Overcoming Intellectual Doubts about God

“Your desire to be separate is the most insane desire of which you have conceived. Over all your longing for union you place this desire to be separate and alone. Your entire resistance to God is based on this. You think you have chosen to be separate from God so that you can make it on your own, and while you long to return to God and the heaven that is your home, you do not want to admit that you cannot get there on your own.” (C:5.22)

Separation, being alone, independent, not needing anything or Anybody else, is just insane. We have invented our special relationships to accommodate this insane desire to be separate but merged. And our special relationships are normally full of drama, highs and lows, separation and mergers, and we know no peace. Only when we transform those special relationships into holy ones, reminiscent of our true relationship to God, do we know any peace. This is why the relationship to our brother (or sister) is the way home for us as described in A Course in Miracles.

The true relationship is one of joining with God, and with our brothers and sisters. We think that to be autonomous is a good thing, but we fail at it repeatedly. And we chastise ourselves for this failure, when actually this failure is a symbol of the fact that we don’t get along very well when we attempt to separate ourselves from our faith in God.

We are part of God; He is living us. So the very idea of separating from Him (or Her) is insane. It is impossible. And the sooner we give up the idea of living an independent life, separate from our Creator, the sooner we will live in happiness. We taught ourselves the very unnatural habit of not communicating with our Creator. And did we ever suffer for such a ridiculous notion!

Of course, some of us have intellectual doubts about God. To those who feel this way, I would say to look, as A Course of Love, encourages, to our heart. Our heart doesn’t need the proofs that the egoic mind demands. Our heart will soften and seek to love. And in that love we will find a love for a Higher Power, for in our heart we know that we are not all alone in the universe. It has been said, borrowing from World War I imagery, that there are no atheists in foxholes. But, closer to home, there are no atheists who listen to their heart in this matter of the reality of God. We try to be intellectually suspicious, but we can’t sustain such an idea when we feel such warmth in our heart. Where is this warmth coming from? How do we know that God exists? For these two questions are identical. And our heart knows the answer to both questions.

Stop the mind from raising objections. Just consider that we have been wrong to trumpet independence as the way to live in this world. Reach out to the others in our lives, and see if that reaching out doesn’t touch the heart. Then and only then, with soft and sweet feelings in the heart, are we open to eliminating our skeptical attitudes toward the loving God Who created us.