The need for God

The other day I realized that I have been omitting writing about God in my blog and I started to wonder why – because I definitely do have many things on my mind about this issue. I guess I was trying to be nice, to not rock anybody’s boat, to play it safe, to not upset (and lose) my readers… A nice guy, you see, that’s what I am.

But, upon realizing this I immediately decided to express what’s on my mind about this topic as well, and so in the next months I intend to write posts on subjects like which God among many, the reasons for talking about God, God’s books, the plans of God, the personality and the values of God… and perhaps other things as well. And I will start with the questions of the need for God.

To begin with, let me paraphrase an old Zen saying:

If you believe in God,

things are just as they are.

If you do not believe in God,

things are just as they are.

In other words, it doesn’t matter what we think or believe about God or anything else, things are and will be just as they are. So, relax, this is what I suggest…

Anyway, the questions whether there is an omnipotent creator of everything is definitely an utterly fundamental question, but there are other questions like this too, like whether there are multiple universes or is this time/space the only one, or whether this universe is expanding or not (and what is it expanding into), and whether we are alone in the universe… All these questions are important, crucial and all-embedding, but in general we do not talk about them all that much and definitely we do not fight or even kill each other over them. Apart from the questions about God. We do kill each other over them.

So why is the question about the existence of God so important and special? Why would we want to stress and expose it over and over again? There are a few possible reasons that pop up in my mind when I ask myself the above questions:

• The existential dilemma of freedom is a scary one, since being completely free to choose also means being completely responsible for these choices. Full responsibility for our lives, for our existence. Therefore the external locus of control, the feeling that control is not within us but out there, in the hands of destiny, God, some ultimate authority, is a very comforting one and perhaps also the reason why we have the need to reassure ourselves, over and over again, that we are children of God. Not fully responsible. Thus not having to fully face the scary freedom of choice.
• Another reason for talking that much about God may be that there’s yet another existential dilemma we are having difficulties to face, and this is the question of meaning of it all. The question of the meaning of life seems to be rather unanswerable and it is not easy, we all know that, to go from day to day without some sort of a steady meaning. Now, the paradigm of the existence of God makes picture perfect and simple, bringing peace of mind. Or at least pacifying the horror of the meaninglessness. You do not have to know the meaning, as long as there is God who knows. So all you need to do is just trust and continue. Knowing that you are on the right side, on the side with a meaning.
• The third possible reason I see for talking about the question of God all that much in our lives could be in running away from the dreadful feeling of being isolated, of ultimate loneliness in this dark and cold universe. If you remind yourself every day that you are actually warmly held in God’s lap, you have this warm feeling of safety and eternal belonging. So the notion of God brings a relief from this isolation. Now, this lack of ability to be alone could be seriously problematic. Fromm said that the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love, and I could not agree with him more.
• The last, and to my mind the most powerful possible reason for having God on our lips that much could be that having a living connection with the supreme force in the universe gives one a tremendous power. By being the child of the greatest and the one and the only God means being in the right club. This connection gives you power over others, the unbelievers, the unfaithful. It was so easy for the Crusaders to kill everybody around by screaming: “God wills it.” It is so easy to fight God’s wars, to be the hand of God, to have this connection to the ultimate authority. Frankly, I have personally met so many “Godly” people, various religions, various cultures, with God on their tongues all the time, but no respect for other people, no love, no empathy, no acceptance, just the will to judge, control, change, punish… On the other hand, so many loving, gentle, respectful, empathic, warm, wise people never mention God at all.

So, these are some possible reasons that I see for the question of belief in God not being just one of the many intimate personal matters we are all having, mentioning them here and there, but rather an ultimately important concept that is not only shaping lives of individuals, but the history of humankind, to a such dramatic extent.

And I wonder what your thoughts are.

The Die-Hard Role of a Victim

Through my 12 years of working as a psychotherapist the most common inner enemy I was trying to help people to cope with was a role of a victim. This role of a victim of circumstances, destiny, people and forces out there does not only seem to be a common favourite theme that connects us all (in the Western world at least), but also an unconscious mechanism that has roots stretching so deep down that it is almost impossible to cut out completely.

I knew about the dimensions and omnipresence of the role of a victim in human lives and personalities literally decades ago and used to make, in my lectures and trainings, lots of jokes about victim’s dramas and acts – until one day it finally dawned on my slow mind that my own self image and personality was actually built on the drama of a victim; of my childhood, parents, schooling system, society, individuals and groups, destiny and even God… I almost could not find anything in my life that was not coloured with this “victim” colour. This realization shut up my mouth for quite a while. It was such a cold shower to realize how much I actually loved self-pitying and provoking sympathy and pity within others. And this urge is still there, to be honest. In particular I love to be a victim of my wife and my kids, of course.

