God

There are approximately 7 Billion people in the world today and most of them believe in God in some way, shape or form. Now I am not trying to offend or upset anyone, I am simply wanting to speak my personal truth about God.

I have always believed in God, however I have also never believed in religion. To me God is not some omnipotent being sitting on a cloud playing with our lives, I see God as the essence of existence.

So what do I mean by that? Well firstly I need to explain how I see the universe. I see the universe as made up of energy (like they explain in string theory), the way this energy vibrates dictates what form it takes. What this also means is that everything in existence from people down to rocks is made of energy and as this energy is not static it is alive with Gods life force and that makes every scrap of matter in this universe both part of God and also alive in some manner.

To digress slightly this is I believe how "magic" and "miracles" are done, by tapping into things on an energy level and (with Gods help) influencing how the energy vibrates changes are able to be affected on solid matter.

So back to God, what this also means is that God is the sum total of every piece of matter in this universe, so the chair you sit on is God as are you. We are all God, we are all connected to what I like to call the God consciousness.

As I said at the start, there are approximately 7 Billion people alive today, and most of them believe, but there are so many different beliefs about God. The problem as I see it is that everyone insists that their idea of God is the only right one and that all the rest are wrong. This has let to so much violence and bloodshed that it wounds me just to think about it.

The sad thing is (in my humble opinion) everyone is both right and wrong, God is EVERYTHING, which means no matter what form of God you believe in that is God. There is not several different Gods, just different ways people come to know God but at the end of the day it is all the same thing. It is my dream that one day instead of focusing on how each group see's God differently people could see that their common belief in a higher power can bring them together.

The fundamental teachings of all religions (so far as I can tell) is love and compassion, and yet when it comes to living with that belief all people seem to be able to do is focus on why people are different to them and as such deserve to be hated. There is so many people who hate who belong to a faith that teaches love that quite frankly if I thought about it too much I could cry.

God loves everything in existence, from the sand at the beach to each and every one of us, this love is unconditional, we don't have to do anything to "deserve" it and no matter what we do we will still have it. God does not send people to hell, we send ourselves there with our belief that we do not deserve love, as the only true hell is one where we can not feel Gods love.

If people could simply love one another as God loves us, and this is not a romantic or sexual love, but a pure and unconditional love then we would not need to go to heaven as we would already be there.

Equality

I recently listened to Martin Luther King Jr's "I have a dream" speech and it really spoke to me. In it he speaks about his dream where everyone is judged not by the color of their skin but by the contents of their character. He came to this dream after years of racial prejudice and hatred perpetrated on his people for no other reason than the color of their skin.

In this day and age we do not stand for racial prejudice because we can all agree it is wrong to judge someone based on something they cannot change.

Yet there is another area where the exact same judgements and hatreds are being directed and for some reason this is seen as OK and even appropriate.

I am talking about homosexuality. Now I know I have probably already lost a lot of readers right there, but the real question is why? Why do people deserve such hatred, such bigotry, such condemnation based on something they can change no more than you can the color of your skin or indeed the gender of person to whom you are attracted to.

IT IS NOT A CHOICE!

I don't think there is a single man or woman who woke up one day and decided to be gay, to not be able to walk down the street holding hands with the person they love for fear of being beaten, arrested or even executed in some places. It is no more a choice to be gay than it is to be straight, and yet homosexuals are treated as if they are sick, twisted perversions who need to be kept away from children and decent individuals.

Why is it that if a black man is refused the right to vote, marry or express himself in this day and age it is seen as wrong and yet it is perfectly fine to ban gay marriage, to abuse and attack gay people and even in some cases kill them.

This is not equality.

Equality is the fair and even treatment of EVERY single human being on the planet, irrespective of race, creed, belief, sexual orientation or any other difference they may have.

So I say to you, let go of the hate, for holding onto hate hurts you more than those you hate. Instead open your heart to love. Love everyone, it doesn't matter who they are. If we can all do this then maybe our children can grow up in a world free from hate and violence, where war is a thing of the past.

Thank you
Matt