Why do you believe God has hidden himself?

It is pretty obvious God conceals himself. He has hidden himself very very well, he has many fooled… in fact he had me fooled for 18 years, but then I smoked some weed and started thinking about God, lol. The cat was out of the bag, and nobody will ever convince me there is no God. I realize that won't convince any atheists...finding God on weed .

So if you can agree that God is real, and he hides himself very well, why do you think he decided to hide himself?

Is it because he wants you to believe in him? Why? I don't understand why God could give a care if we have faith. Is faith even a choice?

Is it because he doesn't want to be the focus of this life? Maybe this life is about how we treat each other, not God? If this is true, why not completely hide himself...erase the concept of God from his creations.

Does anyone have any theories on God's reclusive nature?

 

without any kind of sarcasm intended,

if you are somehow connected to god, as your experiences have shown you,
why don't you ask god himself?

my own theory is that there is no reclusive god, no conspicuous god, or any sort of separate god-being at all.

 

blackie, i'm sacrificing a chicken for you tomorrow; i swear i'm on it.

 

Thinking about god when youre stoned does not make you understand or know God. I had basically a similar experience, weed opened me up to spirituality, and since then I've spent a lot of time thinking about such things. But I don't claim to be enlightened. Belief and knowledge are not experience.

If god has hidden himself (it's possible that we, mankind, have just lost touch), there's only one explanation I ever heard that seems feasable. God is bored and wanted to play hide and seek, but since there was only him, he had to hide from himself. He did this by becoming the universe. Before that, it was just him, alone in the timelessness and spacelessness. He had to do something.

But really, I'm not so sure god has hidden himself fully. I believe god is totally accessible, but we just have a hard time with it, due to ego.

 

god is everything(in and out) there is no hiding unless its under your nose.Reality in all its forms are him/her.Just everything.Some people some times can not grasp his enormity/smallity.

Also you came up with when you were on drugs............not good drugs can open you up and close you down.Dont trust your self when you are on them....Of course I would not know but all the same.......STAY AWAY FORM DRUGS!!!!

 

woah woah, you guys are putting words in my mouth. I don't know God, or claim to be enlightened . In fact it is the exact opposite, I'm ignorant of God and would like to know him/her/it. I only claim to have realized the obvious: there is a creator, and he is probably a pretty nice guy .

 

Lol! Sounds like we go to the same non-church bro.

I think we hide God from ourselves (in an attempt to hide ourselves from God). Most people wear the world like a blindfold.

As for me, most of the time my ego's so out of control, or rather I'm so under it's control, that it is my god. Most of the time I'm so buzy talking to myself that the pointless dribbel in my head is all I can hear (and God's polite. He wont interupt unless I ask him to. Something to do with freewill I guess).

What weed does for me is that it somehow shows me that almost all of my internal dialouge is in fact pointless. Most of it's geared towards reinforcing my denial systems, rationalising my veiws and behaviors, trying to find something or someone else to blame my failures on.
Most of the time I'm completely unaware of all this.

Weed "unveils the Leviathan", shows me who my real master is (ego). Once I get a good look at it I realise that most of what I tell myself most of the time is a lie. Once the full impact of that realization sinks in it's alot easier to turn off the internal dialouge and just listen to the still small voice.

The only time I ever use weed is; by myself, in the woods, and for the reasons I mentioned above. I don't smoke it for pleasure because personally I don't find it pleasurable. I also don't smoke it socially for that reason.

 

A hot chick in a baggy sweater. You think you desire her too much when she is in lingerie and don't pay attention to her creative intellectual side (which takes a lot longer for you to learn to relate too)?

 

It's not that God is in hiding, it's merely that God can only be seen with very fine senses. People in general are not led to literally look within, and if they do see things then they're considered insane, which is insane, because God definitely exists. I have met many people in my life who see God, the Gods, the Angels, Celestial Beings, Bindus, mandalas, Buddhas, Demons, and every other sort of phenomena.

God is not in hiding at all. This was the message of every religious figure ever. It's merely that people have turned away. And coming home to God is the easiest thing to do in the world. Easier than shopping at Walmart. Because all one has to do is sit still and look within.

 

God is not hidden. You (and I and everyone) are constantly in God's eternal presence.

Perceiving God is difficult for too many people because they believe and expect God to be one extraordinary thing and nothing else. Usually they believe God to be an ego, disembodied and separate from all things, who acts, benevolently (or not), as the ultimate authority figure, or rather, as the most extreme form of whatever they believe an authority figure must be. Of course, it is always nearly impossible to recognize, or appreciate, anything that blocks your view of what you think you are seeking. So, as always, when God acts as everything other than the ultimate cop, judge, warden, doctor, parent, teacher or artist, all too often one is unprepared to realize they are in the presence of the divine.

To put it much more simply, too many people believe they do not see God because they don't know what it is they are looking at.

Peace and Love

 

God is not hidden, we are.

 

I would bet that if you could "speak" with a fish, it would probably have no frame of reference in which water did not exist. It would probably take the existence of water for granted. It would almost certainly be able to tell you about tides, temperature, pressure, murkiness and the like, but it is quite probable that, regardless of how intelligent it may be, it wouldn't be able to conceptualize the idea of water itself.

In exactly the same way, we human beings have an equally difficult time thinking about the spiritual reality in which we all live. There are vital spiritual realities that I whole-heartedly believe are so integral to our existence that we have no real frame of reference outside of them. When you know what these things are, you then know what the enlightened are referring to when they speak of God. These things are - existence, consciousness, love, truth, creativity and wisdom. They are the attributes, the essence, the actual nature of God.

Beyond the conditions upon which one is prepared to recognize any example of these things, beyond the specific identities of those involved, sooner or later one must recognize the incontrovertable fact that existence itself, consciousness itself, love itself, truth itself, creativity itself and wisdom itself, the essence of each of these things, their actual nature, is each interwoven, beyond identity, with all the others to form our divine, mysterious reality.

This is our "water."

This is God.

Peace and Love,