Connecting to a Higher Power

A little while back I wrote about being invited to join a group seemingly designed for people who shared common interests of creativity, entrepreneurship, and spiritual tendencies.  

I still think the only reason I registered as a hit on the algorithm was because of my Catholic school background, but I digress.

One of the immediate impacts of joining the group is it gave me permission to explore, or re-explore, the possibility that a higher power exists and that by tending to a connection with it, we'll get some help on our journeys out of suffering.

The organizer of the daily virtual gatherings has an unusual candor about sharing his personal beliefs on this matter: he calls it God, and that's what he believes, but he always invites and ensures everyone is welcome to call it whatever you want or believe however you believe. It makes no difference to the practice.

I believe that. Although I try to give great exception to my Catholic grammar school, and it's quite easy to do with Jesuits and their freewheeling intellectual attitude, Christianity by and large has been entirely co-opted by evangelists who think their way is the only way, and that dogma is more important than truth. But I remember differently in my experiences with the Catholic nuns and Jesuit priests that educated me as a grew into a man. 

The truth is we don't need the bible or church services or supreme religious leaders to know God. In fact, even calling it God is our attempt as humans to give word to something that is ineffable; something so great that it is beyond our capabilities to explain it. And yet, I think we can all experience a connection with it. An incredibly powerful and helpful and perhaps necessary on some level, connection with it. God, the Universe, a Higher Power, the Force, the mushroom nymph that lives in a tree in the forest...I honestly believe it doesn't matter. The benefits are immense as long as you can ease yourself into believing about something. God is loving and giving and is available to provide peace. That is not dependent upon you spelling his name a certain way in the credits. 

Now, I don't know if these are deeper meditative states or a genuine connection with a higher power, or maybe both, but I do know that it feels very different. It feels powerful and gentle and loving. 

And I say it as if it's not me, and yet, well, the whole "we are all one" line of thinking. 

What's different, it seems to me, about this nuance between meditation and a higher power, at least in my experience, is that in the perception of it as a higher power, something beyond me, yet accessible to me, is largely at this point around the concept of Surrender. It is so much easier to let go of limiting beliefs, worries, and negative thoughts when there is a miraculously powerful Energy to let them go to. And even better, coupled with the faith that by letting them go they will be taken care of, handled for the greatest good of all, and take their place in a universe where everything is meant to be, everything has a reason, and wherever I happen to be, I can have the confidence that I'm exactly where I should be. As are we all.