Sometimes as I’m cruising the news and posts, I think about us humans and I wonder.

Early in our days, we worshipped multiple gods. We worshipped the sun goddess and we worshipped the moon goddess and we worshipped the rain goddess, and all kinds of other gods and goddesses. This worship was closely tied to the seasons, to bless and celebrate things like planting of crops and harvesting of crops. There was a lot of fertility worshipping going on around the planting of crops. I remember learning in one of my classes that the goddess of the moon was worshipped more than the goddess of the sun, not because the moon was more powerful, but because it was closer than the sun, and thus more accessible.

So I read posts about the moon waxing and waning and about mercury being in retrograde, and this is why stuff is happening the way it is, and I can’t help but think that we’ve gone back to worshipping the goddess of the moon.

Nothing wrong with that.

But for me, I prefer to worship a bit closer to home. If indeed worship is the right word. It comes down to what I believe in that gives me comfort and peace and power and safety in a world gone mad. Because I happen to think that is what life is about. It’s about feeling comfortable and peaceful and powerful and safe, no matter what.

All of of that stuff, the New Age stuff and the traditional religious stuff, just screams of separation to me. It screams of attempting to find peace in something outside of myself, and that has never made any sense to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my candles and my rocks and my crystals and my altars. I love the rituals and the ceremonies. But that is all stuff to take me back within really. They are just tools.

I don’t care whether it is a traditional God that lives in the sky, or whether it is the moon waning, or mercury in retrograde, to me it is all separate from me, and thus, not where I want to place my attention. That is called duality, and duality has created more problems than just about anything else in this world. A belief in duality says that there is your side, and my side, and then we must take sides. A belief in duality says that I am separate from you, and isn’t that a lonely place to be. A belief in duality says that we can’t get along. A belief in duality says that god is separate from me, wants things from me, does things for me, but only if I am worthy, but really, I’m not worthy at all, because that is the nature of humanity.

None of that has ever made sense to me. What has made sense is oneness.

I have known my entire life that god is a part of me and I am a part of it. I have known this deep inside in the unreachable places, as well as in the more reachable ones. As my life has progressed, I’ve encountered various teachings that implied god was somewhere else besides inside of me, and I’ve sometimes been amused, sometimes not, but always have known, “yes, perhaps, but god is within me.” And this belief and this god has served me well through much.

And when life got to be a bit more painful than I had anticipated, I knew where to go. I knew to go to a place that taught about this god within, and learn more, and connect more, and get a deeper understanding of this god within so that I could feel better about myself and about life.

And before I get too much further into this, I just want to clarify: God is ALL. Everywhere present. Not just within me, but within everything, manifested as everything. It simply is, it is ALL. When I say within, please consider that an encapsulation of this, because this essay is already getting a bit wordy.

I went home, to a place that is currently called the Center for Spiritual Living, but that’s just a new name for a system of teaching and thinking and believing that was first put into words in the 1700s by people like Swedenborg and Mesmer, then by people like Emma Curtis Hopkins and William James and Joel Goldsmith and Christian Larson,, and further refined by Masahauru Taniguchi and Charles and Myrtle Fillmore and Ernest Holmes. All of these great minds and more contributed to a system of spiritual psychology that today is called New Thought. There are several New Thought organizations today, but of course I’m very fond of Centers for Spiritual Living, which was founded by Ernest Holmes in the early 1920s.

We aren’t really a religion, except in the places where we are. We teach more than we preach. We don’t give sermons, we give talks. Our ministers are called Reverend (and I still very much enjoy it when someone says to me, “hey Rev!”) and can do all the stuff other ministers do like weddings and celebrations of life and blessings. We are not exclusively Christian, although we do refer to the Bible frequently, as well as the Torah, the Koran and the wisdom of the Buddhists and the Indians and the Eastern philosophies and the Greek philosophers and the great psychologists. Some of us even embrace the moon waning and mercury in retrograde.

I prefer to keep it simple. I believe in a God within, and that is what I teach. After almost ten years of study, I have this wonderful thing called an accredited Masters Degree, and a license that says I am a minister.

Today I look back on that bleak time in my life and I become grateful for this teaching that empowered me and allowed me to know a deeper understanding of what God is, because that is what ended the bleak time, ultimately.

So if you are seeking something, and you aren’t sure what it is, and you’ve been jumping around from the moon waning to the retrograde mercury to the crystals and candles and the latest New Age fad, or you’ve realized you are tired of being called unworthy because you didn’t do God’s will, or perhaps because none of that stuff makes sense anymore and you still feel like there is something missing, come join us and take a journey within.

I promise you we won’t tell you how to think or belief, but we will give you tools so you can figure it out yourself, and when you do, we will continue to love you and accept you.