Thoughts on a Wrathful God… My two cents

I’m reading Alan Cohen’s book A Course In Miracles Made Easy: Mastering the Journey from Fear to Love. I’m really enjoying it so far. I’ve always learned more easily when teachers use stories to explain principles. If you learn well that way and you are studying A Course In Miracles, I’d recommend you pick this one up. Anyway, on with my post!

I started the book a couple of days ago and Mr. Cohen touches on a subject I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, and think about often, which is the image of a wrathful God.

I’ve never subscribed to any organized religion, mostly because I don’t agree with some of the principles and the level of corruption and hypocrisy involved in many of the well-established organized religions.

It seems like such a contradiction to teach that God is love and made us all in his image, yet he or she sits upon a cloud, glowering down upon us in judgement. Why would we want to spend eternity with a wrathful god? It also seems strange to me that such a God would give the life of his only son to redeem the sins of man.

So much hate seems to be acted out in the name of god, and the name of particular religions. It doesn’t seem right that God himself would be okay with any of this.

Alan Cohen says:

The ultimate disowned shadow self is the projection of anger onto God. Wrath is entirely a human experience, incited by a sense of guilt, fear, powerlessness, and separation. None of these traits belong to God. All the scary tales you have heard about an angry, punitive God are the result of anthropomorphizing divinity with disowned humanity. As the French philosopher Voltaire aptly stated, “God created us in his image and likeness, and we returned the compliment.” A Course In Miracles Made Easy p 21-22.

Another good quote is at the end of page 22, which states:

The immature mind sees God from the viewpoint of a powerless child under the thumb of an oppressive parent. The mature mind recognizes us as offspring of a kind and forgiving God who would not hurt his beloved children any more than we would choose to hurt our own. A Course in Miracles Made Easy p 22.

Pardon the pun, but amen!

A Course In Miracles says:

You need not fear the Higher Court will condemn you. It will merely dismiss the case against you. There can be no case against a child of God, and every witness to guilt in God’s creations is bearing false witness to God Himself. Appeal everything you believe gladly to God’s own Higher Court, because it speaks for Him and therefore speaks truly. It will dismiss the case against you, however carefully you have built it up. The case may be fool-proof, but it is not God-proof. The Holy Spirit will not hear it, because He can only witness truly. His verdict will always be “thine is the Kingdom,” because He was given to you to remind you of what you are. ACIM Text 5 VI 10:1-8.

The God referenced in A Course in Miracles is more of a God I could see myself following. He does not judge, but rather loves his children unconditionally. A fundamental question of most people who dismiss organized religion is why God would let bad things happen to good people. The organized church would preach that it is some kind of atonement for a sin committed by humanity, and the bad event is merely the punishment for a sin.

I’ve just never been able to get behind that, and I think it’s one reason I’ve never gotten behind organized religion. There’s too much fear which is used to control the behaviour of the congregation, and the thought that you can do something bad and then simply confess or pray and have the instant forgiveness of God just seems contradictory. God loves us all no matter what we do. I agree with that statement. Anyone who is a parent knows unconditional love. I like to believe that he isn’t sitting wherever he or she is judging us every minute of every day. I think he or she (or it) has better, more important things to do!

Just my two cents!

You are meant for greatness

Lately I’ve been reading The Science of Living According to Wallace D. Wattles. Our book club selection this month was The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles (hooray! I’m actually getting through a book club book!).

The Science of Living According to Wallace D. Wattles includes three essays Mr. Wattles wrote: The Science of Getting Rich, The Science of Being Great, and The Science of Being Well. They are all relatively short, easy reads, with easy principles to follow to attain wealth, greatness and health, simply by manifesting them into being, and living life in a Certain Way, as he describes it.

I’m in the middle of The Science of Being Great and I grabbed a couple of quotes from it that I liked while I was eating lunch and reading it today.

…everyone will be something worthwhile, something rare, something perfect.

Everyone. You and me, and that random guy you passed in the coffee shop, or the girl you waved into traffic. Even the most destitute, the most outcast is worthwhile. Think about that for a second. Does that change the way that you perceive your fellow man and the people who surround you every day in your day to day activities? In The Science of Getting Rich, Wattles implores the reader to abandon the thought of competition and the pursuit of dominion and control over others. We are all here for the same thing. To learn the lessons we are to learn and to thrive. To manifest our destinies, and achieve all that we desire. That’s pretty powerful stuff.

