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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
- Albert Einstein

My Beliefs About God

Contemplating one's belief in God can literally open up a can of worms. Committing to the existence or non-existence of a higher power forces you to take a stand about many other facets of being alive. In fact, contemplating God creates a snowball effect with regard to one's beliefs about our entire reason for being.

I've come to feel God as an energy system that is located on a different plane of existence. We are all a part of that existence, but in that other realm, we are unable to experience anything but pure love. On the earth plane, God challenges us to choose love despite our exposure to numerous other feelings and experiences. God's interference with our everyday activities would only hinder this plan. In fact, if we all began to act more "Godly" here on earth, we may someday bring a more heavenly existence to the denser plane.

It has always bothered me that, in my opinion, my views about God were in conflict with my being a Jew. In fact, after formulating my vision a number of years ago, my whole life philosophy has become decidedly more Eastern. I have come to believe that we are spirits that inhabit human bodies to learn lessons that will eventually bring us back to God. I feel that our lives are ongoing and it is only the circumstances and the vehicles that alter. We come into each life with gifts and talents from previous existences, as well as baggage or karma. We must assimilate these qualities with our genetic body as well as with our environment. Because we have lived many times, we have the memories of these incarnations in our psyche. However, if we were conscious each lifetime of previous existences, our learning would be thwarted. Each time we come to earth, we re-learn from a different perspective, a new body, a new culture, a new personality and our lessons require that we re-learn in a different way. It is also my belief that human beings form relationships in order to learn more about themselves and to learn to see the world from a different vantage point. I feel that we are born with a unique energy pattern and that "power" is what allows us to gravitate to others and them to us. All of us are free to choose how we will think, feel and/or act in any given situation. And, the bottom line of each of these choices is that they are either based on fear or love. Choosing out of fear creates anxiety and thwarts growth. Choosing out of love elevates and uplifts us, both consciously and unconsciously. When we act in ways that honor ourselves, as well as others, our soul is raised along with the consciousness of all humanity.

Since my views take on a Buddhist flavor, I never considered that this kind of philosophy could be espoused by a learned Jew. But then, I encountered an article in a Reconstructionist text (Windows on the Jewish Soul) that mitigated my fears. I learned of a 13th century astronomer, mathematician, and Jewish philosopher whose theories came as close to mine as any others I have read. Levi Ben Gerson, according to author Jeffrey Schein, had very clear ideas about God and why bad things are allowed to happen to good people. Levi Ben Gerson felt that God does not come down from the heavens to help us. It is our job to learn to climb up to him. By elevating our character and by seeing our world as God sees it, we are better able to do justice to one and other. Levi Ben Gerson asserted that we cannot imagine that God concerns himself with the details of each of our everyday existences. For if we were helped every time we cried, asked or faltered, we could never grow. God put within us the power to do good and understand the world. Interference would be a violation of his plan. And finally, a quote attributed to Levi Ben Gerson that I found on the internet espoused, "A peace that comes from fear and not from the heart is the opposite of peace."

Encountering a Jewish philosopher with views akin to mine has renewed my interest in Jewish knowledge and ideas. The fact that Ben Gerson invented the instrument that allows astronomers and astrologers (like me) to be able to measure the angular relationship between celestial bodies is just one in a strange line of synchronicities that has led my meandering spiritual quest back to Judaism.

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