G.O.D.

Yogiji used to say, if the word God does not mean anything to you, think of it as those forces which Generate Organize and Destroy (unless you Deliver).


Everyone loves to throw around the G-bomb. "God, damn it," "God, help me," "Oh my God!" But who are we talking to? When I was growing up, I distinctly remember feeling like a big moron in the catholic church because I thought I was the only one who did not get it. Now I fear I'm one of the few who does. Somehow, as a child, I got this idea that God was some guy with a white beard sitting on a cloud throwing lightning bolts down like a bored kid atop an anthill with a magnifying glass. Maybe you also think that's what he is, or maybe you think that's just silly. More important than what he looks like is the implication there that God has some kind of "will." We often hear the justifications "...because God wills it" and "God works in mysterious ways." Perhaps phrases like this is where the confusion about his will comes from. I'll get back to that later.

In order to understand what we mean by phrases like "God, help me" and "God wills it," we first need to understand just what the hell this "God" thing is. Consider the idea that when we say "God," we can just as well say "the universe itself and the forces that govern it." The huge implication here is that God does not have an agenda to push. If you drop a ball in a vacuum, it will accelerate toward the earth at a rate 9.81 m-s^-2. Well, it will also accelerate toward every other particle in the universe. And it will have a lot of stuff going on within the ball itself. There are particles decaying, gravity, strong force, weak force, electrons spinning, momentum and inertia... It is a very complex system. I'm not denying it. It is, in many ways, leagues beyond our best attempts at comprehension. When we say "It is God's will" we are alluding to that; that this event that occurred is a result of the many complicated parameters of the universe. We use that phrase as a consolation for those who are unsatisfied at the lack of an explanation provided to them for why such a tragedy has taken place.

Another thing Yogiji tells us is that God wants us to be happy. God, the father, cares for us, his children. What does this actually mean? Again, it's not that some dude in a robe is hoping for our lives to turn out okay. This one is a bit trickier. In mathematics, we can describe certain phenomena with differential or difference equations that directly affect one another. Don't panic, I'm not going to get into dynamical systems or phase plane analysis, but I'd like to briefly explain a particular result that can be obtained.

When we have something called an equilibrium point it means that as some variable changes (often time), the others stay at this point. An example is a pendulum. An equilibrium point on a pendulum is when the weight as at the bottom because it's going to stay at the bottom. Contrast this to a point straight out to the side-- as time progresses, the weight will move toward the bottom.

The pendulum actually has two equilibrium points. One at the bottom and one at the top. They are different, though. The one at the top is called unstable and the one at the bottom is called stable. Mathematically, this means that, even though the weight will stay at the bottom or the top if it's placed exactly there, if one were to move it slightly away from one of those points, the behavior would be different. For the stable point, a small change would result in the weight moving back toward the point. For the unstable point, a small difference would result in the weight continuing to move away from it. There is a reason I described this. :) According to Yogi Bhajan, happiness is a stable equilibrium in our complex system called God. This result is important. It means that our natural state is to be happy. So why are we unhappy? The only possible reason is that we are actually exerting energy toward being unhappy.

In my own life, this realization came in the midst of depression and angst. When you're feeling shitty, the last thing you want to hear is some happy bastard telling you not to worry. So I got angry when I heard that "happiness is my birthright." If that is true, I thought, then why is it always an uphill battle? The answer came to me: I spent so much time practicing being unhappy, walking down the hill, that it indeed was an uphill battle. This can come in many forms. A buddhist will tell you your unhappiness stems from having desires, a christian will tell you it comes from committing the seven deadly sins, and a psychologist might say it's because you learned that throwing tantrums gets you the attention that you need (with the unfortunate side effect of creating a habit in your psyche and training you to feel that way internally). At the root of all of these is the simple truth that you did not start out that way. You were not born unhappy; you worked for it.