What are your beliefs about your higher power?

• I believe my higher power loves me and is unconditional love.
  • I have no problems in my relationship with my higher power.
  • My faith is strong.
  • Prayer is natural to me.

• I don't believe in God, spiritual guidance, or a higher power. A higher power does not exist.
   
• If God existed, then bad things like child abuse and murders and poverty and hunger wouldn't exist. If there is a higher power, then it would have done something about bad things happening.

The love that is God, being spirit, cannot stop people from being abusive or greedy. We have free will, which means that no one, not even a higher power, can stop us from doing what we do. We each decide whether or not we want to be open or closed, loving or unloving, abusive or caring. Humans cause the poverty and hunger, the abuse, and the murders.

Often, when children are being abused, they pray to God to make the abuse stop, and when it doesn't stop, they believe that God doesn't exist or doesn't care. They are unable to understand that the spirit and love that is God is always there helping to sustain them.

• There is no scientific evidence that God is real.
  • I believe in hard evidence because it makes me feel safe.
  • I believe in hard evidence because it is the truth.
  • I have to see it to believe it.

If we could prove the existence of God, we would not need faith, and learning to have faith is a major part of our journey on this planet. Yet the proof is everywhere - every living thing and all of nature is proof that something created all of this. 

• I would feel duped if I believed in God and there was no God.

Often the fear of being wrong and feeling stupid keeps people from discovering the truth for themselves. Yet it is only when you are willing to take the risk of opening and receiving a direct personal experience of the love that is God that you will know the truth. 

• I believe in a Higher Power but:
  • I have been abandoned by God because I am unworthy, bad, flawed, unlovable, or unimportant.
  • God uses me to help others but does not come to me personally because I am nothing.
  • God is a person/man who cannot possibly be unconditionally loving. I have to earn God's love.
  • God is judgmental.
  • God is punishing.
  • God is too busy for me.
  • God is indifferent to me.
  • God is there for some special people but not for me.
  • God loves everyone but me.
  • I believe that God is like my mother, or other female caregiver, was when I was a child: judgmental, punishing, too busy, indifferent, absent, or playing favorites.
  • I believe that God is like my father, or other male caregiver, was when I was a child: judgmental, punishing, too busy, indifferent, absent, or playing favorites.

We may tend to project our experience of our caregivers onto God, as well as treating ourselves as we were treated by our caregivers and as they treated themselves. This perpetuates our belief that God does not exist or is not here for us personally. In addition, until we heal our core shame and our false beliefs about love being conditional, we may continue to believe that God couldn't love us because we are not lovable enough. Further, we may have been taught that our only worth is in helping others - that we are nothing, so God will not come directly to us to help us and love us. 

• For me, God is:
  • a man
  • a woman
  • Spirit
  • Energy
  • Love
  • Nature
  • the Universe
  • Light
  • the All
  • the Great Mystery
  • Jesus
  • Allah
  • Yahweh
  • (add your own)
     
• I believe that the responsibility for spiritual connection lies:
  • with God
  • with me
  • within my mutual relationship with my higher power
     
• I believe God loves me and is unconditional love, but:
  • my faith is sometimes difficult to maintain.
  • I have difficulty praying or seldom do it.

• I would like to heal my relationship with my higher power.
  • I would like to learn to pray. (You might want to take a look at the section on Inner Bonding Prayers in the Learning Center).
  • I would like to experience the unconditional love that is God - Divine Love.

When you open to learning about loving yourself and keep your frequency high with healthy foods and habits, you can learn to have a direct experience of the love that is God.