Eliminate the middleman between you and God

It’s usually advisable to eliminate the middleman. He won’t like it. But if there’s no reason to keep him around, dump the guy. He adds extra overhead.

Especially if he’s standing between you and God. Or more accurately, if you believe he is. For given that the evidence of God’s existence is extremely scanty, it figures that a belief in the need for a middleman or mediator between humanity and divinity rests on even shakier ground.

Like, quicksand.

I used to buy cars the old-fashioned way. And hated it. You know the routine. Find a car you like. Talk to a salesman. Tell him how much you want to pay. Then cool your heels while he supposedly goes off to try and talk his boss into accepting the deal.

You never see the boss. All you see is the salesman dejectedly walking back into his office, telling you “Man, I’m sorry. I argued for you, but my boss says the dealership would be losing money if he accepted your offer. So this is what he’s willing to sell the car for…”

And so it’d go. Of course, the salesman wasn’t really on my side. Nor, I suspect, did he ever talk with his boss. He probably had a cup of coffee and joked around with his buddies for ten minutes, then plastered on a fake dejected look before he tried to suck more money out of me.

But at least I knew the car I wanted was real, even if the middleman game was fakey. With “God” (a placeholder term, the way I use it, for ultimate reality), I neither know that my envisioned object of desire exists, nor that a mediator between me and God serves any purpose.

I don’t need a mediator to connect me with unicorns, fairies, or leprechauns. I can imagine them all on my own, thank you. No assistance required. Yet for some reason there’s a strong demand for a mediator between people and God, even though the middleman never delivers the goods.

Nice work if you can get it. It’s no wonder there’s never been a lack of prophets, gurus, priests, shamans, and all the other members of the God-human mediator class. If I could make a living by serving as a middleman between people and a being who I never had to prove even existed, much less actually show face to face, that’d be sweet.

I could even keep on with my go-betweening after I died. That’s what happened with Jesus. Countless Christians still consider that he’s striking a bargain for them with God: Jesus died for their sins. Since Christian theology says that you never get to talk about the deal with the Boss directly, believers have to take the word of the Salesman on faith.

My biggest problem with the God-human mediator business is this: the whole notion is founded on duality—separation. Jesus is considered to be the mediator between two estranged parties, God and humankind. Similarly, in Sikhism (and offshoots such as Sant Mat) the guru reunites separated ones with God.

However, a central thrust of modern science is that unity lies at the heart of reality. Physics speaks of the space-time continuum and quantum connectedness. It seeks the Theory of Everything, not Theories.

So it’s difficult for me to believe that the spiritual realm, if it exists, is more disconnected than the foundation of material existence. But this is what religions would have us believe.

Somehow we’ve supposedly gotten way out of touch with a distant God, and there’s no getting us back together without the aid of a middleman who says, “Listen, have I got a deal for you…”

In his book “Grassroots Spirituality,” Robert Forman says that wholeness is one of the hallmarks of a spiritual (as contrasted with religious) way of relating with the world. Speaking of the fresh ways of communing with the cosmos that are sweeping the world, he writes:

In short, the traditional western “transcendent” model of God is no longer operative in the Grassroots Spirituality Movement. Its Ultimate is reminiscent of the omnipresent, immanent yet infinitely extended vacuum state of quantum physics, more like an “It” than a “He” or “She.” In “It” “we live and move and have our being.”

…This sense of an “indwelling” One has an implication for our religious structures. If we each are gifted with an indwelling spark of the One, then we have no need for some mediating figure like a priest or a minister. For “It” is already available to each of us.

Nor do we need an intercessor, for it’s available to us by merely letting go of our attachments. If we’re each connected to the All through some deep inner wellspring, then no one of us is more connected to “It” than is any other.

Make your own deal with God. Eliminate the middleman. In the end, there might not even be two ends to ultimate reality. With One, there’s no middle. Nor a middleman.

But if you still want a guru (and have a broadband connection), I have a recommendation for you.

Comments

[zhoen]

Naw. I'd rather hire out. Much easier. None of that messy having-to-look-at-myself stuff.

[benandante]

I often forget to say how wonderful the essay was that prompted the following new thought. So before I comment, thanks for taking the time to contemplate and for sharing that contemplation with me. I get a lot from this.