Wisdom is the essential basis of greatness. All that is and all that has been are present in the intelligence that is wrapped about us and enfolds us and presses upon us from every side

Wattles discusses the collective consciousness and the fact that all knowledge is in us already. It’s just up to us to connect to it and we can download whatever information we need. All of history and all of the collective knowledge are accessible to us.

I liked this one too, even though I’m not religious at all in the conventional sense, I thought it was a good way to put the ideas into the biblical framework, because tons of people believe in the bible and the fundamentals of Christianity. Yet another book where I see the parallels between the things I believe and the things that conventional Christianity teaches as well.

This was the foundation of his (Jesus’) knowledge and power. He showed people the necessity of becoming spiritually awakened; of hearing His voice (the Father) and becoming like him. He compared the unthinking man who is the prey and sport of circumstances to the dead man in a tomb, and besought him to hear and come forth

You need to get plugged in and switched on to the collective consciousness. We need to learn, to read, to grow and to think in order to evolve. Whether you believe you are tuning into the voice of God, or the Universe, or whoever is controlling this whole thing we call life. There is spiritual support around every corner.

This also ties into the Allegory of the Cave that I often like to reference. The Allegory of the Cave was written by Plato, and it’s very interesting. It essentially tells the story of a group of men who are kept inside a cave. The people who are controlling everything in society are projecting shadows onto the walls of the cave, while the men watch, and think that the images being projected in front of them are the real world. Eventually, men become enlightened to the fact that there is a world outside the cave (that’s my Cole’s Notes version). Google it if you have time. The Allegory of the Cave is pretty neat. It’s stuck with me since the first time I read it in my first year of college when I took a metaphysics course.

Anyways, I just thought the quotes were cool and wanted to share them with you. 🙂

A Bit About Me

Wow, I have a couple of followers. Hey there. Thanks for stopping by and reading my meandering ramblings!

I thought maybe I’d do a little about me post, because, hey, maybe you are wondering who this gal is.

I’m an office flunky by trade, currently on maternity leave looking after my son.

I’m on a journey, as we all are, to grow and evolve spiritually in this life, and my journey started with my spirituality, in earnest, probably about two years ago.

I’ve always been intuitive. Many times in my life, I’ve seen things and heard things that nobody else has seen and heard. You might think I’m crazy, but that’s ok, I might think that you are crazy too!

I’ve been reading a lot of books (I have always been an insatiable bookworm), and there’s a lot bouncing around inside this head of mine, and I needed an outlet.

This blog has been set up as a safe spot for me to process what I’m learning and get all this stuff out on “paper”. I really wrestled with the idea of this blog, and haven’t been auto sharing it anywhere because I have been worried that people will think I have gone bat crap crazy! Oh well. Maybe I have.

The Mad Hatter: Have I gone mad?

Alice: I’m afraid so. You’re entirely bonkers. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are.

I was wrong before. The journey started when I was a kid, really. I was always interested in different belief systems and religions. I always sought out material hoping that one day I could find one that had everything I wanted, but none did. I cobbled together my own belief system from a myriad of different religions, taking bits and pieces that I liked from one or another, and making a kind of “me-ism”. (Kind of reminds me of Ferris Bueller on -isms… hehe)

Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism’s in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, “I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.” Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I’d still have to bum rides off people. – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Anyways, after lots of different experiences and chasing different leads, a couple of years ago I really started moving in the right direction with some help. I’ve been reading all the books I can get my hands on, and applying the things I am learning and it is making a HUGE difference in my life.

I’ve been channeling now for about a year and a half. I haven’t really been going crazy with it and doing it a lot, but I do it when a good opportunity presents itself. I’ve been quite surprised with the messages I have received. Some have made my hair on the back of my neck stand up!

I might end up sharing some of that here. We shall see.

Even I am on the skeptical side of some of these things!

I took my level 1 Reiki last June, but I really haven’t used it much. One of my goals for the near future is to start using that more! I was doing it regularly before I had my son.

There’s my disorganized ramble about who I am. I hope you enjoy the things that you read here, and that my posts are helpful or meaningful in some way. That’s my goal. I’ll explain in more detail later.