1. How did the words God, Love and Faith become bad?

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion - Abraham Lincoln

I commonly ask patients are you religious or are you spiritual? Do you believe in something? What words do you use to describe what you believe? Do you use the word God? I commonly see patients that have a huge aversion to the word “God”. Even the words “FAITH” and “LOVE” are purposely avoided. How did we and our own minds come to believe that three of the most powerful and originally beautiful words are bad?

The word God unfortunately has been associated to religion, and many religions now have unfortunately been associated to corruption, guilt, shame, mistrust, unworthiness. There are many different variations of religion, many different variations of Christians, Catholics, Buddhists, Muslims, etc, and many different variations of spiritual leaders. I do not really believe that one particular religion or philosophy is better than another, what makes something positive or negative has more to do with the awareness of each individual. Also the way each person consciously or subconsciously interprets it. In other words, the philosophy of a religion can be misunderstood if the person’s perception and reality. Do they see through the eyes of fear or through love? For instance using the bible as an example, how many different times has that single book been used to manipulate fear or inspire love? If asked to sum up the bible in one word, would you say that it is more a book of “love” or is it a book on “hate”? It is these misinterpretations that ultimately cause the message, action and real meaning of “Love” and “God” to be taken away from what was intended.

Throughout time there is a genuine desire to believe in something. No matter when or where we look, we do see the consistent wanting or desire of people to want to believe in a good power or God. We want to believe in a positive force, in loving energy or power that we are part of and connected to. That desire to be connected to a good god is stronger than ever, we want to believe in a force that is not necessarily above us or below but inside of us. It is this inside force that needs attention, this is called our feelings and it is using these feelings as a guide that makes someone spiritual. In the past people where born into their religion, if your family was catholic you where catholic, very few people actually sat down as an adult and decided what set of values and moral they wanted. Instead those were taught to them. Many religions satisfied parts of what we want but we were fed other pieces that did not fit, unfortunately when you are not using your feelings to guide you, the truth can get mixed in with the un-truth and be still served up together.

One example of forgetting to use feeling with trained thinking is when I have asked several religious patients, “If you had to go against your religion to follow God would you? It’s a tricky question, it is amazing how many times people say, “no I would follow my religion”. Let me get this straight, if you had a voice inside of you (called feelings) that you knew was connected to that force that created us or God, you would still follow your religion? Shouldn’t your religion be aligned with your feelings? Those that chose to be religious can be spiritual as well; no teaching should be more real than your own feeling. You can be both.

We know throughout time many people have killed in the name of GOD, I am pretty sure that it was not Gods intent to kill, even when death is mentioned in the books like the bible. If you are not sure, say this to yourself…..GOD gave life to kill it……does that feel right? Now try this, GOD gave life to live it, how does that feel? It’s important to have the freedom to feel and the freedom to choose from that information. Whatever force created us, has given us this life as a gift and with that life the freedom to choose. Misinterpretations of some religions have made God less loving and more fearful.

There was a time in my life that if I saw anything with the word God or Love in it, I would immediately throw it down and walk away. The words God and Love became untrusting dirty words to me. GOD meant guilt and LOVE meant hurt, and of course Faith meant just reading a book over and over, it did not have any action to it. I like so many people purposely avoided the words and if needed made up new more safe and pleasant words. God become mother earth, faith became trust, and love became a word without any deep meaning. I realized that I was avoiding these word because they were associated to religion, guilt and distrust, they were also associated to my childhood, my parents, my upbringing my hurt. I asked myself why such powerful words should not be used purposefully. Just because someone in my past affected the meaning of these words, does not mean that I should let their “crap”, their hurt, their numbness affect me. This unfortunately keeps us locked into a set of values that we have learned solely due to the fact those beliefs, values and morals are connected and attached to our childhood and our survival reflex. Those values called “starter values” or “survival values” create our base identity and are strongly attached to our parents and our first sense of safety or home, even if the home was not that safe. This survival attachment is so strong in fact that any challenge or attempt to change or upgrade them can actually feel like you are going to die, or lose your whole identity (see moving past the comfort zone). We all have values, principal, guidelines, judgments and morals that we adopt that do not always create, health, peace and joy in our life, and those are the ones that we did not have any input to create. Believing or not questioning anything beyond what we have been programmed to believe through our childhood creates massive amounts of stress, conflict and resistance. This resistance overtime can lead to physical and emotional disruptions and disease. This can be difficult to break through without suffering, and even though you can never underestimate the power of suffering to move someone to change, do you always have to move and change by suffering? It is important to know that this is your life and your gift, and realize that some or all of those survival values may not even be yours. It may be time to upgrade them using your feelings.

What is faith, love and what is God? It’s time to reconnect those words to a more playful meaning. In this context, if I use the word God, I mean anything that did exist, that will exist, that connects you to me and us to everything. In this context “faith” is the action that brings you closer to “god”, and love is what you feel when you are connected.

Related to the words GOD, FAITH and LOVE, I like using them now, their meaning is all mine, they are not tainted by someone else’s hurt. I have been able to use my free will to create the meaning and values that I wanted to have, most of them closely mimic how an open and playful child would act, see and use these words. To do this is a process called awareness, this is also known as “feeling” and it’s the ability to “feel your feelings” which allows you to know what is truth for you. When we are operating primarily within our survival reflex, we are numb to our own feelings, our own inner guidance, and our own connection to whatever version of God YOU want to believe in.

I can’t prove that god does exists also I cannot prove the opposite. The simplest message and the first truth that I learned is this, if you do something that makes you feel good, you're close to God or whatever version of God. If you do something that makes you feel bad, you're not. It does not really matter what form of religion or spirituality you believe in, as long as it is your choice to believe it and it brings you closer to peace and joy. It is common to unknowingly adopt beliefs and values through what you learned as a child. So check in with yourself, use your feelings, all values are not valuable. If you find yourself unhappy, full of anger, stuck or numb, entertain the possibility that you’re current belief system and values may need to be upgraded, altered or even overhauled. A belief system that is based on what is true and followed in a truthful way automatically creates a feeling of peace and happiness. This is of course, unless you believe that you are doing everything right and truthful and that’s why you are feeling bad, conflicted, stressed, physically exhausted or numb? Entertain the possibility that any value, moral, principal, guideline or obligation that causes you to be consistently un-peaceful, unhappy, or in disharmony may not be yours and may not be the ones you want to have. How can you really be free if you not even following your own rules. Remember life has some suffering, but you have not been given this great gift of life, and the power of free will to have a life full of suffering. It maybe now time to think and feel in a different way, even in a total opposite way. Ask yourself, is it you time for your awakening, are you ready?