Tentacles on the Octopus of God

Shining Light into the Darkness

One of my students gave me this wonderful pendant because she loved the Octopus of God concept. I was delighted with this little guy.

One of the greatest gifts of my life was becoming angry and disillusioned enough with my parents and church to begin deeply questioning the programming I’d been fed as a child. I was taught that God is punitive, Hell is a real place, and Satan is a real being always trying to tempt us into behavior that would cast us into that fiery place for all eternity.

That version of reality never did sit well with me, but like many raised in a fear-based religion, challenging the dogma can be a difficult psychological process. Early on I had fearful moments in which I wondered if I was playing right into Satan’s hands. The process of pulling away from such a religion is akin to leaving a cult.

Despite the pesky fear of burning in hell, I kept going because a more authentic and direct spirituality was beckoning. I sensed a connectedness, a thread through nature and all life (including me); that didn’t jive with the concept of a separate, vengeful, super-human guy up in the clouds somewhere. I had a number of mystical experiences in which I lost the sense of physical boundary around my body and felt connected to the entire web of life, the vastness of creation. In the religion of my youth God hadn’t made man in its image but instead, man had made God in their image.

My spiritual unfolding has primarily been a journey of unlearning, experiencing, and unlocking independent thinking. During the past seven years I became a minister through Unity Worldwide Ministries. Unity is non-dogmatic and spiritual rather than religious, but it does have some key principles. Unity holds that God/Source/Creator is in and through all things and is only good and that we humans are therefore also good. Another principle is that we are all connected to one another. I like to say we are all tentacles on the Octopus of God. We each have unique suckers but we’re still part of the whole.

These principles feel good and are easy to apply when everything is kumbaya and we’re hanging out with like-minded people. But boy howdy it’s a whole different story when dealing with difficult personalities or people whose beliefs are very different from ours.

I’ll be honest, right now, with the upsurge of MAGA, Christian Nationalism, and Project 2025, I am having a hard time feeling the love. I’m not having great success avoiding “othering” when it comes to far right-wing personalities driving destructive ideologies and policies. I’ve heard the term “culture war” many times, but only now am I experiencing it in a tangible way. Being really honest again, an unsettled part of me feels like progressives are facing dark forces we don’t even understand – dark money, dark tech, dark intentions.

I’ve danced with the uncomfortable idea that maybe we can’t effectively deal with the darkness by being nice. Yet even as that thought surfaces I see the error of it. We cannot quell hate by piling on more hate. We can’t reduce the devastation and meanness in the world by being devastating and mean in our words and actions.

It’s hard for me not to feel hatred toward the uber-wealthy capitalists who continuously chew up nature in pursuit of even more money. It’s hard not to hit back with personal attack against the Neo-Nazis denigrating women and people of color. It’s not easy to view these people as fellow expressions of the Divine, but I sense, at a deep level, that that is exactly what they are. We are all spiritual beings, individuations of the Divine, and we are also human, subject to human pressure and programming.

Though I really dislike some of my fellow tentacles just now I will not chop them to pieces. As Einstein said, we can’t solve problems using the same level of thinking that created them. We can stand up to bad actions without personally attacking the actors. We can shine a light into the darkness and stand firm for a world that works better for all beings. We can speak truth to power without spewing violence and vitriol. Civility and kindness are signs of strength.

When it feels like chaos out in the world one form of action is not allowing chaos to reign within ourselves. Growing our own inner light is a powerful tool for clearing away darkness. I’ve been intentionally reminding myself to “vibrate up”, to notice the good all around me, and to choose joy. It has been a tremendous gift to myself.

Yes, it’s a bumpy road just now, and to that let’s say, hallelujah anyway and shine our lights so that we can all see a way through the darkness to brighter days ahead.

Much love,

Cylvia

P.S. I invite you to consider giving a gift subscription rather than stuff this holiday!

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Prosperity and Spiritual Economics Class (Online)

This course examines the prosperity teachings of Charles Fillmore and Eric Butterworth, as well as contemporary teachings. Students explore the broader meaning of prosperity beyond “material things” to discover their own beliefs about money, abundance and lack. Students create practices for healing limitations they hold about prosperity, and discover ways to address their own unexamined, unconscious assumptions about abundance, giving and generosity.

This course will also explore some of the challenges in the status quo consumption-based economic system that is our current societal operating system as well as alternatives that could bring about a healthier world.

Tuesdays, 1 – 2:30pm Pacific, Jan. 7, 14, 21, 28, Feb. 4, 11. Online via Zoom

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