Experiment #19: Trying to Answer the Question, "What is God?"
This is me practicing “E” for Engage with Spiritual Teachings on the M.O.N.K.E.Y. B.A.R.S. from Experiment #6
If reading time is hard to come by or you’re interested in a more human experience, there is a “Read-to-You” version of this article.
An experiment with
“E” for Engage with Spiritual Teachings
on the
M.O.N.K.E.Y. B.A.R.S.
~
For more:
Read M.O.N.K.E.Y. B.A.R.S. explainer
Read “E” explainer
See all “E” experiments
I have published 18 experiments to date on this Substack (plus a few updates on those experiments) and often, within those, I have described how I think about the question: “What is God?”
Experiment #19, for me, is about bringing some of this thinking together into one place.
Remember the clip shows from your favorite sitcoms where they would primarily use excerpts from previous episodes? Well, Experiment #19 is sort of like that—a clip show. I want to be able to both focus on the question “What is God?” as a standalone experiment and also celebrate the fact that it’s woven into nearly all of the other experiments as well (perhaps this is helpful foreshadowing for the question). And then, at the end, I wil do my best to summarize it.
As I continue, please know that I do so with the utmost humility because I actually think God is beyond human understanding, which is what most spiritual traditions teach.
That said, there is research that shows that grappling with profound spiritual questions like this one is good for our brains. I first explored this in Experiment #6: Engaging with Spiritual Teachings when I discussed the work of neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Newberg, M.D. and neuroscience researcher Mark Robert Waldman.
In their book, How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist, they describe research that shows how:
“…religious and spiritual contemplation changes your brain in a profoundly different way [from other areas of contemplation]… these experiences often generate long-lasting states of unity, peacefulness, and love.”
Now, if I’m being honest, I haven’t always found that contemplating religion has filled me with “long-lasting states of unity, peacefulness, and love.” But as I said in Experiment #6:
“Right or wrong, a distinction I began to make for myself was that ‘God’ was different from religion.
Religions are created by humans. They are a human attempt to understand and codify God, which [again] most traditions say is beyond human understanding. Given this, it’s almost inevitable that these human systems experience some form of corruption.
But that doesn’t mean that religious texts and leaders have nothing to offer. And it doesn’t mean that I have to accept everything a religion preaches in order to learn from it. Holding religions to this standard feels like the cruelest kind of perfectionism—one by which I hope I am never judged.”
When I earnestly think about what God is, I find that it does have an expansive effect on me. It opens up my curiosity and makes me look at the world in a way that’s filled awe, wonder, gratitude, and love.
So without further ado, the clip show...
An excerpt from Experiment #7: Yearning through Prayer
What I love is that the profoundly successful Alcoholics Anonymous 12-Step Program helps members, as they describe in their "Big Book," partner with a Higher Power “of their understanding” when “the needed power [isn’t] there.” It goes on to say:
“Our human resources, as marshaled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly. Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves.”
A Higher Power of your understanding. A Power greater than ourselves. Giving its members the freedom to choose what to call this Power removes a major obstacle for many people. I found this language especially helpful as someone who always struggled with the word ‘God,’ which I touched on in Experiment #6.
My spiritual teacher, Swami Nityananda, often calls this Power “Divine Grace.” But then she’ll say, “…or whatever your word for it is.”
So I took the invitation to think about what I would call this Power, this source that I felt I had connected to while writing and singing.
I honored my discomfort with the word “God,” which always made me picture something like Michaelangelo’s painting in the Sistine Chapel or what [author] Julia Cameron calls “a celestial Santa Claus.”
It was more helpful to me to think of this Power as a field or an ecosystem or a living being in the way an ocean is a living being, rather than an anthropomorphic figure. We hear people say that God is always around us, but I have found it helpful to think of this Power as something that we are “existing” in, more of like an ocean or substance—that everything is part of this field. Everything is part of this Power.
