Since we are God, what we believe about God, we believe
about ourselves.
The Story: The Angry Father and the Insufficient Mother
Take the view that there are two gods—rather, a God and a Goddess. God is equivalent to “Father Sky,” and attends to the non-physical realm. Most particularly, God is associated with the intellectual mind and the realm of pure, abstract thought. The Goddess is equivalent to “Mother Earth,” and attends to the physical realm. “Mother Earth” is the same as “Mother Nature,” and she attends to the body and the feelings (i.e. the heart). The God and the Goddess together attend to pure spirit, which manifests within each of us as the soul. As such, the union of Father Sky and Mother Earth creates us: conscious human beings.
Much attention has been given to Father Sky in our civilization—particularly since the rise of Christianity roughly 2000 years ago. Our view of him, however, has been gravely distorted. We have seen him as evil, aggressive, and unforgiving. In our attempts to meet the demands this angry God has made of us, we have made ourselves in our image of him.
Accordingly, we have abused Mother Earth, dominating her as if she is a totally neutral entity. We have done so by emphasizing use of the intellect, which creates the technology we have used to take control of the Earth and to destroy each other. Suppressing our feelings and neglecting and abusing our bodies (which further suppresses our feelings) has helped us in this endeavor, because paying heed to our feelings would lead us to reject God’s wrath and desire a more harmonious way to live.
Through our actions we have declared that God is a greedy, violent brute, and that the Goddess (i.e. the Earth) is essentially a doormat which God wipes his feet on in his attempts to satisfy his unsatisfactory lust for more.
Because we are God (and the Goddess), we have simultaneously said of ourselves that we are brutal and domineering like God, and also weak, vulnerable, and valueless, like the Goddess. In turn we see ourselves as unworthy of trust, and so we cover and clothe ourselves—in more ways than one. We wrap up our bodies, trying ever so hard to keep ourselves warm; we wrap up our words and public persona, so as to keep too much truth from leaking out into the world; and we wrap up our hearts, so we can perpetuate our cruel demeanor and, ultimately, emotionally protect ourselves from it all.
In seeing the Earth as a neutral entity, we see her behavior as totally unpredictable and without regard for us. We see our physical bodies in much the same way: random collections of cells that could break down at any day, without warning. We regard both our bodies and the Earth as being valuable only to the extent that we can overpower them with technology. Without technology, the human body and the Earth are vulnerable and valueless. As such, we fear the Earth and believe that our bodies are weak. Consequently, we have created and turned to governments to keep us safe, from none other than ourselves.
Our collective views of God and of the Earth are parallel to our collective views of men and women. We regard men as having been barbaric, and women as weak and stupid. Women are entities to be exploited: whatever value they might have is to be squeezed out of them by any means necessary.
Similarly to God, it’s fairly stereotypical to think of men as being cold, uncaring, and cruel—especially towards women, their spouses in particular. It’s likewise burned into our subconscious minds to think of women as being unintelligent and insufficient: what they are and what they do is never enough.
The Story’s Resolution
In resolving this mess, it is useful to view it from the perspective of everyone involved. Note that because the God and the Goddess are Father Sky and Mother Earth, all humans are their children; thus, we are all each other’s siblings.
Let’s start with a generic story that could unfold between a mother and her child. Imagine that the relationship began in joy, as parent-child relationships often do when a new baby is born. But as the child grew older and her ability to make choices expanded, she made choices that made her mother unhappy. As such, the mother was unable to accept what she perceived to be her child’s imperfections, and she became miserable.
Thus began a snowball effect. In reaction to her mother’s disagreeableness the child began to distance herself from her mother and take up all manner of distractions to fill the emptiness that resulted from her feeling unloved by her mother. This, in turn, caused the mother to become even more frustrated with her child. As the mother rejected her child’s behavior more and more she became more miserable and exhausted—yet, at times she still remembered back to the beginning when all was well and beautiful. In the end, when the child finally left home, both mother and child were in misery, each feeling that the other had simply not been enough.
Now, rather than wallow in the misery of this story, why don’t we pick up the pieces? First, let’s put ourselves in the mother’s shoes. If the mother wanted to make things right with her child, her primary task would be to accept her completely as she is. Rejecting her daughter is what sparked conflict in the first place, so accepting her daughter can put an end to the conflict.
We can’t be certain of what will happen beyond this point: it’s quite possible the daughter will forgive her mother but still have no desire to speak with her. However, it’s a safe bet that complete acceptance is what is needed for the situation to heal.
