Who Created God?

Every other month I do one or two days of silence and fasting. It's often a rich and inspiring time for me to evaluate what I'm doing in my life and explore deeper into how best I can serve all beings and support both personal and global transformation. During my two days of silence in October of 2010, I had some incredibly deep and rich explorations. These explorations led to the message below and to the title of this email, "Who created God? Where does consciousness come from?"

So who created God? In times of inquisition like that of 800 years ago in Europe, this question alone could easily have gotten me killed or at least sent to the torture chambers by the powers that be of the time -- the Catholic Church. Yet for me today, it is a legitimate and very deep question.

Of course the term God has been used in many different ways and means different things to different people. Because of this ambiguity, I generally avoid the term and prefer either the words Spirit, the Divine, or -- what I feel is the best descriptor of what these words are trying to convey -- "All That Is." So to reframe the question in my own words, who created All That Is? Now if a person's answer to this is God, then I again ask "Who created God?"

Even if a person doesn't believe in God or any kind of divine being, the question remains, why does anything exist? Where does consciousness come from? Why not just nothingness? This is the ultimate existential question. To me, it is also sometimes a scary thought.

Yet I have found that often fear is invitation to growth. Only by facing my own fears have I been able to dive so deep into all that I explore. By looking into even the possibility of ultimate nothingness and meaninglessness, I am choosing to face some of my own deepest fears.

My current answer to these deep questions about who created God or who created All That Is, and why not nothingness, is simply I don't know. In fact I have not the faintest idea or speculation on this most core question of existence. To me this is the ultimate mystery, the deepest part of the divine mystery. I suspect I will never be able to find an answer in this lifetime, and it may ultimately be a question that is unanswerable by anyone -- even the collective consciousness of us all.

So now that I have created the ultimate blasphemy by questioning even God's origin, where do I continue this line of inquiry? The next natural step seems to me to be to acknowledge that my consciousness exists, and so does yours (or you wouldn't be reading this) and that of every conscious being in the universe. Somehow, though I have not the slightest idea how, you, me, and all conscious beings who share this universe came to exist. Or maybe we have always existed and time is just an illusion. I don't know.

I've heard some speculate that we all started as one unitary consciousness which eventually split itself into a vast myriad of consciousnesses to explore itself. But if this is the case, we are back to the who created God question. Where did that one unitary consciousness come from? And what existed before that? How could one unitary consciousness even divide itself?

By the way, if any of you have reasonable answers to these questions, I would love to hear and consider them. I have no answer and just take it as a given that I exist and we all exist here, otherwise how could I be typing this message and you be reading it? Even if it is, as some say, all an illusion, well then the illusion is all I have to work with.

I do suspect that even though I have no idea where it came from, there is and always has been some form of greater consciousness, some integrated collective consciousness of All That Is. I suspect that somehow this consciousness fragmented in order to explore itself, quite possibly because being the only thing that existed unto itself was in some way boring. And some or all of these fragments then fragmented themselves into other conscious entities. Thus were eventually born all of the consciousnesses in the universe. I am not at all sure of this, but right now it is what makes most sense to me.

Yet somehow, even after this unitary consciousness fragmented itself, I suspect that there continued/continues to be a more expanded collective awareness of all of the fragments, a kind of divine collective consciousness of all beings. And using the holographic model, within each of the fragments the whole is contained. So within each of our consciousnesses, we have access to the more expanded awareness of All That Is.

One of the things that complicates all of this is that I am fairly certain that there are dimensions of existence in which time does not exist in any sort of linear sense. So maybe trying to explore all of this using a time-based model of cause and effect is simply a futile effort of a very limited consciousness (me), trying to comprehend things in other realms that are simply incomprehensible from the limited viewpoint of a human being. Again, I don't know, but that doesn't stop me from exploring the possibilities.

I am sharing here my deepest musings into life and existence. I am aware that these musings may or may not have any practical use in your life. But in my current sojourn as a human on planet Earth, I continue to find this investigation most rich and intriguing.

Continuing with this speculative line of inquiry, the original unitary consciousness might have first split itself into two (yin and yang), then into four, eight, 16, 32, etc., creating some kind of sacred geometry based in what we understand as mathematics. Or it might have been much more random (like chaos theory). On the other hand, it might have been a kind of spiritual big bang when the One suddenly exploded into a myriad of fragmented beings. I suspect if there ever was only one unitary consciousness, it likely fragmented through some combination of all of the processes - divine geometry, random divisions, and occasional explosive fragmentation.

The posited original source consciousness may have first started with just a split from one unitary consciousness into two individuated ones. This would have created an opposition, a polarization whose ramifications can still be seen in our world today. The masculine/feminine light/shadow yin/yang split which can be seen in many aspects of existence are clear examples. Yet even if this was the case, the original split was only a beginning.

Among humans, some people seem to focus on the polarities they see in life (good vs bad/evil), which could have originated in this original split. Yet there is clearly much more. In our current reality there are countless examples of rainbow spectrums where the ends are only the most extreme poles of an entire, rich spectrum. Between black and white are an infinite variety of colors. Between the pure masculine and pure feminine energies are a vast multitude of mixes of both.

