Well, of course they are. Everything comes from God, and since all are manifestations of the Source, everything is the word of God, including you, a lion, a gazelle, the ego. There is a beautiful quote from the New Testament: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. But we cannot fathom the word of God while it is has been tampered with by the ego. Only the few who have surrendered the “i” with “I” can experience the essence of the word beyond what has been transcribed. Otherwise, we begin to follow an entire book robotically, ignoring the essence within us beyond the duality of good and evil.
Think about it. We are all creations of God. And in our body, we contain both light and darkness. There are parts of us that want to polarize and other parts that are inclined towards universality, just like any book that purports to come from Source. If we follow the part within us that condemns those who appear to be different to us, then that is merely a reflection of our own tendencies. And if we choose to adhere to the essence of peace within us, then that is an indication of a more evolved level of consciousness. It has nothing and everything to do with Source. The same applies when we read or follow a book. You see, the Koran, The Bible, The Torah, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao are all projections of our inner world.
Everything is the word of God, but it requires wisdom to grasp that God is beyond the word, beyond any sense of darkness or light- whether inside of us or within a book. Those invested in their ego will believe they are carrying out the word of God when they kill to proselytize their beliefs. And they are right — because their God is the ego. And for those who dwell in the heart, they know inherently that only universality is the pathless path and behave accordingly.
This is why essence can be found in all books from the Encyclopedia Britannica to Animal Farm; Sons and Lovers to Slaughterhouse Five. And essence can be found in all human beings. However, it is our ego that filters the love that arises from divinity. It is our decision to remain slaves to our desires, which in turn fuels hatred, divisiveness and terrorism. Therefore, individuals who embody duality are prone to make others’ lives hell on Earth, keeping us frozen in a low level of consciousness. Our evolution of consciousness lies in which truth we adopt as our own in ourselves. And that is what separates us from the Divine and from others. This choice. And only Source can unite us. Only the love of Source above attachment to worldly desires can save us from turning into monsters. Only the vortex; the realm which Rumi refers to as beyond right and wrongdoing. He wisely asks us to meet there. But we cannot do so as long as we grasp tightly to concepts of the Divine.
Religiosity can ruin the experience, because we begin to appease our deity with rituals, dogma and forget our inherent nature of divine love. We can never grasp that which is beyond by holding onto one way or the highway to hell; nor can we grasp what Tolle refers to as “isness” with the mind. It is only something that can be known. Perhaps the most transcendent reference to source is by Lao Tzu who claims, wisely, that that which can be named is not the Tao. We can neither name nor confine God to a place. It is contradictory to say that God is omnipresent yet resides in heaven. Observe a little closer. You will be pleasantly surprised at how close the Divine is to you. For those who adhere to Islam the hint lies in a verse from The Koran where the Beloved promises: [I am] closer to you than [the] jugular vein. Also, one of Allah’s names is Al-Shaheed, which means the Witness. In order to witness everything, the Source must be everywhere. And in the Bible, God states that the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. God can be found anywhere, and we can learn more about surrender from nature than from any book since the former is incomplete surrender while the latter is always filtered by the ego of man. Heaven is all around us and yet we blind ourselves to it by polarizing others, by tormenting children, by abusing our fellow man, all because we cannot transcend from the realm of belief. Evil exists because of our belief that we are superior to ‘the other’ though – inherently – we are the other. It is our delusion of separateness that makes us behave so antagonistically toward the other. Our spiritual journey, then, is a return to the Self, a remembering of sorts. In the meantime, we are just dancing in a purgatory, though we can turn this world into Paradise when we awaken and see life in everything.
Heaven is here, now. Those trapped in the realm of ideological thought matrices of divisiveness view Heaven as a place where physical desires are manifested in a sort of members-only club. They seek God to satiate their egos, knowing nothing of God or their true selves. But even this is part of a divine dance; even the ugly chapters we cannot comprehend are taking us one step closer to love, to God.
We learn the hard way, however, that we cannot seek for that which is already here, now and love cannot ever be achieved for reward or to avoid punishment. We learn the hard way by believing that God is a distant deity waiting to punish us for not following the way of our ancestors. Atheists are one step ahead in saying God doesn’t exist, because that which exists may cease to exist. And so God does not exist. God is. And God always was and will always be. Beyond the temporal, spatial. And as for “us”… We are all exactly where we are meant to be, and as Ram Dass so eloquently states: We are all here to walk each other home.
So let’s walk. Together. In the silence beneath it all.
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Nejoud Al-Yagout, a Kuwaiti poet, is the author of This is an imprint and Awake in the Game of Pretending. Her third book of poems will be released later this year. Her website: www.nejoudalyagout.