I Am Divine

Goddess In Violet
by Sherry Lore

It's been a while since I posted anything. I kind of lost my self and my sense of hope... Pandora's box open and empty for a while. So,I thought I'd try again, mostly for my current self, a little bit for the lost part of me, trying to find my way back from the empty box.

The Following essay came from a discussion I had a few year ago after a long session of therapy. After talking about feeling lost even after being in my new home for years, I found that I wasn't just physically and emotionally lost, I was spiritually lost as well. So, in response, my therapist asked me to write about what divinity was to me.  

As is in my nature, I took what was supposed to be a simple assignment of a paragraph or two about what I thought divinity was and made it into something more akin to a map. Perhaps I could find some clue as to where to go if I figured out where I'd been. A fortune cookie if ever I heard one.

The Divine Within

I’m not sure what specifically makes me, or any other, divine.  This has always been a tough concept for me.  My scientific mind trying to reconcile with my spiritual soul has been a difficult thing.  We are all made up of atoms, which combine to make proteins, which string together to make up DNA, which is the blueprint for our being.  This I know and understand.  How those atoms came together, becoming proteins and DNA and eventually us, or me, is quite another.  That speaks of something divine...  

Now, here’s where it all gets fuzzy for me.  My search for the divine has taken me many directions.  I've read parts of the Bible, the Quran, the Torah, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, teachings of Buddhism (everything from Theravedic to Tibetan), the Tao Te Ching, some Confucian writings and some Shinto teachings.  I've been to formal Catholic high mass to Southern Baptist fire and brimstone sermons, from Evangelical prayer circles to having at least read the pamphlet version of the good book of Mormon.  Most believed there had to be an outside source and only they had a direct connection to it.  Others believed there was no source, there was no connection there wasn't even a tangible reality and that it was either the consciousness or the journey of said consciousness that held the truth.  Okay, at least in a theoretical way I might buy that, but it still didn't take into account that intrinsic place that the Universe and the tangible held for me.  

After a while I think I felt like Goldilocks. Nothing fit, everything was either too short or tall, too hot or cold, too hard or soft and with something as personal as my eternal soul or whether or not I even had one I was looking for just right.  

And then came Wicca, which came closest to just right for a long time. There was both masculine and feminine power, there was nature and it was both without and within.  But in some ways it wasn't enough, or maybe it was too much, I don’t know.  I think after a few years when my concept of God and Goddess, Lord and Lady became more and more abstract and my idea of magic dealt less with will and power of my own energies over or with permission of  the external energies of the rest of the universe and more with the interconnection of all, I became disillusioned with all forms of formal, or at least semi-formal, religion.  So, I decided that my subscribing to a specific form had done me a disservice.  What I had been truly seeking all along was my own spirit.  A spirituality without definition, without limits, without rules and without dogma, but with full blessing and permission from the only thing I had left:  me.  

I give myself permission to be divine, not limiting myself by other people’s dogma and to create an ever changing and evolving version of my own spirituality. So far I have a hand full of truths to hold on to...  A truth that because everything in the universe is made up of energy, atoms, protons, neutrons, electrons and so forth... the Universe’s building blocks... and it all shares and interacts with each other, giving and taking pieces of itself on a regular basis, a giant cosmic dance that creates all, and we are all a part of this dance, we are all, thus, divine.

Another truth, or natural law in this case, is that everything I do affects everything around me and vice versa. Cause and effect in both a physical reality and spirituality.  What we put out comes back to us. Now, the degree to which this truth is true, is subject to debate.  In Wicca it is threefold, in Hindi and Buddhism (and a few others) it’s a karmic law that is dependent on outside sources or inside sources and has a lot of quid pro quos to it, dependent on repayment of said actions either in this life or the next.   For Wiccans it’s sometimes a literal threefold concept or can be a theoretical threefold, i.e. mind, body and spirit concept (this one is closest for me).  For other traditions there are various texts and/or God(s) involved and it all goes back to someone else having said it is this way or that way and that’s the way it is, which comes into direct conflict with my final truth... there is no absolute truth.  Just when I think I have it figured out, something new comes about to change my view.  Some call this evolution, others call this the path to enlightenment.  I call it just another step in the dance of the universe or maybe just a misstep depending on my daily view.  A constantly changing, ever evolving view of reality that sometimes takes a wrong turn at Albuquerque.   

What/who came up with the specific blueprint for the Universe itself or whether there even is a specific blueprint, I don’t know and I’m not sure I want to. Some mysteries are better left that way or would be lost, as much of religion seems to be, in translation.   But that doesn't mean I’m separate from it or that IT isn't as much a part of me as I am a part of the whole.  Thus, I am divine.