Now let’s say that I am the child in this situation: how might I change my relationship with my mother? I must open my heart and trust my mother. I know it looks like she can’t provide for me, but that’s only because I insist on seeing her that way. She does accept me, but if I don’t believe that then I won’t experience it. She does want to enjoy a harmonious relationship with me in which she gives me all she can, but my heart is not open to receive from her. If I can go to my mother with open arms we can begin to relate to one another anew. She can nurture me and help me to grow, and I can respect her, enjoy the health she gives me, and share the gifts she gives me with my brothers and sisters.
Now, let’s remember the larger reality here, which is that the child represents humanity, and the mother represents the Goddess, Mother Earth. So, let’s summarize the situation, from the viewpoints of humanity as well as the Goddess.
As a child of the Goddess I have closed my heart off to her and pushed myself away from her, thinking that she does not love me and cannot provide for me. I have seen myself as fundamentally separate from my mother, and I can receive from her only by overpowering both her and others who wish to take from her. As such I have turned on my poor mother: I have taken to killing my brothers and sisters and covering my mother with technology to force her to produce what I think I need, so I at last feel like I have enough. The reason for killing my siblings is so that they cannot take what is mine, and if I lose what is mine I will cease to have enough, and I will die.
Interestingly, there has been widespread agreement among my brothers and sisters that the Goddess (i.e. Mother Earth) is indeed a suspicious and unpredictable character, and anyone who considers “going back” to her (i.e. to Nature) is foolish.
The solution to all this is to open my heart to Mother Earth once again and see at last that she really has loved me all along, and all I must do is cease to place obstacles in the way of her love.
As the mother of the child- i.e. as the Goddess herself- I see that I have let myself become miserable and exhausted in my child’s rejection of me. As a mother with unconditional love I must completely accept my child as she is and not need her to change. I must understand her thoughts and behavior and let her be. Otherwise, if I continue to decline into misery, she too will crumble.
The father, God, is a part of this situation too. As described previously, as a child of God I have perceived that my father is angry and egotistical, and he hates me and will punish me if I fail to follow his rules and meet his demands.
So far I have looked at the situation as a child of God, the mother of the child, and a child of the Goddess. The final way to view this situation is from the relationship between the God and the Goddess themselves. As a woman I’ll keep things easy for myself by only considering the perspective of the Goddess, in her relationship to the God.
So, let me again view the situation as the Goddess herself, except this time as the lover of the God. My God has been distrusted and viewed as a barbarian, out to simply take what he can and destroy anyone who gets in his path. He is seen as being aggressive and heartless. Whereas his children are perpetually suspicious of Mother Earth, the God is seen as being rather indifferent to her. It appears that the love that the God and the Goddess make is rather loveless.
The solution here, as the Goddess, is to trust the God and love him unabashedly. I can create the experience for him that he is indeed trustworthy and a being of love—it’s just that he has so many times been told otherwise.
The relationship dynamic that occurs between the God and the Goddess can likewise been seen in romantic/sexual man-woman relationships in general and in the collective relationship of all men to all women.
Reality is fractal, you see. We can see the same sorts of relationships happening at all levels: individual, among other people, among all people collectively, and among the Gods themselves. We can also view reality from different perspectives and see how ultimately we ourselves are responsible for all of it, because we are all of it.
Uniting God and Goddess
We have long and intensely placed our attention on Father Sky. We have sought to improve ourselves intellectually, we have kept our spirituality separate from our physical lives, and we have made great efforts to dominate the earth and our fellow humans via technology, so as to improve the quality of our physical lives. We have taken on what we perceive to be God’s character traits, which include aggression and anger.
Now, if we are to progress any further, we must turn our attention to mother Earth by paying heed to our feelings, uniting our spirituality with our physical lives, and opening ourselves to her love. When we do this we will simultaneously find that the Earth does provide us with enough; and, rather than fight with each other for what the Earth provides, we can share it.
When we do this, our relationship to Father Sky can at last change, and we will see that both he and Mother Earth are in fact pure love. We will see that they are one with each other, we are one with them, and we all are one with one another. When we do we will reclaim access to our full potential as conscious human beings, and in time our perceived need for conflict will cease.
As both parents and children, we must open our hearts. We must accept our children as they fully are, and cease to fear and hate our parents. Only then will the parents of us all- the God and the Goddess, Father Sky and Mother Earth- at last be able to share their love with us and with each other.
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