Omnipresence & Omnipotence

Two words from my early childhood had a huge impression on my Way in this Life.

They are Omnipresence & Omnipotence.

At Sunday School & Fellowship groups ... Presbyterian, Anglican, Salvation Army ... we were told that there is a God and He is Omnipresent and He is Omnipotent. Somewhere in the depths of my heart I questioned the 'He' but that's another story ...

We were also told that 'Omnipresent' (these words were always said with a capital O) meant Everywhere at Once and that 'Omnipotent' meant All Powerful. I could handle that concept. In fact, it made perfect sense to me.

This God, this Creator, this Being, this Presence was everywhere - absolutely everywhere. In the Air in the Water in the Fire in the Earth. In me and in you ... in the rocks and the trees and the animals and the houses and the cars and Everywhere. In every tiny part of Everything. Nothing exists that is not filled with this Presence - this God, this Energy, this Life.

Which meant that this God was actually an integral part of Me and that indeed, He was made up of Me and You and all the other things in this world. Understanding that gave me an deep sense of being OK. Of knowing that the world was as it should be, regardless of how things seemed on the surface. And that it was nothing to do with having the right belief system - it didn't matter if I was at the Presbyterian Church or the Anglican Church or the Salvation Army Hall or at home or at the river at Gum Bend or ... well, it didn't matter.

Then there was 'Omnipotent'. Well, that one was easy to grasp too ... this God that existed Everywhere & in Everything was also All Powerful. This Energy was capable of anything - in fact, everything that happened or didn't happen, did so (or didn't so ...) because of the existance & power inherant in God ... in the Everywhere Spirit.

And furthermore, to have this power was not the full story ... there was also total control of this Power. So God could do anything He decided He wanted to do. That is what my teachers taught me. And I believed them. And I still do.

But there was another consideration here that my teachers never seemed to see ... and that is the connection between God being Omnipresent and being Omnipotent. If God is in Everything ... let's say, for example, in every cell of my body ... and if God is All Powerful, then it follows that I am All Powerful. At a very deep and a very basic level. I could do whatever I wanted to do ... or needed to do ... so long as I could learn to feel that Everywhere Spirit within me and allow it to come to Power.

Yes, I could handle these concepts - even at a very early age. And yet it seemed to me that the people teaching me these words had somehow put restrictions on the meaning they allowed themselves to believe. Not that I thought it in such words as a little girl - but the understanding was certainly there. I was being taught something profound - something True. And my teachers did not see the depth of that Truth and I noticed this and it set me apart from them and their beliefs.

It took me many years to accept this apartness. This difference. And when I first began to see that my beliefs gave a different meaning to the words of Truth that they spoke I started to discard those beliefs as being Not Me. In rejecting the difference between the Truth as experienced by my early teachers and the Truth as experienced by my childhood Self I also rejected for a time my own Truth.

It was a path I had to experience, the Path of Rejection. It is a path that still sometimes runs alongside me and I slip onto it on occasions, when I give myself cause to feel rejected. And I remember that the Path of Rejection is not a rejection of Self but a rejection of Differences between the perception of Truth.

These days I do not restrict myself to the concept of God being a male deity who is watching us and watching over us.

I see a Great Everywhere Spirit who is alive in everything and has been given a multitude of names by the people of this Earth over countless years of understanding their own version of the Truth.

I see the Great Everywhere Spirit in the stories of the Gods and Goddesses of Eygpt and of Greece and of the Celtic Peoples and the Aztecs and the Koories and the Romans and ...

I see the Great Everywhere Spirit in the plants in my garden and the river at the bottom of the mountain and the earth that lies still & deep under the eucalypt forests and the waves that crash on the rocks at the edge of the ocean and the baby crying next door and the children on their skateboards racing each other down the hill and the elderly couple who are still holding hands after 68 years of married life...

I see the Great Everywhere Spirit in the actions and words of those I meet and those I speak to and those I read...

And I see the Great Everywhere Spirit in the expression of religious fervent - at Easter and Spring Equinox, at the Celebration of the Rebirth of the Sun God and at the Celebration of the Birth of the Son of God, I see it in Christ's Passion and in the Raising of Power. I see it in electical storms and heat waves and in snow falls and earthquakes...

I see that Spirit in You and in Me.

And I rejoice in It and embrace It for this is what Life is.