I guess the story of our love affair with the role of a victim starts with our conflict with the world and with other people which just don’t meet our expectations and needs. People behave out of their free choice and do not perform quite according to our standards, furthermore even gravitation, time and other physical constraints do not strictly follow our needs… And since we do not want to feel there is anything wrong with us, therefore it must be that there is something wrong with other people. So it is them who are doing it to us thus making our lives miserable! It must be them, who else could it be? And so we sit down with couple of like-minders and indulge in our favourite sport, which is whining over an enemy out there. With a cup of coffee or a bottle of bear, it does not really matter.

The way that Erich Fromm in his book The Fear of Freedom and Irwin Yalom in his capital work Existential Psychotherapy explained our urge to hide behind the role of victim may not have as much to do with our traumas from the past as it has with the difficult and yet unresolved existential question of freedom. It appears that we are scared to death of being free. Yes, we do pray and wait and fight for freedom, but once we start having it we are terrified of the fact that freedom brings along the responsibility. Now this is heavy. To be fully responsible for our lives and existence with nobody and nothing to blame anymore – this is almost unbearable and so we prefer to create our lives in a way that we are not really free, but can at least go on being victims.

I wouldn’t want to sound as suggesting that if other people are not guilty and wrong and to blame, than it must be us who are. I do not think an issue of guilt applies in this context at all. I believe it is really crucial to be constantly aware of our own limited perspective and conscious and unconscious interpretations of what we experience to be the reality around us. And within this very relative point of reference we are left with basically two choices: accept things as they appear to be, take a deep breath and make another responsible step into the unknown, or to rather choose to sit down, point our fingers out there and blame it all on everybody and everything around and indulge in self-pitying for the rest of our lives.

I know than we are not omnipotent and that we cannot absolutely freely create every bit of this reality, but what helps me in almost every possible circumstance is to ask myself: “Now, if Buddha or a perfect Zen Roshi was in my place here and now, would he complain and whine over other people, feel he/she is a victim of circumstances?” In the next fraction of a second I most often immediately become aware of an immense room for improvement in my world and choose to make another step into the unknown. With a smile.

Freedom from and freedom to

Last year was a somewhat weird one. On the outside things were seemingly progressing perfectly, but I was struggling on the inside. Not really in a heavy-duty manner, but I was facing certain void that I have briefly described in my personal history.

As Fromm has beautifully explained in his book The Fear of Freedom, there seem to be two types of freedom that we individuals struggle with and try to obtain; namely the freedom from (external or inner pressures) and the freedom to (do, create, move, be…). I guess a large portion of my life was about attempting to finally become free from – mainly personal and cultural patterns of thinking, neurotic feelings etc. In the course of all those years I somehow got used to live with these inner companions and felt quite comfortable and natural not feeling free from…

In the last few years this has shifted and I have started to not only feel free from, but also to feel free to. Now, the problem was that I did not really know what to use this new freedom for, so to say. What did I want – besides all that I already had? About 20 years ago a palm-reader somewhere in South India assured me (and so this must be 100 % certain) that I would live 80 years. Sharp! So last year I was a bit horrified about the fact that there were still roughly 38 years ahead of me – of being free to not know what to do and why to do it.

So I guess I was making everybody around me rather depressive last year, talking about this lack of motivation and meaning etc. I have noticed that friends actually ceased asking me how I was. However, in August things started to unfold and I feel in a completely different shape nowadays.

I have attended an International Intensive Training in Switzerland, lead by Marshall Rosenberg and the Centre for Nonviolent Communication. I guess if I haven’t had 12 years of experience of practicing psychotherapy, this could have been just another communication training, an excellent one of course, but I doubt it would have sparked inside of me what it actually did. Somehow things came together – what I have experienced as a psychotherapist as being the eternal and always present core of all our psychological and relational problems, namely our inability to realize and express our true inner feelings and needs to each other, proved to be the very core of Marshall Rosenberg method of Nonviolent Communication. If you are not familiar with the NVC approach, I am very much inviting you to have look at a short film (in three parts) of Marshall describing it and to therefore hear some of it from the source.

It took me couple of months to realize what actually happened there. At first I was completely overwhelmed with all the beautiful people I have met there and all the great things I have realized about communication and about my life and about, you know, everything… And than, just a month or two ago, I started to realize the depth of it, the dimension of the breakthrough. Many things got together and the void was just not there anymore. The meaning was coming back and now I feel if I can devote my energy to teach people to speak this language, the true language of heart, if I can mediate and use that language to help people relate in a more pristine way, get together, commune…, well than I am back on the track again. On the track of my life.

And, after 38 years, while entering the tunnel and looking back, I will feel content.