This short discourse will attempt to clarify, in the simplest way, the Teaching’s belief in God.

First, God is omnipresent, meaning that God is everywhere, in everything and in everyone. There is no place outside of God. This does not mean that God is limited to just what is or to the sum total of what is, because God is infinite and thus includes the transcendental infinite as well as the finite universe. Furthermore, God is omnipresent for each person and in each moment, meaning that God’s Presence is always present in every instance of our lives. Thus, God is always here and nearer to one than usually realized.

Second, God is omniscient, meaning that God is all knowing. God is conscious of everyone and everything, in every moment. This is because God is Consciousness, which is the Source of our own consciousness. This means that God is always aware of everything. Now this is why some people reject a belief in God – because they are uncomfortable with the thought that God is watching everything they do and knows everything. This would of course be uncomfortable to anyone who feels guilty about what they do or have done. It also feels to be an affront to personal privacy; if God "sees" everything and also even knows our every thought.

Yet to someone who feels alright about what they and how they live, this might not seem so uncomfortable. For example, if one does not have any guilt or embarrassment about their sexual activity nor their bathroom requirements, then perhaps God’s omniscience would not feel uncomfortable. And why would there be guilt or embarrassment about such normal human things? Because of distorted religious teachings. For we have to understand omniscience in the context of other truths, such as God’s love.

So if we can propose here the possibility of God being omniscient, let us also propose that God is conscious of everything we do but without any condemnation or judgment. This sheds a different light on it all. For we not suggesting that God is watching everyone with a judgmental eye. Neither are we suggesting that God’s consciousness is like a human parent watching over us; this analogy has some merit but certainly not in the sense of a judgmental parent. The consciousness of God is not judgmental; it is simply conscious. Moreover, God is loving and compassionate, rather than judgmentally condemning.

Thus thirdly, God is unconditionally loving and all-compassionate And when God’s unconditional and all-compassionate love is combined with God’s all-knowingness, then there is no more guilt or embarrassment about natural human activities nor about one’s occasional mistakes. In other words, we do not have to continually self-critique ourselves about our sins. We might indeed make mistakes and do things that are less than noble, but we need not feel that God is watching us in judgment and seeing us as sinners for this or that. God is not doing that, and we do not have to be doing that to ourselves. This whole judgmental and condemnation theme in western theology is simply a misguided and distorted teaching. God is love and compassion. God is caring and forgiving. The condemning and judgmental God is simply a false god, which has falsely seeped into western established religions.

God is loving, caring, and compassionate. God’s love means that in every moment we can know and feel that God loves us. God embraces us with love. In fact, God’s Being is Love Itself. And every instance of love coming from us or anyone has its source in God, for God is Love and is the very source of all love as coming from anyone. As well, God cares. God cares about us and about everyone and the whole world. Know that God cares and is ready to help us. Then thirdly, God is compassionate. This means that God understands us and understands our unique situations. So that no matter what is going on in us, in our feelings and in our actions, God really understands us and understands our difficult situations, and furthermore understands how we make sometimes mistakes or get sidetracked. Compassion from the Divine Observer is a mixture of love and wisdom, of unconditional love mixed with understanding wisdom.

Now let us briefly come back to the theme of judgment. It might be argued that IF there is no judgment from the Divine, such that all is lovingly accepted or at least forgiven from God’s compassionate understanding, then there is no divine distinction between the killer and the healer. In other words, if God unconditionally loves everyone and there is nothing that God is judging or condemning, then isn’t everyone completely free to do whatever? (and still be loved by God).

Here is the answer. God still loves you, no matter what you do. God loves everyone, no matter what they do. God is also still caring and compassionate for everyone, no matter what. Yet what makes the difference is in how God will have to respond to each person and their circumstance, which involves God’s Wisdom. So God’s Love is unconditional, without distinction between good or bad. All is in God’s Love. However, the distinction between good and bad, better or worse, is significant when God’s Wisdom is involved, because the response of Wisdom will be different depending on the quality of our actions.

Briefly, let us define wisdom – it is somewhat more than intelligence. Intelligence is a know-how, so we could say that nature has intelligence – a practical intelligence in the working of things, so to speak. Wisdom is intelligence but with the addition of purpose; so we could say that nature has intelligence with purpose – the purpose being a higher goal to which nature is heading or to which wisdom is leading. This is the Wisdom of God, as found in the natural world, and in people as well.

Thus, God is also Wisdom and this wisdom is at work in the world. It may not be perfectly or completely at work in the world, just as each person is not necessarily wise in their thoughts and actions, but this Wisdom can be found in nature and to some extent in many people.

