Hi, I’m An Atheist, And I’m Stupid

I don’t believe in God. I don’t have to believe in God. Have you ever looked down at the ground to see grass? Do you have to believe in grass? Beneath the grass have you ever looked at the earth and thriving ecosystem in the grass and the earth, the small creatures like ants, aphids, flies, mosquitos, worms, and bees? Do you have to believe in them? I see God everywhere my eyes and mind can possibly go.

Atheists have it all wrong. But so do the bible thumpers. These are like two extremes that couldn’t be any more different, any more in opposition. I can understand why it seems enticing to be an Atheist, especially if there is disdain for religion. It’s like being a Satanist, but being PC about it. The problem here is that if you really are an Atheist, your logical thinking brain is telling you that there is no God. That means that as an Atheist you don’t see God anywhere, in anything, in anyone. This still makes sense to me if the God you are looking for is an old man in a toga with a long white beard sitting on a throne above a cloud. The God that doesn’t exist could also be the one somehow described or characterized in whatever religion there is disdain for, and at least that an Atheist has exactly right: that God certainly doesn’t exist.

But what of seeing divinity in every single thing that exists? If this hasn’t yet been revealed to one confident and proud to call him or herself an Atheist, well, then that is the definition of Atheist! The definition is one who has not yet seen or can’t understand that God is everywhere, in everything, in everyone, is everything. I certainly would not walk around calling myself someone who is proud of understanding that I am short of understanding, but that is what the Atheist does, and most probably unknowingly. This is difficult to swallow because the knowledgeable and thinking brain is what leads one to be skeptical of any God, so it can’t be that there is a lack of understanding; lack of understanding is the hallmark of the one who is led by faith. So, one can say that he or she just doesn’t care.

The scary thing is that these are basically the same concepts that the proselytizer uses to get you to accept a religion, or Jesus, or what or whomever. They say things like, “Let him reveal himself to you”, or “once you accept Jesus as your savior”. The power of love is amazing. It requires no belief in any gods or God, it is religionless. I’m talking about unconditional love, not conditional love which is focused on some object or subject or external thing or person, even the idea of Jesus or God as some kind of paternal entity to Jesus. Many people have a misconception about what the definition of God is, and the head of a religious community may reference a God that I absolutely don’t recognize. In that sense, I certainly would proudly call myself an Atheist; maybe Atheists have it all right.

Vernal Equinox 2010

Lucifer, most beautiful conductor of music in all the universe.

We on this planet earth with all of our unique differences have a myriad of things in common. As we approach this year’s vernal equinox for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, a notable change is about to take place on March 20 at 1:32pm like the node of a sine wave whose frequency is one orbit around the sun.
The change of the seasons is a rhythm that we adhere to and is inescapable. Curiously, we have four distinct seasons that when related to the passing of time are like the beats of the time signature of the music of our solar system on one side of the Milky Way Galaxy. Is it a coincidence that the most common and popular time signatures in written music today are divisible by or multiples of four? If our grand musical time signature is 4/4 with one measure lasting a year, we can fit any time signature variations we would like and synchronize with our given larger framework.
As individuals with different rhythms that have begun at the moments of our creation, we are given the opportunity to become aware together and adjust our tempos to accent as one this beat in the symphony that we write and perform. Like an orchestra comprised of every living thing on the planet, our celestial sheet music calls for every instrument to play a note in the key of life.

Silence Is A State Of Mind

Have you ever heard the phrase, “the silence was deafening”? AUM is the verbal equivalent of the four states of consciousness and their fields of experience. A is the waking consciousness, U is the dream consciousness, M is the dreamless sleep, and the silence around the sacred syllable is the Unmanifest Transcendent. The dance posture of the God Siva may be visualized as the symbolic syllable, also commonly written as Om.

But what is the correct note to voice this syllable? There are musical notes associated with each of the seven main chakras, and our root chakra is associated with the note C. The note middle C is a good reference point for the sound AUM, and there are Om singing bowls specifically tuned for this purpose.

Anthropomorphic idols, like Siva, exist to make the point that the God is within the worshiper. Long sermons are unnecessary among idol-worshipers, and the devotee mimics the god with the same meaning the god has, infused into local custom and the details of life. The whole of life can be made into a support for meditation, and one lives in the midst of a silent sermon all the time. Yoga is the same. One mustn’t think of the asanas as representative of what yoga is. It is better to think of them as a vehicle to the goal and comprising only a small fraction of all that is yoga. When your yoga practice comes to a close and you are introspective and alone with the Self, listening to what is usually being blocked out from your awareness, this is yoga, your state of mind after the asanas have been practiced to help you get there. Yoga is for everyone.