Surrender to a higher power.

After all this time what other choice is there?

After all the ups were followed by downs, and all the downs followed by ups, and up and down and up and down, what other choice have we got left?

How much longer will we fool ourselves into thinking that we have real control, intellectual understanding or religious certainty in a universe vast beyond imagination?

Surrender. A higher power. Life. This moment.

I rebelled against Religion and Church (Dutch Reformed Christianity) from a very young age. The rigidity and the conservatism really put me off.

But I discovered that it wasn’t so much religion that put me off. It was the ignorance. Ignorance of basic human egoistic tendencies.

Everybody does it. But few people seem to notice.

Regardless of what we believe, we fight with one another about our beliefs. And through that fighting we create division and we damage God’s Creation.

As the old saying goes, it isn’t bombs that kill people, but people with bombs that kill people.

Beliefs aren’t dangerous. People with beliefs are dangerous.

Why argue with someone about their beliefs? Regardless of how ignorant we think another person is, considering the unthinkable vastness of the universe and what lies beyond, we’re all ignorant to some degree.

What matters is not what we teach others, but what we continue to learn.

After my childhood rebellion against the church, in my teenage years and early twenties I became a staunch atheist. God was nothing more than a fantasy. Something people invented to deal with things they couldn’t explain. A comforting thought in a world of uncertainty. I believed that God definitely did not exist.

However, as time passed, life went in a certain direction for me. A very specific direction. I knew it was a direction I had chosen for myself. I wanted to do what I was doing.

Deep down I always knew what was wrong with the world and what was wrong with me. And I always knew that I wanted to be a part of the solution.

I started noticing that there were certain very significant events that unfolded with uncanny order. Clearly these events were not under my control, but neither were they random. More and more things started happening at just the right, or the wrong time.

Either I was involved in a series of very, very elaborate coincidences, or something, a vast intelligence, was orchestrating events in a coherent way. Sometimes to my benefit, sometimes to make me suffer. But always to teach me something.

It did not take long for me to become aware of this, but it took several years to understand what was happening and truly accept its reality.

As coincidence followed upon coincidence, it could no longer be denied.

I realised that every time something happened at just the right time, whether for better or worse, it became less and less likely that life was random and purely coincidental.

I eventually reached a point where I had experienced enough. I finally started seeing the reality of what I was experiencing.

It reminds me of a quote by the famous astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle. He compared the random and spontaneous emergence of life on Earth to the likelihood that “a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.”

Evolution has clearly taken place on this planet, to some degree or another species do change. But clearly there’s something else happening too.

The likelihood of life being a fluke occurrence in a universe without intelligence behind it is, as Sir Fred Hoyle said, as likely as a tornado assembling a Boeing 747.

The DNA molecule is so complex that the likelihood of it spontaneously arising, without a guiding intelligence, is as unlikely as a monkey typing an entire series of encyclopedias, without a single mistake, by hitting random keys on a keyboard.

It’s also comparable to the idea that Earth is the only planet with life on it.

There are billions of galaxies with trillions of stars with trillions upon trillions upon trillions of planets in orbit around those stars. The chance of intelligent life existing on only one planet is practically zero. There’s a better chance of winning the lottery, every weekend, for the rest of your life.

I begun to realise that there was only one logical conclusion.

A philosophy tutor with whom I studied at university put it this way:

“Through philosophy first you lose God, then you find God.”

What she meant was that through clear rational and independent thinking one will inevitably shed all the misinterpretations we are fed by a clueless religious society, and then, as we continue thinking for ourselves, we inevitably find the truth of the One Infinite Creator.

Because the One Infinite Creator lives within us all and independent thinking eventually leads us to explore everything within ourselves.

I could think for myself. My childhood rebellion against a church with lips made of splintered wood was justified. My rebellion against a society obsessed with religious trivialities and addicted to lies was justified. My rejection of a God based in fear, insecurity, punishment, contradictions and childish stories was justified.

But all of it was part of God’s plan. Because ultimately I would discover that it was not God I had rejected but false interpretations of God.

False interpretations based in Ego.

I don’t know exactly what God is. But I know what he is not.

When someone says that “God is the Alpha and Omega. God is Love” and then follows that by saying: “But only by accepting my God can you go to heaven” or “Only through my saviour can you get to God and go to heaven”, it shows that they do not truly understand God. Because the implication of “my God” against “your God” implies that God is limited.

And God isn’t limited. God is everything. Everything is a part of God and everything owes its existence to God. Therefore all the different interpretations are, at best, only partial truths.

The only way to truly understand God is to accept that all different interpretations of God are only partially valid. All religions contain some truth and some mistakes. None of them are complete. All of them describe different aspects of the one infinite Creator.

And why would an Infinite Creator send only one teacher? All true teachers, whether Jesus, Buddha or Sukuinushisama, could lead one to God. An Infinite Creator provides as many teachers as is necessary to spread the truth about his creation.

There has never been only one way to reach the top of the mountain.

To claim that you can only go to heaven through one saviour is a misinterpretation of truth. When Jesus said that the only way to God is through him, he meant that only by doing what he was doing can one come closer to God.

But that does not mean that he was or is the only one doing it.

Buddha and many others practised the same principles of forgiveness and understanding.

Division is a clear indication that a person is trapped in the egoistic tendency of creating false borders in order to strengthen their conceptual identity. An identity which is not absolute because it is based in thought. And since thought is based in consciousness, the only true identity is consciousness-without-thought.

In other words: we are not what we think we are. We are that which exists before we start thinking.

Likewise we cannot form an absolute idea of a creator that is infinite. For how could we describe infinity? We cannot. If we try we will literally continue describing it into infinity. We’ll never be able to stop, for if we do stop, our description is limited and we haven’t described infinity.

It follows then that if we cannot accurately describe or define infinity, we cannot describe or define an Infinite Creator.

God is that which is, before we start thinking about what exactly God is.

The idea of “my God is the only God” or “the only way to God is through my saviour” divides people through belief and therefore serves to strengthen a false identity, something which does in fact, ironically, move us further away from God.

If God is the one and only Infinite Creator, by creating divisions within his creation we move further away from the truth. That all is one.

There is a huge amount of scientific evidence to support the idea that there’s a vast conscious intelligence within nature and behind life. Alive within this moment.

Likewise many religious teachings do contain kernels of truth, albeit concealed behind many misinterpretations.

But the ultimate proof of God comes from experience.

Surrender and see what happens.

Let go of what you think you believe. Let go of what others believe. Respond to what happens in this moment and then let it go.

Life has shown me that I am not in control. I make choices and the intelligence of life, the conscious intelligence of the universe responds. Orchestrating events to always give me what I need, to continue learning.

Life has shown me that my opinions will change again and again as I acquire new knowledge. As I move closer to the conscious intelligence of our one Infinite Creator.

What that intelligence is, that’s worth talking about. That’s worth discussing.

But with an open mind to every opinion, because if God is vast enough to have created this universe and all of life, then clearly all of us have much to learn.

God is within us all. The truth is within us all.

However, if, how and when we find it, how we interpret it and how we express it is, that is our choice. And it will change with time.

I only speak for myself when I say that it’s been conclusively proven that there is an intelligence behind everything.

But I speak for everyone when I say that none of us can speak with absolute authority on the subject of God.