The Wisdom of God is present everywhere, but it is not always at work in a perfect way, or perfectly actualized. Nonetheless, everything and everyone is in a larger evolutionary process which is gradually leading to greater degrees of actualized wisdom and finer degrees of perfection. This relates to another truth about God, which is God’s omnipotence or power; but for now let us wait on this explanation.

We do not need to assume an anthropomorphic image of God as being like a wise and all-powerful King who dictates every move of nature, including our own actions. Neither is God the Wise making a ‘decision’ about how to respond to each person or each circumstance. And its not like God the Wise making continuous judgments about what we are doing, and then delving out rewards or punishments.

Instead, God’s Wisdom is simply embodied in nature and it is more akin to what we think of as natural law. Another useful understanding of Divine Wisdom would be the idea of karma – which comes from eastern thought but it is also part of scientific thinking. Karma is a natural law of cause and effect; whereby the effect (which is what happens) is a natural result of causes (actions, behaviors, and circumstances that preceded the effect). So whatever is happening in our lives or in the world is an effect caused by previous actions, behaviors, and circumstances. What is is explained by what happened before, and every action is a cause to future effects.

This puts the responsibility of our present circumstances and our fate on our own actions, rather than having a simplistic religious belief that whatever happens is because God the Wise decided it so (in His making this "the best of all possible worlds"). In the law of karma, there is no reason to think that God the Wise makes everything perfect. {One could say that everything is perfectly the way it has to be by the law of karma, but this muddled mixing of word meaning is confusing and too often misleading .}

Karma is the efficient means of God’s Wisdom. It is how Wisdom works in the world, and it is also how we learn and then evolve towards being more wise and loving ourselves. For as we understand that the world is presenting effects of previous causes, we can then also understand that the future can be made better by the causes we produce right now. In other words, if we can responsibly produce causes that are more loving and intelligent, then the circumstances of our future will correspondingly be more loving and intelligent.

It is this law of karma that evolves the world and humanity; not the dictatorial manipulations of God as "the absolute Ruler." The way that karma works to evolve the world and humanity is by continually reflecting to us learning circumstances – or lessons in the school of wisdom. Thus, the Wisdom of God is simply reflected in the cause-effect reality of nature and in how circumstances naturally reveal wisdom lessons (about causes and effects) and sometimes propel us to make changes for the sake of a better life and world.

Now let us return to a question about how God’s Wisdom produces a difference, depending on the ethical quality of our actions. God loves unconditionally, so all people are loved no matter what actions they make. And God is not watching us with judgmental condemnation. This must be understood first. But according to how we think and what we do, there will be a corresponding response from nature and the world around us. This response is the Wisdom of God, responding to us in a way that teaches us important lessons and leads us back into harmony with the Divine. This can also be understood as karma, the natural law of cause and effect. If our actions are already loving, holistic-minded, beautiful and good; then the world and our karma will reflect beauty, goodness and love back to us in. Yet if one’s actions are harmful, or solely based on self-centered desires, or unethically deceptive, or what might be called evil, then Wisdom (or karma) will bring to one a corresponding response that will reflect back to the person what they instigated. In other words, by law of Divine Wisdom, or the law of karma, a person will receive a corresponding reflection of whatever they had previously instigated or caused. Thus, the quality and ethical nature of our actions determines how life will reflect back to us, according to the Wisdom of karma.

This is the Divine Justice. It is not that God is judgmentally condemning people for various sins and then producing punishments for the sinners. Rather, there is simply a natural law taking place, a law of cause and effect, which over time reflects back to us. Thus, if our actions are loving, holistic-minded, beautiful and good, then in our future the world will reflect back likewise. But if our actions are harmful, low-minded, ugly and bad, then in our future the world will likewise reflect this back to us. This is the natural law of karma, yet it is also the Wisdom of God – for Wisdom wants to teach us how to be better human beings and how to live in harmony with others and the rest of nature.

Wisdom wants to teach us how to help build a beautiful world and live in peace, and how to make the whole world a better place to live. Yet if people are not listening to the inner Wisdom, as is available within, and if people are making harmful actions without true love for everyone else, then the Divine Wisdom will have to teach these people by presenting harsher learning lessons, in order to awaken them from the slumbers of self-absorbed ignorance. The goals inherent in Divine Wisdom is for the whole world to evolve towards greater love, intelligence, beauty and goodness. So all wisdom lessons are intended to lead people towards such goals. If a person intentionally moves towards these goals in their actions, then God’s power of Wisdom will provide them with favorable circumstances and abilities. But if a person acts in a way of harm towards others or to nature, or is in this kind of uncaring attitude, then the power of Wisdom and karma will have to bring difficulty and lesson to such people, in order to teach them needed lessons and awaken them from their slumber of ignorance.