As author Lynn McTaggart writes in her fascinating book, The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe, in which she synthesizes the newest scientific studies being done in quantum physics:
“At our most elemental, we are not a chemical reaction, but an energetic charge. Human beings and all living things are a coalescence of energy in a field of energy connected to every other thing in the world. This pulsating energy field is the central engine of our being and our consciousness, the alpha and the omega of our existence. There is no 'me' and 'not-me' duality to our bodies in relation to the universe, but one underlying energy field. This field is responsible for our mind's highest functions, the information source guiding the growth of our bodies. It is our brain, our heart, our memory—indeed, a blueprint of the world for all time. The field is the force, rather than germs or genes, that finally determines whether we are healthy or ill, the force which must be tapped in order to heal. We are attached and engaged, indivisible from our world, and our only fundamental truth is our relationship with it. ‘The field,’ as Einstein once succinctly put it, 'is the only reality.’”
…This conceptualization is meaningful to me because it helps me make sense of my connections to it so far. It also helps me make sense of what spiritual traditions describe as oneness.
If we think of this Power like an ocean, we can think of ourselves like the waves. From one perspective, we are separate and unique:
But we are always part of the ocean—always part of the one body of water.
I very much honor the Yogic saying, “Truth is one, we call it by various names,” which I discussed in Experiment #1: Sharing the Top Ten Things I Do Regularly to Create a Happier Life. The various names I am currently choosing to use are:
The Source
Divine Intelligence
Field of Consciousness
Infinite Consciousness or the Infinite
Divine Grace
That which upholds the universe
Creator of All
An excerpt from Experiment #18: Using a Spiritual Name
So, again, instead of “God,” I’ll say The Source or Divine Intelligence or Field of Consciousness or Infinite Consciousness or The Divine because my understanding of God, which I explored in Experiment #7: Yearning through Prayer, is like a field of consciousness in which everything exists and through which everything is created.
I understand this field to be alive. It’s a “being” in that sense like an ocean. This Infinite Consciousness is vibrating with frequencies that we would recognize as the feeling of love. The description in 1 John 4:16 works well for me:
“God is love.”
All of creation (including our lives) are waves in this ocean—this field, this Divine Intelligence, this love. We are always able to “awaken” love within us because we are created with love. It’s what we are made of—made from. We are always connected to it. We are always part of it.
Even if we are feeling spirit-depleting emotions like anger, frustration, self-doubt, self-judgment, jealousy, loneliness, etc., these are just masking love in the way that kicking up mud in a stream masks the clear water.
This helps me remember why I want to “awaken love of God” within me. In my understanding, God is love. Love is God. We return to clarity by focusing on love and love contains a range of spirit-uplifting emotions like happiness, joy, peace, calm, compassion, gratitude, and so much more, as I described in Experiment #1.
An excerpt from Experiment #1: Sharing the Top Ten Things I Do Regularly to Create a Happier Life
With practice—and over time—what can emerge is a way of living where our daily lives feel harmonious even when there is dissonance (conflict, suffering, hatred, etc.) around us.
As Don Miguel Ruiz puts it:
“You can live in heaven in the middle of thousands of people living in hell because you are immune to that hell… Heaven is a place that exists within our mind. It is a place of joy, a place where we are happy, where we are free to love and to be who we really are. We can reach heaven while we are alive; we don't have to wait until we die.”
Swami Nityananda has described this as “the heaven frequency” or “the love frequency”—a state of consciousness where we are so unshakably tuned to the emotion of love (and love’s related emotions of joy, peace, compassion, forgiveness, etc.) that even as challenges enter our lives, we greet them from a state of peace. We remain steady.
I find this way of looking at the world to be very empowering and it resonates with me particularly as a musician.
If we understand love not as something abstract, but as a frequency, we can begin to understand that changing that frequency in our minds from a spirit-depleting one to a spirit-lifting one (like love) can have a profound effect.
It helps me to think of it like changing a radio station from a frequency with static noise or a song that drives me crazy to one that’s playing one of my favorite songs. I may not be able to control what others say or do or think, but I can control what to focus on. I can control which frequency I put my inner radio on.
Depending on what I choose, I can allow the monkeys in my mind to play with bananas (fear, hate, anger, etc), or I can give them a job playing on the M.O.N.K.E.Y. B.A.R.S.
When they play with bananas, I feel bananas. When they play on the M.O.N.K.E.Y. B.A.R.S., what I have noticed over time are significant increases to the evenness of my temperament, my calmness, my experience of happiness, my experience of self-love, and my resilience to things that don’t “go my way.” I have noticed more creativity, more intuition, and more joy.
