"Adam, where art thou?" - God

Shortly after the fall from grace the all-seeing God went looking for Adam and Eve. Obviously not on his omniscience game that day he called out "Adam, where art thou?"

Where indeed.

Adam responded that he was hiding. When the all-knowing asked him "Why?" the recalcitrant, literally born yesterday human responded, "I was ashamed."

For centuries now adults and children alike have been tormented by the idea that there is a very harsh and judgmental super being who not only records all your deeds for later prosecution, he even records everything you think. The ultimate thought police.

As a spiritual teacher I can actually agree with that whole litany:
-He does know every deed
-He does know every thought, emotion, sensation, impulse and desire and
-He does judge them, and almost always does so harshly and without mercy

How is this possible? How can this being know absolutely everything you do, think or want and prepare the most horrible punishment for your transgressions?

Because She is You!

She (or he if you prefer) is a deep disowned part of yourself; your inherent divinity, your mystery, your magnificence, your Original Innocence. In other words God is the disowned voice of your very soul.

This voice had been disowned and powerfully so. Disowning simply means it cannot be acknowledged. And this taboo against its acknowledgment is the foundation of western religions (the Abrahamic tradition) and indeed all of western culture.

The consequence of this institutionalized, horrific injustice is that we take upon ourselves the fault, the guilt, the shame, the blame for the very worst of human behavior. In the meantime, the very best, that which wish we could be but which we no longer have access to, we project outwards on others. And the ultimate form this projection takes is the idea of God.

God represents the ultimate, the best, the unattainable, everything we would regard as divine. He/She also represents the ultimate rule maker and rule keeper. enforcer, the punisher, the strict enforcer of all laws. Law that were imposed on us by the way. We had no say in their selection.

But every quality we attribute to this super being is nothing other than a projection of your own self. God is your disowned Soul.

All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you." - Joseph Campbell
All the gods and goddesses, all the angels and demons, all the heroes and villains, THEY ARE ALL YOU!

That is why God seems to know everything about you. That is because she does. She IS you! But, in our ignorance, we have projected it all on an imaginary super being. And we did this simply because we have never been allowed to accept our own innate divinity. And yes, that divinity includes our innate power. Yet the fact remains that all those qualities, which have been denied and projected outward, are your forever qualities. They are your true nature.

So what happened? How did our actual, innocent nature get so demonized? How did the God within become the wrathful God without and to such a degree that to even question it is the most severe blasphemy?

Early in our lives we learned to keep so much of ourselves hidden. I have spoken and written extensively about this so I will only summarize here. This sad but necessary state of affairs is a normal part of the process of growing up. The bottom line is, you were not acceptable to your "Tribe," your caregivers and the culture in which they operated and so you confronted the most horrific existential crisis... it was unacceptable and thus dangerous to simply be yourself.

This was the condition of childhood that caused us to send big parts of ourselves to the basement of disowned selves, simply to survive. Not only did we disown the very best parts of us (the God within) we created a fictitious version of ourselves (the ego) to present to the Tribe exactly what it wanted to see. In so doing we guaranteed our basic needs would get met and we would survived.

It also meant we lost our soul.

All the inner forces that kept us afraid and hiding away the real self became the projected God of this world. Yahweh, the enforcer of rules and merciless dispenser of judgement and punishment was the perfect metaphor for this horror. Universally experienced it became the dominant religious view although mercifully, the influence of this imaginary, tribal super being is finally waning.

The Influence of the Yahweh idea can wane because it is a fraud, a fiction, an infantile projection of humanity in its superstitious and fearful infancy. But the true God/Goddess, the one that does live within you and IS you, is immortal. That can be obscured but it cannot be killed or done away with. The real God, the REAL YOU, is still alive and well. It has not been lost. It has only been disowned and at the root of that true self denying effort is ignorance.

The false self (or ego) gets created over time and is believed to be the true self; limited, frail, mortal and filled with fear and lack. This becomes our self-image. It is who we think we are. The power of the mind is such that, whatever is believed is literally experienced as a lived reality. Thus all the circumstances of our lives appear to confirm that fundamental mistake. As a result we unconsciously and relentlessly reject who we really are. We keep the disowned god in the basement.

This is where genuine spirituality enters the picture. Self-inquiry begins to question these long held, unscrutinized assumptions and asks:

-What is really me and what is what I have been conditioned to believe?
-Are these assumptions true?
-Is this image I hold of myself who I truly am?
-Who was I before all this conditioning happened?
-Who would I be if I saw myself differently?
-Is this identity nothing but conditioned patterns?
-Is it possible that I am way more than I believe?
-Is there a path to realizing that?

The mere asking of these question, even before there is a concrete answer, is an awakening, an opening, a shift in perception. Mind you, the path back to the real you is not an easy one. You are so well practiced at being who you are not that your entire nervous system is embodying that false assumption every moment of everyday. Not only that, but when you begin to challenge this fiction, there will be the inevitable resistance that comes when you try to change any habit of behavior. And this is mother of all habits of behavior.

But, the reward is beyond description. Everything you have ever wanted to be, every quality you have ever wanted to possess, every fear, lack and doubt you have ever wanted to be free of, are all yours, with the realization of the real you, the god/goddess within.


That disowned voice, projected outward on a wrathful, merciless super being, turns out to be your voice. And your true voice turns out to be infinitely benevolent, forgiving, gentle, happy and eternally free.


Join GP Walsh and host/producer Lisa Berry for the next episode of "The Flow" every Tuesday at 12 noon eastern time. at http://youtube.com/gpwalsh or in the private facebook group https://facebook.com/groups/gpwalsh.