On God, the Beginning, and the Argument for Morality

Truly, I hold all truths lightly for I recognize the infinitesimal portion of myself in the scope of all things. And yet I seek that which I do not believe I can find and on occasion stumble across thoughts that I imagine may hold a speckle of truth within them.

Such as God. What is it? What is it not? Perhaps I hold most true to my soul the idea that God is one, not one thing but rather all things and non-things. All that is, was, and might become. And in my meanderings about the mysteries of God I sometimes wander about the question of the beginning. 

There are things I suspect to be true, in the lightest sense of that word, like the idea that consciousness itself is God and that this is what all things are composed of. “What if?” often comes to me as the first question but what preceded that? If in the beginning there was only the one, I imagine it must have existed in stillness, for movement requires distinction and distinction requires bounds between what is what and what is not what. 

What, then, preceded movement? 

“Thought” arises within me. 

And what preceded thought? 

“A feeling” says my soul.  

And what preceded feeling? 

“Awareness” comes my reply. 

 And what preceded awareness? 

“Being.” Is all I can find.  

Nothing (non-being), as far as I can imagine (knowing how very small my imagination to be), is the only thing that might precede being but nothingness only makes sense to me in juxtaposition to somethingness, a proposition that only makes sense in comparison. For nothing has no structure, no value, no possibility, no things from which to build and yet things are built and here we find ourselves together.

So here is a small story I offer up to the universe and you, my friends and my beloveds, a story of beginning and one idea of the purpose and nature of all that is, was, and might come to be.

In the beginning there was. This was-ness was singular, boundless, and without form. This was-ness was without movement, still and calm and unrippled. All the was-ness was was being and that was all that existed or ever might have come.

But then the was-ness became aware of being and in that awareness arose the first line of distinction, the first bound within the boundless, the first sliver of possibility. For being aware stands apart from simply being; even such as we can be without awareness. To be aware contains within it the contradiction of awareness, a speck of change, the start of a movement.

The small distinction of awareness from being was followed then by something akin to a feeling, not such as you or I might experience or even imagine, but simply whatever sensation or emotion a formless, boundless, All might contain. And that feeling etched deeper the newly forming boundary within the All. 

As the All became accustomed to and contemplated this feeling, eventually was born a thought. This thought was the first movement, the wind which whispered into becoming-ness the possibility of anything within or without the All.  The advent of movement was then the beginning of separation, the invention of change, the birth of possibility.

And the feeling was curiosity.  

And the thought that arose; “what if?”

Since the arising of “what if?,” the All, as indivisible as it remains, leaned into the momentum of movement: Thought giving birth to thoughts, thoughts giving birth to ideas, ideas giving birth to actions, and actions giving birth to all that we know and have yet to learn to perceive (I hesitate to attempt to follow this further lest I lapse into the begatting I so quickly bored of in my spiritual and physical youth).

If this small approximation of the order of things has any truth, what meaning has this truth for you and I? 

If curiosity is the driving force of the universe, if all movement evolves from “What if?,” might not it be true that all things exist as appendages, sensing arms of the divine, on a quest to understand? And as appendages might it be that our purpose is simply to answer the question of “What if this being existed with these attributes, in this time and place, with these experiences?” 

Would that not mean that our purpose is, quite simply, to live?

We have all been told that the Universe is ever expanding. Similarly, understanding expands awareness and possibilities in of itself. In understanding what comes of a being like you, or me, or that tree, or that mountain, the universe comes more clearly to know itself and to explore the edges of its own potential. And in exploring those edges might its potential ever grow. For is it not at the edges of our own potential where invention resides and the creative powers that move our reality from impossible to that which is?

And through living we participate in the expansion of the universe. Through living we are inseparably part of the divine.

This brings me once again back to the last weeks of my father’s dying, when his particular mind was lost to cancer and what remained was the innocent child he must have been.  Gone were all of the things that he brought with him, the betrayals, the cruelties, the wrongs. Gone was everything but the spark of the sacred and, flawed as he was, that spark was unblemished.

It seems to me that whatever we might do in our lives we cannot blemish our divinity. We might decay the self that rides upon its coat-tails but our divinity itself is beyond our reach. And that sacred self might exist for curiosity’s sake.  

What if this were true? I wonder now. What if you believed lightly, as do I, that your purpose is to live your life according to the person you are in the circumstances in which you find yourself? How might that change your perspective, perhaps change your life? 

For me, it changes so many things.  It allows me to let go of the things I carried as guilty burdens.  It allows me to let go of the oughts and shoulds that plague me but are not mine. It frees me to look into the vast terrain of my interior and ask what is truly mine to keep.  It frees me to see myself anew and understand who I might be.

One last thing, if we cannot blemish our soul or damage the divine within us, and any way we choose is correct, why then should we, any of us, be moral, be ethical, be kind?

We should be these things because it is in our nature, or, if it is not, we should be these things out of self-interested concern.

Gandhi challenged us to be the change we wish to see in the world, and what I find is this:

The more I am selfish the more selfishness comes to me in my life.

The more I am judgemental; the more I am judged. 

The more I live with malice; the more malice I must survive. 

The more I steal; the more I find stolen.  

AND,

The more I am just; the more I receive justice.  

The more I am respectful; the more I am respected. 

The more I am generous; the more generosity flows into my life.  

The more I am kind; the more kindness I am shown. 

And most of all, the more I love; the more love there is.

Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts. I would love to hear from you. What are your thoughts? What do you believe about God, the beginning, the reason to be moral? How do you think about spirituality? What inspires you to do so?