Universal

I mean the universe. I mean God within.  I mean, being part of Universal Energy. I don't mean a man in the sky.  I mean that there is something greater than myself.  I don't know what that is, and I don't need to. That's been part of my work to accept the mystery of what that is. As God, I do blanch a little bit at the dogma of God.

Part of God for me is community. So the things that I get out of whatever I do, is the way we treat other people. I think the biggest practice,  the easiest accessible pathway to God for me is the golden rule. How I treat others,  it's not about me. So it helps me in my meditation practice. It helps me to get out of my own way. It helps me not to be egocentric, It is a great mystery.

I do believe that we're not just biology that we crawled out of the water.   I just think God is the magic dust in every particle in you and in me,  it's part of a universal energy field that I believe you can tap into.  I think you can find a way to be in that energy. Some people are more highly evolved than I am because of their ability to be part of that.

When I was young, I'm pretty sure the memories that I have that were sort of awe-inspiring or outside of my own little body were in nature. Even though we knew the boundaries of the woods that we would walk in, whether that was with the dog and my dad, you could get lost in creation.  I remember being in the woods and the sun and just trees and being able to sort of feel like you were part of something bigger.

Laying on my back in the backyard of a starry night and getting the sensation that you're looking down on the stars instead of looking up. Being able to expand out of my little self and feel gravity being stuck to the ground.  I do remember explicitly the feeling, if I did it long enough, if I tricked myself for long enough, I was looking down at the stars, and that was mind-blowing.

Big natural spaces that minimize me as an individual and then you're in that space, That was probably as close as I remember getting to feeling a part of something.

I have those moments more now (60) than between the ages of  40 and 50. Acceptance, not worry or anxiety, is  the key to solving my little problems. When I relax and just realize that accepting the energy of the universe is the better answer, I feel like I can access it.

I was in the 1991 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, and in that moment, the smallness of who I was as an individual evaporated.  It was awesome. The correct usage of that word.  The whole world was shaking and I was tiny.  I can feel that way in a huge storm on the ocean and it's just a giant, the giantness of the energy when it's made manifest and you're in the middle of that is a reminder.

The practice of dropping in and meditating and shutting down the Thousand Voices of Chaos that we all have agreed to live in, is a welcome practice.  I think you're tapping into something when you're allowing yourself to be still. Whether it's by that sort of outside natural force or whether it's your intentional being still.   For me that's big,  because otherwise I would just do and do and do and do and take action and take action. and then you're not operating from an accepting place of that God energy. It's available to me.  It's also easily ignored and to think you can live your whole life and not tap into that.