Do you Feel It?

I’ve stopped asking people if they believe in God. I realized, after many awkward negatives, and after even more detached dialogues about the dogmas of tradition, that the question is irrelevant. Or, maybe not irrelevant—it’s just the wrong question. (As we all should know by now, there is some special life-navigational magic in knowing the right questions to ask.). Therefore, the right question is: Do you feel it? It’s really much simpler. It’s perfectly clear to those have, and yet it’s vague enough to set a very different tone on the conversation with those who haven’t—or, at least, those who don’t realize they have. Asking someone what they “believe” in is a lot like asking them what football team they root for, or their favorite musician. At some point, people choose to establish a cognitive framework in their minds as to how the world works, what they like and don’t like about certain systems and songs and cities with football teams. They establish that framework, make it a part of their identity, so that, depending on the elasticity of their personalities, they might feel competition or animosity toward someone with a different team (or band). Belief, though it may be inspired by profound experiences of touching the numinous, is still a mental construct, a philosophy that requires thought and reason and varying degrees of logic. (That is, we all have reasons for believing something, however buried or irrational those reasons might be.) But the profound experience of touching the numinous has nothing to do with mental constructs. It is a feeling. A reality. A truth. Do you believe in trees? Do you believe in mosquitoes? Do you believe in life? For those who have felt that touch, that call, those who have brushed that otherworldly Presence, being asked if they believe in God is like being asked do you believe in trees, or mosquitoes, or life. If, even once, you’ve sat on the rim of a canyon watching the sun set and felt utterly connected to the forces around you, embraced by the sky and rooted in the earth, spoken to by the rest of life teeming around you, there is no Belief that can contain it. If, even once, you’ve felt an overwhelming love and awe at the beauty of a child, or a lover, or the world, no philosophy can adequately describe that. And, truly, when we try to, when we attach too many descriptions or ideas or rules or beliefs to those paradigmatic events in our lives, we have forced them out of their native domain of Spirit and into the rigid realm of the Mind where they cannot live. There is a reason the ancient Jews prohibited speaking the name of God. When we focus on names, or doctrines, or beliefs, we lose the rhythm, lose the thread; we start thinking and stop feeling. And, in the end, God is verb, not a noun; an action, a connection, a feeling. Do you feel it?