As previously mentioned, I’m trying to understand God. It’s a big job.

So far, I’ve come to equate God with sentient energy that is both male and/or female, depending.

I’ve also decided that God is everywhere, corporeal and non-corporeal, also depending.

I think God takes up a great deal of space. I think that’s where the “God is everywhere” comes from. This means any manifestation that may have happened could only have been parts of the whole. If the entirety of God was compressed into a human-sized form, I think the density would be problematic.

I think the view that we resemble God is a human creation. It helps in understanding the impossible to have a plausible frame of reference. I think “in God’s image” is a metaphor. I think it’s aspirational. Life is growth and evolution; God is the end goal. For us, at least. I wonder what God’s end goal is?

Was there always God? Was there God before the universe? For me, I’ve decided no. I think God and the universe arose at the same time. That in the time when there was nothing, which hurts the head to think about, there was nothing. Then there was a dense singularity, then there was everything, and everything includes God.

I read a book on Buddhism that described life after death as our energy rejoining the energy of the universe. A river of energy which we are always a part of even though for a brief time (cosmologically speaking) we are waves that stand up from the surface. For a brief time, we are our own thing. But with death, we move into a new kind of existence. A non-corporeally-based one. I think of God like that.

I believe God is bound by the laws of the universe. God is of the universe, after all. It’s just that God is really, really old and has a far greater understanding of how things work and what you can do with the laws.

I’m still working out the kinks in my philosophy, of course. Still reading, learning, thinking.

I wonder what God thinks of how we’re doing? If we’re a good species? If we’re learning what we’re supposed to learn or are at least moving in the right direction?

I wonder how long we have to get it right?

But thinking about that leads to thinking about time, and thinking about time is a mistake.

Thinking about time means I have to think about complicated physics concepts I struggle to understand; that always causes a bit of cognitive distress.

What if in addition to being everywhere, God is everywhen?

It’s bad enough thinking about the nature of infinity and the nature of God in the now. Imagining God inhabiting the everywhen made me want to stop thinking about the universe, time, and the meaning of life and pick up an old Dr. Seuss instead. I’m fond of the rhymes in Fox in Socks.

Do you suppose we’re the only world that has risen and fallen in the history of the cosmos? Were there other worlds and civilizations? Did they know God? Did God learn important lessons from the lives and civilizations that came before and after? Is that what the rules are for – to help us evolve successfully into all that we can be? Is religion a way to learn the lessons of others who may have lived a long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away?

I feel a little odd questioning the nature of God and the universe. Trying to figure things out is challenging. It would be more comfortable if I believed in a concrete doctrine. Then I could just answer “I’m doing X” or “I believe Y” in response to questions.

But there isn’t.

At least developing a spiritual tradition and belief system is an ambitious undertaking. Working hard on something is a nice change from the “take the easy road” urgings of depression. Even if it makes me regret not studying physics and cosmology at university.

Do you try and understand God? Do you believe in God? Do you question and analyze the things you believe or just accept them as a matter of course?