Just call me Goddess. And I'll call you god(dess) too. Whether or not you are committed to any type of spiritual path, I am quite sure that there have been times you have cried out to 'God' - from deep within your desperately hungry, naked soul, and asked "Why?', 'How', 'Why Me?' or 'Why Not...?' I know I have.

Atheist or believer, guru or seeker - we all have times in our lives when we seek to contact the Source, specifically looking for answers.

So often, we lie down in our beds at night and in the quiet moments, search the vast darkness that surrounds us for answers, calling on our angels, spirit guides, departed loved ones and God to hear and answer our prayers. And so often, we meet with stony silence.

It doesn't matter how many inspirational articles you have read, how many affirmations you have taped onto your computer screen, how many amazing meditations you've experienced or when your last blissful prayer of realization filled you with joy. Where there is an 'up', there is a 'down' - and when we are down and crying out for help, there is nothing more devastating that the feeling of not being heard.

Just a week or so ago, I was broadcasting my joy and wonderment far and wide, after I had asked a team of angels to bring me an answer, via email. Yes, I 'dispatched' Archangel Gabriel, the angel of communication, and Archangel Auriel, the far-seeing angel of earthly matters, to send my request to a business partner who had not answered an urgent email for several days. I had barely finished my prayers when I opened my eyes and from sheer force of habit, hit the send and receive button on my computer keyboard. And to my delight, at that very moment, the letter that I had been desperately waiting for arrived in my inbox. What relief, excitement and validation! Angels rock! And they like me!

Determined to reinforce the magic and the experience of this new 'gift', I tried this same process again a few days later, this time with no 'reply'. This led to the inevitable rationalization that the angels did indeed hear me (well, they 'must' have heard me...) and had carried my message forth to the universe, but perhaps it was not in my best interest for the results I wanted to be made manifest. Excuses, excuses?

So, even though I consider myself 'enlightened', I find myself making excuses - for myself (maybe I said the prayer wrong....), for the angels (maybe they tried their best but just couldn't pull it off), or for 'God' - maybe 'He' knows best and the non-response is in my best interests. But for a human being with a well-developed rational mind that is usually locked in a deathgrip of a passionate tango with spiritual realization, these hit and miss answers from the universe just don't cut it as the ultimate answer.

Do angels exist? Why do my spirit guides never pop in when I call them, even when I address them by names that have been revealed in my dreams, by other psychics in their readings for me, or through countless channelings that describe exactly who, what and where they are? Am I not worthy of a visit? Are jaded spirit guides gathered in a group somewhere in the distance, too busy with more important stuff to pay heed to insignificant me? Maybe they're all out for a smoke break, chatting and gossiping, backs turned to me as they laugh amongst themselves. Recently, I asked a psychic one of my perennial questions - who are my guides and why can't I talk to them. They seem to reveal themselves only very briefly, ephemerally, and then off they go on their merry way never to be heard from again. The answer I received through this particular reading and other material that was presented to me around this time was something to this effect: through my spiritual work I have become so enlightened that some spirit guides just do in fact consider a 'meet and greet' to be ample time and energy spent with me.

Well, I'm not that enlightened. I get so worn down and fed up with the apparent non-responsiveness of Spirit and/or the cryptic messages I sometimes receive, that only a few weeks ago I told the whole lot of my spirit guides that they were fired! LOL! I must have been watching too much of Donald Trump's recent television series The Apprentice *grin*

But you can't just fire your 'team' without a back-up in place. That's risky business. Of course, we always have our Higher Selves to fill the breach between our physical selves and 'God', but somehow, talking to my Higher Self always makes me feel a bit schizophrenic. So, I am working with a new-found awareness now, that has so far brought me a more equanimity and repose for my spirit. It goes something like this:

'God" is everything - the good, the bad and the ugly, the energy and the stasis, the yin and the yang, the dark and the light, the everything and the nothing that makes up the universe. Whether you see God as a stern old man in the clouds, who once upon a time raised his enormous hand and created heaven and earth, or whether your God is a bright light of unknowable energy, the Source, the Great Spirit - whatever the image that dances in your mind when you hear the word God, He/She is everything and everywhere. And since we are part of that everything, we are part of God. And if we are part of God, we ARE God.

Try that thought on for size if you haven't already. You are God.

The first time I dared to give this thought space in my mind, many years ago; I thought I would faint from the sheer brazenness of such a thought. The fact that I had some Catholic upbringing may have had something to do with my intense imbalance here. My soul must have cowered for a while, I'm sure, trying to embrace the enormity of this thought. But - not only did I survive it, with nary a scorch mark from thunderbolts being hurled from the skies, but I felt my spirit swell with a surge of joy and power and true connection. And so, I embraced this concept as part of my reality.

Perhaps this analogy can explain how I feel about our God-connection. Picture the vast, majestic and unknowable ocean. It is a force to be reckoned with. If you take a drop of water out of the ocean, the ocean still exists. So does the drop of water, but, separate from the ocean, it appears insignificant. Put the drop of water back and it merges once again with its source, and IS the ocean.

The ocean is neither good nor bad, it just is. In some places it is blue, in others, stormy and gray. Some parts tenderly lap sandy shores, and others harbor unfathomable mysteries. Oceans tear apart ships, hold icebergs in their bosoms, and offer moisture to passing breezes and sustenance to marine life, as well as to Mother Earth. Can it be the same with us, and the God-Source? Can we be a 'drop' of God, and therefore 'God'?

'Being' God is not going to bring us a shower of miracles, blessings and divine power any more than we are capable of realizing in the human condition. And knowing we are God is not a panacea for all our woes. But realizing and remembering our God/dess selves will surely uplift our souls as well as elevate our earthly experiences.

I think it's a good time to mention that I'm not totally delusional - at least I wouldn't demonstrate this concept by walking down the street proclaiming 'I am God' - heck, I don't even have any white hair underneath the chunky blonde highlights, let alone a beard....but every time I'm tempted to cry out for help lately, instead of beseeching a hard-to-contact spirit, intervener or Spirit, I instead remind myself that I am God, and who better to help me than me???

So, to sum up, I've come to the realization that I must not only find my own answers but tend to my own needs. And with the knowledge that I have access to the same 'powers' that God does - in manifesting, in working with the laws of the universe, etc - I feel pretty good that my 'issues' are in good hands.

However, one point bothers me, silly little humanoid that I am, and that is the inescapable need to 'rank' myself in the grand hierarchy of spirit. So - I've named myself, my higher power, as Goddess. In the past, I was never overly interested in god and goddess figures - but we all know about the pantheons of these personages from Greek and Roman mythology, from Celtic lore, from ancient Eastern religions. Pagans of many paths work with the gods and goddesses all the time and to my mind, whether these figures are mythical or are religious deities, they exist to symbolize certain aspects of all things that exist in the universe. There are gods of love, war, forests and fauna; goddesses of birth and death and every experience in between. And these gods and goddesses of religion and lore, like human beings, have mortal frailties and experience all the challenges of the human condition

Gods and goddesses are all part of 'God', or All That Is. So by calling myself a goddess, I can categorize myself as not exactly being 'God', but as being a representation of some aspects of God - even while having all of God within me and being part of 'God' like a drop of water in the ocean is part of the ocean. By calling myself 'goddess', I can remember my 'God' connection, and yet not negate the other 'God' - the big one.. After all, even though I want to enjoy strutting my new-found realizations and personal power in my private world, I still want to live in the awareness that I am a drop in the ocean of All That Is. But you can call me 'Goddess' anytime :>)

© 2004 Zsuzsana Summer