options which you can take seriously enough. This means that you are limited by what you are willing to experience. In general you won’t be willing to experience something that is drastically different from what you are currently experiencing, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get there. You can steadily open yourself up and branch out to possibilities that are new, but not too far out for you. Before you know it your experience of reality will be radically different. Take this from the girl who was raised Catholic, became staunchly atheist at the age of 13, was agnostic for several years, and now believes in a subjective reality, regards the Earth as a goddess, and is exploring what it’s like to have angels and spirit guides.
I wouldn’t encourage you to explore paths that bore you, annoy you, or that you genuinely expect to be a dead end, because as long as you’re of that mindset it will be a dead-end. Effective belief changes produce an expansion of consciousness. Promising new viewpoints will initially draw you in and fill you with excitement and wonder, and in the long run will better enable you to experience whatever it is that you desire to experience (i.e. in general, joy).
It won’t happen overnight, but the ride can change pretty quickly. The key is to indulge your curiosity when it comes to you, and be aware of it when it brushes against your cheek like the wing of a butterfly. Sometimes curiosity is very subtle, but when you take it by the hand it can change your whole world.
P.S. If this all is kinda weird to you, look at it this way—if I think that the Earth loves us and I am busy befriending bugs and spirits and whatnot, I’m going to take on a vibe that doesn’t allow me to do things like break in your car or hurt you: I’d rather devote my time to expanding human consciousness and intelligence and living harmoniously with the Earth. So even if the beliefs themselves seem a bit odd to you, this doesn’t meant they aren’t effective.
Keep this in mind as you go about exploring your own beliefs. Don’t reject a new idea out of hand just because it seems too kooky on a surface level. For all you know it could produce just the mindset- and heartset-shift you need rid yourself of irrational fears and to live in the way that you desire to live.
If nothing else, remember that you are allowed to explore. After all, there’s no such thing as “right” or “wrong” in the goddess’s eyes. ;)
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