E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality by Pam Grout Read Free Book Online Page B

pretty often.
    What a legacy to dump on an innocent child.
    God Looks Like Z.Z. Top and
Other Annoying Myths
    “Our ideas of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.”
    —T HOMAS M ERTON , C HRISTIAN MYSTIC
    Ask the average individual if he believes in God and he will probably say something like, “Well, duh!” However, it’s unlikely he will have ever asked himself exactly what he means by God. When pressed, he’d probably offer some cliché about “the guy upstairs.”
    Trying to define God, of course, is impossible. God isn’t static, any more than electricity or light is static. God lies beyond the material world of matter, shape, and form. It fills the cosmos, saturates reality, and supersedes time and space. But that doesn’t stop us from trying to construct definitions. Here are the top eight whoppers we’ve made up about God:
    Whopper #1: God is a him. Even though the progressive churches sometimes refer to God as she, the FP doesn’t really have a gender. We certainly don’t talk about Mrs. Electricity or Mr. Gravity. The more appropriate pronoun would be it. The FP is a force field that runs the universe, the same energy source that grows flowers, forms scabs over skinned knees, and constantly pushes for wholeness.
    God is more like the force in Star Wars, a presence that dwells within us, a principle by which we live. That’s why Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader have become such a phenomenon. Star Wars is a myth that speaks to us at a deep, gut level. Some part of us knows that “the force” is with us and that we, through our words, thoughts, and deeds, create the world.
    Whopper #2: God looks like ZZ Top, makes black check marks after your name, and is basically too busy working on world hunger to care about you. God, if you believe the accepted box, is a little like Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird: this mysterious neighbor constantly peering out the window of his penthouse suite, waiting to catch us doing something “naughty, naughty.” We can’t really see him, but we’ve been properly warned that he’s there. Watching. Judging. Monitoring our every move. If you don’t follow this commandment or if you break that rule, God just might send his angel Secret Service after you to bop you on the head like Little Bunny Foo-Foo.
    Whopper #3: God plays favorites. The FP is a force field that’s equally available to everyone. It’s a natural capacity in all of us, not an exclusive gift bestowed upon a few. In fact, that is the primary lesson Jesus taught. God is within. You are part of God. You can perform miracles.
    To worship Jesus the way we do is a little like worshipping Benjamin Franklin because he first discovered electricity. Ben Franklin sent that kite up in an electric storm so we could use the principle he demonstrated. He didn’t do it so we’d build temples to him, paint pictures of him, and wear little commemorative keys around our necks. He wanted us to take the principle of electricity and use it—which we do to run radios and computers and air conditioners. Had we stopped with Ben’s discovery the way we did with Jesus’s discovery, we’d all be sitting in the dark.
    Benjamin Franklin didn’t invent electricity any more than Jesus invented spiritual principles. Lightning and the resulting electricity have always been available. We just didn’t realize it or know how to access it. Galileo didn’t invent gravity when he dropped the wooden ball off the leaning tower of Pisa. He just demonstrated it.
    Likewise, Jesus demonstrated spiritual principles that he wants us to use and develop. We’ve wasted 2,000 years worshipping this idol of him instead of using the principles he taught us. Look through the Bible and nowhere does Jesus say, “Worship me.” His call to us was “follow me.” There’s a big difference.
    By making Jesus out to be a hero, we miss the whole point. Jesus wasn’t saying, “I’m cool. Make statues of me; turn my birthday into a huge