And in the many and vast spectrums of existence, the extremes seem to almost always be shadow images of each other. Black and white are more like each other than all of the other intermediate colors. They are inverse shadows of each other, one representing complete fullness, the other complete emptiness.

The choice to focus on polarized extremes shows up in our reality as black and white thinking, which play an important role in our world. It may even play a key role in expanded realities going back to the posited original split, though I acknowledge all of this is highly speculative.

Yet the fact is that many in this world tend to see things in polarized terms of black and white, good and bad. It makes it easier for them to maneuver through an already very complex and sometimes overwhelming life. Generally these people tend to be afraid of their own shadow. What I mean is that they do their best to destroy, banish, or suppress that which is considered bad or not light, i.e. what many call the shadow, both within and outside of themselves.

Yet I think most of you reading this would agree that on the deepest or most expanded levels, all beings are somehow interconnected. And to try to banish or destroy something to which you are always interconnected is on some level an attempt to banish or destroy a part of oneself.

I love Solzhenitsyn's quote along these lines:

"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds,
and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.
But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.
And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

This quote, by the way, is included in lesson 20 of our powerful Transformation Course, which is titled "Beyond Duality." For those of you who haven't gone through the course, I most highly recommend it, even though it is a considerable time commitment. If you don't have time for the whole course, I most highly recommend what I feel are the most powerful two lessons, 3 and 20. Here are the links for those interested:

http://www.transformationteam.net/ttcourse/ttcourse03a - Taking Responsibility for Our Lives
http://www.transformationteam.net/ttcourse/trfc20a - Beyond Duality

So what I'm finding is that the desire to see things in terms of duality and the accompanying desire to destroy or suppress the shadow are at the root of a lot of unconscious behavior we see manifesting in our world. This may even be at the root of all suffering.

If we shift from a polarized worldview to a focus more on the interconnectedness of all beings, if we recognize and honor the full rainbow spectrum of existence and do our best to see the core divine essence in all, it seems only natural to me that suffering would dramatically decrease and love and joy would increase. What say you?

No matter how consciousness came to be, the fact is that there are gazillions of consciousnesses which now exist in the universe. And these consciousnesses come together in a huge variety of ways to form groups which interact with each other and with the world around them. Humanity and the vast numbers of groups humans form on this world would be but one small example. Ants and mosquitoes would be another.

I sense that each of these groups, whether human, animal, or otherwise, have their own collective consciousness. Yet they also have their own level of collective unconsciousness. The unconscious aspect is the collective of all parts about which the group on some level denies or suppresses. It is the collective shadow, which likely has some sort of mind of its own and causes all sorts of problems, or -- looked at in another way -- creates all sorts of opportunities for growth.

I have found it is when I consciously choose to bring the unconscious material to the light that my life and the world around me is transformed. When we both individually and collectively choose to open to our shadows and even learn to dance with them, life can become much more rich and meaningful. This, by the way, is the underlying thesis of the transformation course, along with love being the transformative force which interconnects us all. Sacred love is the ultimate force of harmonious integration.

So the divine may have have exploded all at once, or it may have split itself into myriad fragments in a more gradual process, and that process is likely ongoing in some way that I am not clear. This grand process of separation is not necessarily a bad thing. There is a time for both separation and integration. A wife subject to continual physical abuse from her husband would likely do best to separate from him. I suspect that even now consciousness continues to divide itself in order to explore ever deeper into the divine mystery of life and existence.

Yet at the same time, consciousness appears to be in a process of integration. Some believe that this integration will eventually lead us back into being one united being. I hear many people these days saying "we are all one." Yet even if we were all eventually to come back together into one unitary being, what would be the purpose of it all? Just to start the whole process all over again?

Clearly there is some sort of reintegration process happening, and I very much support and encourage this. Yet I would hope that even as we integrate, each fragment continues to maintain the unique perspective it has gained, which can be shared with the collective of all beings. So rather than saying we are all one, I prefer to say that we are all interconnected in a beautiful, divine dance with the cosmos. And even as we all reintegrate the various aspects of consciousness into a more aware collective consciousness, we can also retain the beautiful individuality that each of us embodies.

Though I highly suspect there is some kind of unitary collective consciousness that lies within all of us, I know also that my individuated consciousness which is typing these words here is not that unitary consciousness. I and all beings may have access to that collective consciousness, but I am not the One. And I suspect you aren't either. So I don't want you to bow down to me, and I won't bow down to you either. Yet I will most certain love and honor you as the divine manifestation that you are. And I want to learn to dance better with you and with all beings.

So I'm finding that though I understand people's intention in saying "we are all one" as a means of honoring the existence of a unitary collective consciousness that lies within every being, in practical life, you and I are not one. You are there, and I am here. This is what gives life it's richness. If we all were truly one, I do suspect it might be boring.

As you are there and I am here, we get to explore each other, to inspire each other, to share the unique piece of divine manifestation that each of us are, even here on planet Earth! That is exactly what I am doing here right now as this divine manifestation called Fred sharing my own particular thoughts on life and existence with you.