Now besides this natural embodiment of wisdom (as potentially learned lessons) in the workings of life, God’s Wisdom is also available to anyone who is open to it. For we believe that the Divine Wisdom, which includes higher intelligence and realized purpose), is everywhere available, such that anyone can open up their intuitive heart and mind, in order to hear or receive this Wisdom or at least glimpses of it. We believe this Wisdom is available to anyone, so that they may accelerate their spiritual evolution. Thus, it is not necessarily at work in everyone. God’s Wisdom might be more realized in one person, while less realized in another.

Therefore, it is incorrect to say that God’s Wisdom is always perfectly at work in the world; since this Wisdom is so unrealized and lacking in so many people. Those who severely lack in love and wisdom will be making un-wise causes in the world and thus producing unbeneficial actions in the world, meaning that the world will reflect the degree of wisdom so far realized in those who act in the world. In other words, the world could never be a perfect reflection of God’s Wisdom as long as there are unwise and unloving people making actions in the world. Our present world is mostly the result of human actions, so there cannot be a world full of God’s Wisdom unless people are full of wisdom. That is, what we mostly see is a world reflective of how much love and wisdom is in people, the main actors in this world; rather than the world being a perfect reflection of God’s Wisdom and Compassion.

God’s Wisdom and Compassion is everpresently here as being available – to be realized and to be effective in the world – but it is not automatically at work in everything going on. What we mostly find in the world is human ignorance and its resulting karma of unnecessary suffering. Yet hopefully, all of humanity will spiritually evolve from ignorance to wisdom, and from self-centeredness to love. For this is how the spiritual process works. This is the divine plan; that all conscious beings begin from ignorance and self-centeredness, then gradually evolve towards holistic wisdom and expansive love. This is the great process of awakening, which requires many centuries and generations of each reincarnating soul, and what propels this along are the lessons of karma and the inner whisperings of divine wisdom.

Gradually then, God’s Wisdom and Love is realized and manifested in the world, through human beings; yet along the way of this evolution there is inevitable conflict, hurt, and unnecessary suffering, because the lessons and the wisdom have yet to be realized.

Awakening wisdom and the lessons of karma propel this process of spiritual evolution. And this is all part of God’s Power, which will now be better explained. One of the attributes of God is Power. Fundamentally, this is the power of love and wisdom. Yet God’s Power also includes the power of consciousness and awakening. It also includes the power of creativity and of life itself. So the attribute and meaning of Divine Power is large and inclusive. We could even simply say that God is the power source for everything. Even the bad, or what some people would call evil, is empowered by God, because there is no other ultimate power except God. But even though all actions are empowered by God and dependent on God, no matter what their ethical quality is, God does not "will" there to be bad or harmful actions in the world.

This issue has been a misunderstanding for many religious thinkers and even mystics, and semantics makes the confusion. Medieval writers of both Christianity and Islam often used the concept of "God’s will" to mean the same as "God’s power," …Will and Power being understood as meaning the same. But a confusion results when "God’s will" is also equated with "God’s decision," as when people say "oh, that must be God’s Will," … implying that God decided it to be. The thought is that "God’s will" implies that God in His love and wisdom is deciding everything that happens, based on love and wisdom. But this interpretation is clearly not true. God, with love-compassion and wisdom, is not deciding everything that happens. God is not "willing" everything we find in the world, in the sense of "deciding" or "choosing" or "wishing." If this were so, then people have a valid point that God may not actually be so loving and wise afterall, and it is for this reason that so many intelligent people have rejected the whole idea of God, completely. But if this mistaken interpretation is removed from our beliefs, then God is freed from looking so stupid to so many people.

For the truth is that God ‘s power is at work in all things and in all actions; but this does not also imply that God is deciding everything. God is not deciding everything nor agreeing to the rightness of everything; and thus, God’s love and wisdom is not necessarily involved with everything that happens in our world. Many actions and occurrences are actually lacking in love and wisdom; and this is because love and wisdom have not yet been realized in those people who are making such actions. This means then, that God is not responsible for everything that happens and is certainly not setting it all into place. Rather, spiritually unawakened people are responsible for most of the troubles and sufferings in the world.

One of monotheism’s main concepts is God’s omnipotence, which means all-powerful. God is all-powerful. This would have to be true, since God is the ultimate Power of the universe and the source of all micro-powers. If there were any other power equal to or greater than God, then this would be a dualistic theology. But this concept of omnipotence, based on the spiritual intuition of divine unity, has been often misunderstood. The mistake is to presume that God’s omnipotence necessarily implies that God is decisively making everything happen in the world. The mistake is to infer that God, the all-powerful, must be dictating every action and every occurrence in the world. This false conclusion might be based on an assumption that an all-powerful God would act like a human dictator or like a puppeteer determining everything that happens.

