This is getting kind of interesting. Can you tell me more about the God in your belief?
Sorry for the extensive answer, but you know this can’t be elaborated in just a few lines (at least not in a way I can think of at this time).
The Buddha said:
"Do not believe in anyone just because he is a teacher, he speaks eloquently or is otherwise impressive. Do not even believe in my words - just because I said them, but try to experience everything by yourself. Only if you experience the Dharma by yourself does it become your wisdom. Belief is only belief, not knowing, not wisdom. If you experience things yourself then no-one can tell you that it is not like that, because you know it from your own experience."
Gautama Buddha also said:
“You can ask me about anything, but do not ask me about God”.
God is not a concept you can put into words, for some, God is just a concept they create in order to have someone to blame, and not take the heat of guilt for themselves.
What I believe is just that, and what you believe is just as important to you. I cannot tell you that what you believe is wrong, and you cannot tell that to me either. If you believe or not in God, that is because of what you have experienced; same rule applies to believers and non-believers.
Some say they believe in God so much, but they are only fooling themselves, and they go to churches or go to other people in order to see others that feel the same, and not feel so alone in this line of thought. But yet, they do this for comfort, to see others in the same situation as they are, and they don’t even trust the God they say they believe so much. Do you know how to tell who is in this situation? Well, those “theists” who get angry when you tell them there is no God, that’s a person who is fooling himself.
Anger comes from your ego, everything that is not what you have experienced, but someone tells you that is truth, and you adopt that truth for yourself, you adopt it in the form of “ego”. It is a very hard thing to achieve, to understand your own “ego”; mainly because it trashes almost everything you believe in and this cause you to feel anger.
See it this way, when you are born, you have no ego. This is the best way to understand the ego, to see how it just doesn´t want you to live in the present time, the ego will never let you live now as now, to “smell the roses” sort of speak. The moment you “stop and smell the roses”, you are meditating; you are getting to know your true self behind this ego.
So you live in the present, a baby never thinks about the future, or the past, a baby only lives in the present time. It is a very hard thing to achieve, to live in the present time, and that is what meditation is all about.
The moment you start thinking about future goals or things to accomplish, it is your ego working. The moment you start thinking about past memories or experiences, even if it took place earlier this day, it is your ego working.
The state of enlightment so much revered in orient, is just a state of an ego-less self.
Jesus, Gautama, Mahavira, Krishna, Shiva, Mohammed were ego-less beings, they were Buddhas, Christs; they understood the ego, and got rid of it, they were their own true-self. They spoke the truth in other words, not everything they were taught by others, and they spoke what they experienced for themselves.
Jesus called the ego as “Satan”, that is how Christians know the ego, they just don´t know the full concept. Do you seriously think Jesus was tempted in the dessert in a conversation with Satan? That means Jesus was tempted by his ego, Jesus himself had an ego, and he had to vanish it in order to follow his true-self. Jesus went 40 days to the dessert in order to achieve this. Jesus had an intense following, and he chose voluntary death, why? If you have an ego, you would not be able to do this my friend, I encourage you to take a look at the following passage on which Jesus was tempted by the Devil, and tell me if it makes sense to you as it does to me in this matter:
“Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. "All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me."
Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.
Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.” (Matthew 4,8)
For me, Satan is the ego, and Jesus himself was tempted to follow it. All men succumb to it at a given time of our life, sometimes, we don’t even know our true self for “bowing down and worshiping our ego” so much.
