A droplet of water, falling through Infinity once asked itself: “What does God look like? Who is God?”
God, who was Pure Light, and was thus Everywhere, at all Time, chuckled at the candid question. Why, the droplet was falling through God and was surrounded by God at all time!
But God decided to provide the droplet with an answer. He shined his Light right through it and created a nice white screen on which his Light could project itself.
Thus the droplet produced the first Rainbow, a projection of God’s otherwise Pure, Indivisible, Unique Light.
Unfortunately, this strategy had it’s limits. The droplet was far from pure. It carried lots of mud and dirt inside of itself, thus producing a tainted and incomplete Rainbow at best. Worst of all, it had preferences when it came to colors. But God had just “spoken” to it! God had responded to the droplet’s plea! It’s judgement clouded by the euphoria and joy of God’s manifestation, the droplet began worshiping the color “murky Green”.
Not too far away, another droplet had the same thoughts. “What is God?” And God, in his Universal Kindness happily obliged, and again, shone his Pure Light through the droplet onto an empty, white canvas. Again, the droplet was far from pure, it had accumulated dust and clay as it fell through into Infinity. This droplet opted for “dirty Red” as a the “true” representation of God.
Both droplets started talking to their neighbors about the wonderful discoveries they made and about the “true nature” of God. Impressed and intimidated by those two droplets’ “special relationship” with God, the other droplets started to admire, follow and study a detailed account and testimony of what these two droplets had witnessed on their respective canvases. Books where written about how “murky Green” and “dirty Red” looked like, it’s properties, every single detail about it’s every aspect, transcribed in poem, song, book, image,…
In the end, God watched sadly as droplets agglomerated into angry stormy oceans of like-minded droplets, so thick that no light could ever traverse it, wagging an eternal and fierce war against each other, oblivious to the fact that they were constantly bathing and made of God’s Unique, Indivisible, Eternal and Pure Light.
This story addresses many of the shortcomings of religions.
The most important “myth” that it breaks is one that says God only “spoke” or manifested him/her/itself to humanity once, (in Jesus, or Mohammed, or Buddha) and then disappeared in a muted silence somewhere in Heaven, letting humans to figure stuff out on their own. This cannot be farther from the Truth. God has never stopped and will never stop speaking to humans or to all of it’s Creation for that matter, from time immemorial into eternity. It’s just that for some reason, we turn a blind eye and a deaf ear. We prefer to hear about God from someone’s else account rather than to seek God’s presence directly. Besides, is it any wonder that all things in Nature, be it atoms, plants or animals perform their intended purpose and function flawlessly? Atoms neatly arranging into molecules, into Stars and Planets, plants and animals forming balanced ecosystems resilient to external shocks and regaining balance on their own… It is only Man, for now, who escapes these Laws that he so proudly uncovers and calls “Science”. Indeed, it would seem that ALL of Creation is listening to God at all times… except Man.
The only reason God has taken so many contradictory shapes, forms, attributes, is due to the “impurities” of humans and their inability to grasp God in all it’s complexity/simplicity. God is ONE, indivisible, timeless, but how can a human mind grasp such a concept? We have a hard time understanding a fellow human, sometimes even a close and intimate friend. How can we even think that our limited minds can grasp God if he is ALL: every single animal, plant, atom, photon, planet, galaxy, in the past, present and future, all that ever was, is and will be, all at ONCE? Thus God can only manifest in imperfect ways, by breaking up his ONENESS into manageable sub-parts in the hope that Man can grasp a snippet of God’s Unlimited nature. I mentioned “impurities” earlier. Let there be no misunderstanding. This has nothing to do with good, evil, sin or other forms of moral and ethical aspects of our being. The only impurity is simply our preconceived ideas about God or about anything. Our beliefs themselves are the impurities which “taint” the true nature of God. In the story above, I used the metaphor of Pure Light transforming into a rainbow. For humans, it is via our five senses, but predominantly via our sense of sight and hearing, that God manifests. For those seeking God very intently, the accounts speak even of a voice resounding in the Mind itself. Yet humans fail to understand that our brain, our mind, is the receiver. It is just like a radio that tries to tune into the right “frequency” that is God. Only our brain “radio receiver” is quite imperfect and “taints” the message as it is filtered by our limiting beliefs and preconceptions. That is the only impurity to get rid of: ask to know God with the purity of a child’s mind, with no preconceptions and beliefs.
Thus the greatest Sin of contemporary humans following a specific religion, is to read about God in books which are an imperfect account of one or several imperfect humans which allowed God’s Light to shine through their imperfection. Some humans came close to purity, such as Jesus or the Buddha, but even their message was then transcribed and edited imperfectly, and even if it were transcribed perfectly, it could not encompass all that God was, is and was going to be! Even a pure droplet projecting a fully colorful Rainbow can only recount it’s appearance at a specific point in time. Some religions, such as Islam, were wise to forbid the depiction of the Prophet or of God/Allah, for this very reason: that one could never represent the full ever changing “picture” of the true unlimited nature of God. But they failed to recognize that a book about God and the Prophet is just as misleading, limiting and incomplete as an image.
Thus the morality of the story above is quite simple: if you want to know God, ask God to shine his Light through your heart, as this will reveal your “impurities”, work on dissolving them until you are left with a perfect Rainbow, and embrace the color that suits you best, that matches your heart’s desire, not confusing it for being God, but just YOUR personal God reflecting who YOU are, thus manifesting a part of God since, ironically, there is nothing that exists outside of God. The droplet is, itself, made out of Pure Light. Only it’s limited thoughts, beliefs and corresponding actions may lead it towards obscuring itself. God has never and will never stop shining his Light through us but it is our choice whether we let it in and experience it directly, or whether we rather seek to find God in books, providing a secondary account of that experience.
Matthew 18:2–6
He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”