When I say God I don't mean some external fantastical being with a mind to watch over me and decide every moment of my life what to give me as a blessing and what to refuse me as a test of suffering to see if I suffer well for the sake of suffering well. I mean you, me, and everyone we know and don't know--the collective "We" that is right here right now in this together, linked to the past and all it's events quite literally through the building blocks of DNA. I am everything that came before me, literally, physically, and all that will come after us will come only in the atoms and molecules that we already existed in today--there is no part of my DNA that cannot be tracked and traced--it tells the whole story of how my body came to be--my double helix--and every double helix crosses paths, all stemming back, all telling the story of us as human beings and then we tell the story of what it is to be human through art, music, language, and often silence.

In this way the mind of God is everywhere, in all things, before and after, first and last, present and not present--because we are all these things--and this moment right here is the ability to recognize it, this is the spark that gives life--it is the dynamic becoming in the process of becoming and we are watching. This is the eye of God. Whatever you see is the eye of God. We are the observers of each other and of ourselves, we are the creators of what it means to be human--the minute we figured out how to open our mouths and express through drawing and then verbal language: "This is what it feels like to be human to me, is that what it feels like for you? Do you feel like I feel? Is feeling that what it means to be human?" And then we gave them names once we decided upon a consensus, yes, this is what we are all feeling--and the names came to represent the concepts of things experienced but for lack of telepathy are expressed in a short hand form of language.

While we were created by the earth, from the earth, the source of what compels DNA to arrange itself, code itself, and reproduce it's code is the source which cannot be named, for it has no name. It's name is best expressed by silence. This was the meaning of Hebrews never saying the name of god--to say it was to indulge in blasphemy, was to name it and clothe it in a concept that would surely fall short of what it was--and once it was named, human beings would begin to project their own experiences of what it meant to be human onto the concept they named and through imagination just magnify what a "super human" might be like--then insist that this Super Human was real and begin to worship it. But it would just be an idol. This was the meaning of thou shalt not take the lord's name in vain and thou shalt not worship any other god's before me. The corpealization of god is the clothing of the great mystery in a human costume--but instead of remembering it was only a symbol just as language is a symbol for an experience, and not the symbol in itself, human beings have believed the symbol to be the symbol in itself.

Deep down I always knew this wasn't real though I did not know how to confront that that was what I was feeling--I had no words to articulate that that was what the feeling was. When people insist to me that God is real and loves me, I understand that we are real and we love each other. All that we attribute to God, both terrible and beautiful, are the traits we are not yet ready to accept are actually in ourselves. The Kabbalah says the truth is clothed in garments that it might protect our eyes, and layer by layer as you are ready to see, the garments begin to peel themselves like an onion. If the truth were revealed to you all at once you would go insane it says--you could not bare it--and so your mind will stop itself when it hears something it is not yet ready to accept as truth--it shuts down as a protection, to save your equilibrium.

Hearing concepts of God as a Super Human with a body alive somewhere in the universe is like someone describing what an onion is just by looking at it from the outside and then telling me in detail what they imagine it is like on the inside. But they have no way of knowing what it looks like, tastes like, smells like, or feels like past the outside object that it is. And everything it appears to be on the outside, is different once you start to peel the layers. It is not dull and matte, but actually shiny underneath. It tastes sweet and also spicy and lingers on your breath like a miracle even after it is gone. It had a faint smell from the outside but once inside the smell penetrates your olfactory nerves in a sharp stinging way. And it turns out that the smell is actually carried by chemicals through the air which creates a burning sensation when it connects with the moisture in your eye, and and as a result you emit more moisture from your eyes. Then you realize if you change the actions applied to the onion, the properties of the onion change again--once cooked it becomes sweet, no longer stings your olfactory nerves or eyes. So you experiment with different recipes, using it in different ways, adding it raw or cooked as you desire different results.

Furthermore, imagine someone had never tasted an onion or seen an onion in their life--and you listened to them describe what they thought an onion was like from their imagination of what an onion must be like; and through the things they had heard other people say about onions, people who had claimed to have had experiences with an onion, seen an onion, or tasted an onion. But what if all the things they'd heard from other people were also from those people's imagination of what an onion must be like--but over time everyone agreed that is what onions were like because this is what they'd heard also which eventually through common consensus becomes accepted as fact. This is how I feel about people's conceptions of God. And when they feel something or experience something that someone or society has already attributed to being God, they assume it is in fact God--because it matches the description already given--and therefore this confirms God's existence. But all it really tell us in those moments is that once again, as human beings, we are having similar experiences together in life--feeling similar things--experiencing things that don't always have explanation but experiencing them nonetheless. We cannot conclude from what source or for what reason we are experiencing them or feeling them, all we can be sure of is that we are and so are other people. To me the source doesn't matter--it is not the burning question--god or no god is irrelevant. There may be and most likely is a higher power, but a higher power like gravity or osmosis--things that happen and cause other things to happen as a result of happening. All the human feeling though--is us--and our collective consciousness--the miracle that we are aware of ourselves and others and have the capability to ask why and what for. No other sentient thing can do this or does do this--but this is also the cause of human suffering. Animals don't have to question existence, flowers, or trees--they just exist because they exist--they don't have the mental anguish of asking why or of thinking they have a choice to avoid the conditions of nature around it, or death, or anything deemed unpleasant and when they cannot help what happens be it natural disasters or a family death they cannot cry out to a ficticious being asking why he let it happen because they can't seem to face the suffering alone that it happened because we are alive, and because we are on a spinning planet in the middle of the universe and there is no guarantee ever for anything--we are as vulnerable to any fate that every other existing thing is vulnerable to in nature. But what makes it worth it is our human relationships, our love for each other and with each other--which can only come because we are conscious in a way that nothing else is.

For this reason when I say God, I mean you, me, and everyone we know and don't know--the collective "We" that is right here right now in this together. "God" is the collective symbol for the experience of being human and seems to represent the best aspects of our humanity--our potential--when we talk about God we talk about who we want to be as a whole of human beings--when we hope to be blessed or loved by God we hope to be shown compassion and love by others. I think it's just us here. And that thought inspires more tenderness and compassion for humanity than it does to believe that someone else somewhere else is watching out and gonna take care of everything in the end and that all our mistakes as human beings, even if we blow ourselves up or suffocate through global warming, will somehow be magically okay. I think we rely on the notion of a God like that when we don't want to face the suffering head on, when we don't want to take responsibility for what we do and what we've done and not just chalk it up to "god's will" or "the way things are supposed to be." But my unbelief in the corpeality of god and thus God as is defined in a collective sense does not make me uninterested in spirituality or different spiritual traditions, on the contrary, I am more drawn to them, more interested because they are telling us a story about ourselves, about humanity, about how we see ourselves as we claim God sees us--but god aside--it allows us to continue on pursuing what it is that is inside layer by layer this great mystery of existence. It makes quantum physics, and astrology, and psychology, and meditation, and all these things so fascinated, and also strangely sacred. What is it to be human...it is beautiful and ugly. And if I can find evidence for anything through observation it is that evolution is ongoing--and why would human consciousness stop evolving if it has evolved this far? For this reason Buddhism appeals to me in so many aspects--it's just me, you, and everyone. Let's evolve higher.