Tour Guide for God

Several people have asked about the title of this blog and what it means. Tour guide for God (TGFG) is a concept, a point of view borne out of years of experience, observation and self-inquiry. Is it right? Is it the Truth? Is it religion? No, no and no. In the Anosognostic blog I mentioned how we create our own experience of our world through our beliefs and most people have some pretty nasty beliefs calling the shots when it comes to experiencing their lives. We've all experienced those days when everyone seems out to get us, a driver cuts us off in traffic, the waitress spills coffee on us, the bank teller closes her window as we walk up to it. Any time you are feeling the "victim" you can be sure that nasty beliefs are operating.

One of the biggest beliefs that seems to dominate many people's thinking is that they somehow have to live their lives "right". They search frantically for the right job or they get completely depressed in the job they are doing and find a way to numb out. They look for the right person to complete them. They look for the right way to give back. We are told thousands of times each day what is right and what is wrong via advertising, unsolicited advice from co-workers, bosses, friends, family members, even strangers. We all know the myriad of shoulds that pepper our lives. (And if you don't this is a good time for a little self-inquiry. Just notice how many things you do in one hour that includes a should; wake-up, get dressed, brush teeth, eat, sleep, etc. And if your brave try it for an entire day.) And somehow the unwritten agreement is that if i do all the shoulds then i will be rewarded with...happiness, wealth, health, love, etc. But i have come to the conclusion that this thinking is all backwards and it is based on a faulty premise that somehow our job is to figure out who to be rather than be who we are. So where does this TGFG come in?

From my point of view, the world is made of the Unmanifest (Life, God, Universal force, Allah, the omnipotent, etc) and the manifest (humans, trees, animals and every thing that populates our world. I am using God in the sense of ALL not in the sense of the big man with the white beard who sits on a mountain and throws thunderbolts at the dunderheads on earth. And God in its unmanifest form consists of ALL, everything, tous. Well the bad news is that in this form he can't experience anything because he is everything. So in his all knowing wisdom he separates himself into millions of life forms because in this separateness he is able to experience himself. (He also maintains the ALL status because that is one of the things you can do when you are calling the shots. So he has to "forget" that he is All when he is in his manifest forms.) Y viola, ipso facto, we humans are one of the life forms and most of us have done a pretty good job forgetting who we really are but that is okay because it plays right into the TGFG concept. Humans are particularly nifty life forms because they are in reality giant, supersensitive, feeling machines. The myriad of physical and emotional sensations is enough to keep God creating over and over, day after day for all eternity.

Now imagine that God needs you to experience himself. Without you he is one big all-knowing, all-experiencing, undifferentiated blob but with you he has the possibility to feel and therefore to know himself. This is how God gets his jollies. Imagine that your only job is to feel. The next blog will show you how this works.