Divinity

by Robert M. Kreegier (a.k.a “Reese”)

The world as any of us knows it, whether we be Christian, Buddhist or Atheist, is ripe with color, depth and beauty. As we grow up, we are shown by someone we love how to identify the color we see: “This wood is brown,” or “This paper is white,” or “This banana is yellow,” for example. However, and hypothetically, what if someone wasn’t taught the names of these colors or even that there were different classifications of color and for whatever reasons, this individual remained ignorant of these categorizations?

If I were to tell this individual, “I see reds and blues and greens,” they would retort and say or perhaps think, “I do not see these things, they are not real to me, I do not believe in them.”

To me these colors exist and for this hypothetical individual they also exist, however they have not learned to identify or classify them, or that they should even make an attempt at such.

If I were to then point to an object and say, “This apple is the color red, just as this fire truck is red and this fire hydrant,” they would be able to make the associations and begin to identify what they had seen all along. From there they would say or perhaps think, “Before I did not believe these colors existed, but I see now they have been here all along. I can identify what I know now I have always seen.”

In the same way we may ask an Atheist, as an example, “Do you believe in God?” and they would say or perhaps think, “No, I do not see God nor do I see any proof of God.” In the same manner as the individual who did not believe in color, it is not that the Atheist cannot see any proof of God, it is just that they have not learned to identify the tangible stuff of God.

It can be said of these matters, that everything is first subjective. It is only when we learn to identify, that these mysterious and elusive subjective feelings become objective and tangible things.

Just as color, tone and beauty surround every aspect of our lives, so too does divinity. The trouble is that with something as subjective as God, it becomes very hard or impossible to point to something and say: “This is God,” or “This is spirit,” or “This is divine.”

And so, early in our lives, someone influential, almost always our parents, point to a religion with its doctrine and say, “This is God,” or “This is divinity.” With nothing else to point to to explain the feeling of God, parents point to their religion. In doing so, these wondrous feelings of spirituality and connection with the world are mapped around the pre-existing beliefs put forward by the doctrine at hand. Unfortunately, in many cases, those doctrines make attempts to hold the individual’s beliefs fast within their rigid framework… and so the individual must never waiver from the doctrine with which they’ve been brought up. This is an extreme example, of course, for many individuals switch religions due to changes in preference or perhaps marital purposes.

There are occasions, however, where we may point out coincidences and reflections of our inner nature and being. I cannot prove spirit in the same way I cannot prove color or the sensation you derive from color. I can only point out occurrences of that wonderful aspect of ourselves that we say is spirit in the same way that I would point out examples of the color blue. Tell me what you feel when you see an oak tree. Tell me what you feel as you walk barefoot through sandy shores along the Gulf of Mexico. What is it that gives meaning to art? How did you feel as you read Great Expectations¹?

I could very well ask you to prove those feelings to me. But I know I cannot ask this because I know they are spiritual feelings. They are subjective feelings and are not bound by the current limitations of physicality. It is that very sense of belonging and feeling that is the god inside everything. It is that sense of connection as you wander through a forest and find a beautiful flower among the tall trees. It is the sense of beauty and wonder as you sit at the edge of a field and listen to the crickets chirp while enjoying the dance of fireflies. That is God.

And it is only when you forget that sense of connection or ignore it completely that the world seems cynical, plane, stale, clinical and boring. It is only in this dire state that wars are fought, for it is in this state that the individual yearns with sad groans from the very pit of their stomach for a sense of beauty and splendor and the true freedom that the pure acceptance of experience brings.

Verily, if you can be Atheist and still recognize the color and wonder ever-present in your life, then you must also recognize the very divinity of your soul.

No matter what your belief structure, you feel emotion and connection with the world. I can only hope that people will begin to feel God and divinity directly, feel their world directly, interpret it on their own and come to their own conclusions. Perhaps with open minds we can come together and share our experiences and begin to try and identify experiences that correlate and then, perhaps, we can all begin to identify the real god that lives inside us all and truly begin to know that we are firstly spiritual creatures with a deep connection to everything around us… for even though spirituality is subjective, it is that wondrous subjectivity that ties together and enlightens the objective world we live in.

End notes

1 by Charles Dickens (note from the editor).