An excerpt from Exp. #13 Update: A Song Called 'In Color' and Why Releasing It During Pride Month Means A Lot
I was guided towards Yoga philosophy, which teaches techniques for how to live in joy even when we are experiencing pain.
The techniques essentially eliminate emotional pain altogether and for physical pain, they help make the monkey mind strong enough to consistently stay focused on spirit-uplifting emotions (again, see Experiment #1).
An example of this in the Christian tradition is Jesus, who the Yogis hold up as a master teacher. He suffered immense physical pain from being brutally crucified on a cross, but he remained connected to compassion, inner peace, and inner joy as it happened. He remained connected to what Swami Nityananda describes as “the frequency of love.”
We see this connection in the description of his final moments. In Luke 23:34, one of the last things Jesus says about his torturers is:
“Forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
Staying connected to “the frequency of love” while being painfully tortured might seem impossible, but… it can be done…
And finally, an excerpt from Experiment #16: Seeing the Organizing Force of the Universe through Chladni Plates
To me, the patterns on Chladni plates seem like breadcrumbs to somewhere. What do they reveal about the “organizing force” of the universe, if anything? After all, “nature is the hieroglyphic of God,” as Swami Premananda tells us.
They make me wonder: What else do frequencies affect like this? What else behaves like sand on a metal plate?
Do our emotions behave this way?
If we studied the visual patterns we see in our cells or our blood or the water in our body or the fluid in our brain or our nervous system and we observed what patterns emerged when we, for example, were feeling love (or the frequency of love as I say in Experiment #7), would we see a highly structured pattern like we do on the Chladni plates? If so, what would joy look like? Peacefulness? Compassion? Gratitude? Forgiveness?
Whatever the case may be, when we experience these uplifting emotions or “frequencies,” it’s pleasant to our bodies in the way certain chords are pleasant to listen to. Is there a relationship between these spirit-uplifting emotions that’s similar to how musical intervals or harmonics work? Are spirit-uplifting emotions octaves or overtones of each other? Are spirit-uplifting emotions predictable frequencies like 345 Hz or 5201 Hz?
Here’s my attempt at a summary
If I had to summarize all of this into a few paragraphs, I’d say something like this (at least at this point in time):
God is everything. It is the field of frequencies in which we live and breathe. It is the container for and component of everything that exists. We are always connected to God because we are made from it and exist in it. In that sense, we are God. We are divine, like everything else.
While it is accurate to say God is “he,” it is just as accurate to say God is “she” and God is “it” because God is everything. It is beyond human understanding. It is beyond gender. God is the creator of all and creating is an act of love. So, God is love. Other spirit-depleting emotions like anger, fear, sadness, etc. are part of how we learn the value of love and choosing love. They are teachers and, though they can feel unpleasant, ultimately serve our spiritual unfoldment, which is a loving act. Love is present in all of creation and simply changes from one form to another in an infinite cycle of births and deaths. Love—God—is energy and it is neither created, nor destroyed. It is eternal. It is one substance. One living thing. One being.
God, in the form of a human, can both perceive itself as a separate, beautiful individual and also as a divine being, a soul. We perceive ourselves as a divine being and become conscious of God within us through the emotion of love, because God is love. What we recognize as the feeling of love is our divine nature—is God. When we feel the frequency of love, we feel expansive, supported, creative, giving, and connected. There is a sense of harmony with the universe, not unlike the way grains of sand are aligned in a beautifully structured pattern on certain fundamental frequencies on Chladni plate. Love—God—is an infinite power that is always available because God is everything and within everything.
Okay. That’s where I am for now. Undoubtedly, this summary will evolve over time as I continue to experiment with the M.O.N.K.E.Y. B.A.R.S. (again, see Experiment #1). My intention is to revisit this experiment—and maybe this summary—every so often and enjoy how my understanding of God continues to unfold.
Have you ever given thought to the question “What is God?” Where have you turned to learn about it? What has resonated with you? I would love to hear your thoughts. If you’re comfortable, consider sharing them in the comments below so we can all benefit.
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a very happy day.
With love,
Jonathan