The other day after finishing my morning meditation, I opened my eyes and experienced my typical few minutes of wonderful disorientation as I moved back into this world from the world of moving towards presence. Those couple minutes are a story for another day. As I transitioned, I could hear Bowie singing “God knows I’m good, God knows I’m good”. Because I was in such an open state having spent the previous thirteen minutes returning to presence this single four-word utterance filled me with wonder. There really is a lifetime of learning contained in those dozen-plus letters. I am still mulling over its significance today.
Obviously, let us start with God. God is something that could fill a library. God could also be a single grain of rice. To some God is all that there is, to others a myth. To me, God is a lifetime challenge. Something to ponder, to learn more about myself and the world every time I consider God. My beliefs and insights and comfort level and curiosity with God has been with me for as long as I can remember. One thing that I know (wait, that is the subject of the next paragraph!), One thing that I think I know (is that really any better?), OK, for me, God is not what most people think of as God. When I meditate God changes. Does God exist outside the laws of physics, outside existence? Is God constant? Is God absolute? Does God get created and destroyed billions of times per second in every cubic inch of space throughout the entire (expanding, and into what) universe? Is God actually “moving towards God”? I could go on for pages like this and will some day! But we have three more words to consider (for now!)
Knows. What is “know”? There definitely is a different flavor to the answer depending on whether it is posed in Kansas or Bangkok. We often think of “know” as uniquely being related to the brain or the mind or the intellect or related to reality. Sure, it can be this, but it can be much more. Sometimes we know with our heart, other times with our gut, still others “with our entire being”. And I, “know” (whatever that means) that a tree is not the word tree nor what I think of as a tree (with my brain, my body, my gut, my heart, my left knee?). “My” tree is not “your” tree. I think therefore I am? Do I even exist? What happens to “me” in another several decades when I “die”? What a fun rabbit hole.
I’m. I am going to break that apart for fun. I. Holy crud, what a glorious lesson. I. I. Wow! What am I? I am, I’m! Am I eternal? Did I exist before I was born? Am I this body or is that just an illusion? Am I constantly in flux? Did “I” put on deodorant yesterday (whenever that was). Can “I” go backwards in time to check? Are there infinite universes some of which I put on deodorant and others where I didn’t and still others where deodorant does not exist and a few where it is a culinary delicacy, and maybe some where it will only exist if someone somehow magically reads these words? Did “I” just invent deodorant? How did “I” get so focused on deodorant? Am I the same thing that I think of as me? Am “I” pre-determined by a set of instructions moving through a pre-determined universe?
Wow, we are only up to “am”. Being. I have always been fascinated by how complicated and irregular the verb “to be” is in the languages that I have studied (English, German, Spanish, French, and Italian, none that extensively!) Is this true for all languages? What about the Eastern languages? I don’t think that I want to even know, I just want to dream that it is different in some of them. That would make the mystery of existence and “am” juicier. Obviously, we could spend the rest of our lives just ruminating and scatting on “am”. I bet I will do more of that some other day. Do I exist? Would I exist without other things to be “relative” to?
Good. Wow, what a deceptively dangerous word. I have always paused a little when attributing good or bad or any other judgment to anything. Not because I am “good” or anything like that, but because I realize the trap that such words or thoughts can be. Good…for who? In what context? How good is good, how good does it have to be to be good? If something is good is it always good? That is kind of boring and seems to violate most of what we seem to know about how the universe is put together (put together?). Would we be better off without “good”? Even if it exists, even if it usually desirable, even if it can be recognized, even if it is within our control, even if causality is real, could we not be happier without it? What a vapid concept, at least for now.
God knows I’m good. Wow. Spell checker keeps trying to change it to “well”. That probably is correct but it feels so wrong. It makes me feel lonely and isolated.
From the innocent little internet rabbit-hole that I just emerged we have “Remember to strive for Connection NOT Perfection….” from
I think I will put on some deodorant (under my arms that is) and walk down to the river to meditate and see what the universe offers me today!
