I have said for many years that it does not matter what name or concept you use for God. What matters is what you feel about Him.
People want to talk about God with the same frame of mind and setting of the nervous system that they would use to do the grocery shopping or figure out the Times crossword puzzle. This is nothing short of stupid.
I speak to a beloved friend with a special feeling, a different tone of voice, a different countenance. In this way, the basis of our friendship is renewed. If I do not make this effort, the relationship is closed to me; in reality, it does not exist, it is something else, something unrecognizable.
So it is with God. Thought of in one way, He does not exist to me. I am an atheist. But when I am in the right state to be engaged with Him, He becomes accessible. He becomes real.
I have often said, ‘do not allow yourself to think about God when you are in the wrong mood.’ Use the mood you are in to do the things appropriate to it, or change your mood, do not try to talk to your beloved friend when all you can think about is your taxes.
This is the problem with so-called logical proofs of God. The sort of thinking that examines things logically is not up to the task of proving His existence. All my capacities need to be awakened for me to be satisfied that He exists and then my speech will have many more dimensions than logic alone. It is not possible to house an elephant in a closet, and in the dark, the various parts of an elephant will be easily mistaken, as the story goes. To ponder His Endlessness, I need my best efforts at spaciousness and subtlety and even then I will be far short of the task.
Bring together feeling, sensing and thinking. Look with great care. Search your heart. Stay with the search. You will find Him, however you have conceived and named Him. Faith is not belief and it is not blind, as the saying goes, it is the most perceptive of faculties.
Rumi tells us of being in a caravan crossing the desert. At night, while encamped by the fire, he hears a man plaintively calling for his camel by name. ‘Have you lost a camel?’ Rumi asks of him. . ‘I feel I am missing a camel,’ the man responds, ‘and the more I call him, the more certain I am that I have lost my camel’. Rumi begins to think that he, too, has lost a camel. That is how it is for those who find that they are missing something dear to them. They begin to look for Him and call His name.