What intrigues me is that I have been shown that humans are electromegnetic creatures in an electromagnetic vibrational pattern who are in the process of being raised to a radionic pattern. For now, we live with duality - dark and light, yin and yang, literally fuel our systems - and the electricity generated in the universe fuels what we call our world.

Eventually, if we manage to shift, we are supposedly going to be in an atomic pattern of radiation. The way a normal atom behaves is us as we are, the split atom the way we will be. There is a part of me that believes this is true, that somehow choosing the dark or the light, the yin or the yang will allow me to stop straddling this unconscious fence and just BE something dagnabbit. Of course the other part of me says that wholeness is wholeness and everything is perfect and denying/choosing is the path of illusion.

What is a marvel to me is that I would have forgotten that I knew that this evening if I had not taken the time to stop and listen to someone else's ideas and thoughts. Truly, my mind lives in a place you should never travel through alone. But besides the basic safety and sanity issues, I need input from people I respect to challenge me, to help me to articulate why I feel this way and what my truth really is.

There are spiritual leaders who I touch base with who are not on an ego trip. They can learn from me without destroying their own wisdom. They do not need to be my guru to have my respect. In fact, the more someone tries to tell me how advanced they are the less I am inclined to listen to them, or read them, or share a meal with them.

I need objective input and I need to give objective input. Like Edward's pinata swinger, I try to navigate my life by using a kind of psychic sonar: ping. ping. ping.

Jeanine

[Roger]

Jeanine,

I need all the answers to all the questions regarding, the mysteries of The Infinite. I want you to gather up all the data, and in detail.

Once this task is accomplished, I want you to place the answers on a silver platter.

Place it all before me. I'd help, but I'm kinda lazy.

My objective input: Go for it girl! Get the job done. If your presentation could be done at one of those expensive New York restaurants, I would be greatly pleased.

[benandante]

Roger, sad to say, I've been given a glimpse of a very few things most of which made no sense at the time. Occasionally I can find lost things in a rather uncanny way, but never my own car keys or other decnt and useful stuff like stock tips or racehorses.

I do have a silver platter somewhere but its quite tarnished; it'll match my halo, tho. And Burger Heaven doesn't take reservations. ;)

Jeanine

[Roger]

Jeanine,

Haha.......Burger Heaven?.......throw in a divine Slurrpie and fries............then you gotta deal....

Luv ya,
Roger

[No-middleman Movement]

You might be interested in No-Middleman Movement: https://www.facebook.com/nmmm.org/posts/1215116471902102:0

[777]

-

-
I like The Middle Men
-
Who would not , when by our own actions

We dived in the middle
of the ocean
on an unstable planet
full of sound & fury, murder and torture

in an exploding galaxy
hanging in a temporal troublesome local cluster

-

Middlemen with Love !
So Welcome !
OMG

-

777

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[Jim Sutherland]

777 says he likes the Middle Man.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DohRa9lsx0Q

But does the Middle Man like it?

Jim Sutherland

[Spencer Tepper]

Let's here it for the Middleman!

"To His Word, His chief messenger, highest in age and honour, the Father of all has given the special prerogative, to stand on the border and separate
the creature from the Creator. This same Word both pleads with the immortal as supplicant for afflicted mortality and acts as ambassador of the ruler to the subject. He glories in this prerogative and proudly describes it in these words "and I stood between the Lord and you" (Deut. v. 5), that is neither uncreated by God, nor created as you, but midway between the two extremes, a surety to both sides. "
Philo, Quis rerum divinarum heres sit

[777]

-
Hard to believe, Jim
hard to believe

but all these brilliances, Glance and Glories from the scriptures and even more
but for a start
HE showered on this fool, . . as snow flocks in Alaska

but
in Bombay in a little room with 100 satsangis
I was pushed with my legs right under His Seat
and He shove the seat 2 cm to the other site

and my ego was hurt . . . :)

Little bit like Brians second Manuscript was shoven away by Gurinder,
so that we all could read on this nice blog

777

[777]

I don’t need a mediator to connect me

OK
Brian You know the Sun , don' you

But do U know Aldebaran , a billion times more forefull

Next a Supernova, killng vast parts of where we live our Galaxy

No need for a middle man ?

But God c q "Exixtance" gave energy for trillions of these guys
in this univers alone

Don't you think you would burn your hand without a middle Man

Great example is our bladder , . . we need The Guy . . . :-)

777