Yet this false image can be abandoned. For the fact of having omnipotence, does not necessarily mean that God would execute this omnipotent power at every moment in order to exactly determine everything that happens. God does not have to be understood as a controlling dictator of everything; like, ‘it’s My world and I’ll make it exactly the way I want it to be… because I’m so absolutely powerful.’ We do not have to understand God in this very limited and anthropomorphic way.

Instead, understand God as having ultimate power, or as being the ultimate power itself, but not necessarily or always exercising this power in a controlling and dictating fashion. For instead, God’s power works in a more subtle way, as a motivator or as an inner drive towards expanding love and wisdom. God works from within things, from within lives, and this is not absolutely dictatorial. God is influential, rather than dictatorial. God is suggestive, rather than commanding. God is available, rather than imposing.

And this is all part of freedom; because freedom is a necessary principle in the divine process of creative evolution. Freedom is a necessary aspect of the divine plan, as it were. But this divine plan is not like an exact blueprint decided before time and being implemented day by day by the power of God. That would be a wrong understanding of the plan. The plan is really to do with a general process of newly unfolding creativity, over the generations of life, which also involves freedom – which means that the creative process is not pre-planned in any exact manner and, in fact, it is a continual surprise.

Freedom is, thus, a significant principle in the divine creative process, or in what we call spiritual evolution. There is freedom and free will in this unfolding creativity, rather than an exact pre-planned blueprint and rather than an all-controlling power dictating and manipulating every new activity. Subsequently in this free creative process, as in any experimental artistic process, there will be mistakes and wrong turns, but also successes and unexpected creative solutions. Moreover, this creative process will be continually adjusted by a parallel process of learning from one’s mistakes through the feedback of karma and the inner guidance of divine wisdom.

Now there is one more aspect of God’s Power that we need to consider, in combination with God’s Love-Compassion and Wisdom.

This is God’s power of healing and redemption , which could also be understood as part of the power of God’s Love and Wisdom. God’s Love and Wisdom can make immediate positive changes in a person’s life. But this does not simply come automatically to everyone.

The ordinary course of life is to learn and make adjustments in life from the lessons of karma or from the lessons of our social and physical world. Some people learn more quickly than others. Some people resist learning so then remain stuck in negative karmic cycles – making negative actions which then cause negative effects, both to others and to themselves. Eventually there will be some sort of new awakening and learning, and a resulting positive change in life, but there could be a long road of ego resistance beforehand.

All along the way the Divine is deep within whispering needed wisdom and insight, but the person has to be ready and willing to listen. Thus, in the ordinary course of our lives God does not force higher wisdom upon anyone, nor does God make anyone do what is best; for this has to depend on a person’s freedom – to listen or to ignore, to agree or to resist, to make positive changes or to remain stuck in repeating negative karmas. Nonetheless, divine wisdom is available to anyone.

Normally and most often, repetitious negative karma will continue on until the person somehow awakens from this slumber of automatic repetitive behavior. This awakening will usually occur from shock or from pain. Most karmic lessons, and a resulting positive change, are learned from shock or pain. We call these the tough learning lessons of life, learning by negative feedback. Of course we can also learn by positive feedback, learning by what works, which is a much nicer way to learn. Yet we can also learn directly intuitively from the divine wisdom.

So, God’s wisdom can enter our intuition, which will then help us overcome obstacles and actually change our karma. But this is not guaranteed; for most people will have no such intuition. Nonetheless, it is possible to gain wisdom intuitively from within. And of course it is also possible to receive wisdom from others, especially spiritual teachers or spiritual teachings, but also from traditional religions and cultural wisdom. However, there is no guarantee that one will receive real wisdom rather than misguided beliefs posing as wisdom. Truth must be ultimately discerned by each person; for there is always a possibility of deception. Teachings may even have the best of intentions but still be confused.

The larger point here is that we can, possibly, receive spiritual wisdom intuitively, or wisdom from within. This will then be healing and redemptive, because any new wisdom or awakening will make a positive change in the course of our lives. This also is significantly important in relation to our karma. The law of karma, of cause and effect, primarily acts as a treadmill of repetitious patterns. An action causes a future corresponding effect, which is then cause for a further effect, and so on. So what happens is that each cause produces an effect similar to the cause, which will then result in a similar effect and then create another cause likewise, and so it goes on and repeats like a wheel always returning to the same place. This is the wheel of karma, which is circular and repetitious. That is, until one awakens from the repetition and with new realization emerges free from it.

This freedom from previous karma is known as redemption. In Christian terms, redemption is freedom from sin; but this is really the same meaning, because sin is a repetitive cycle, a repetitive karma. Of course, though, there is repeating positive karma and repeating negative karma; the idea of sin is of course related to the negative karma. Redemption can also mean a return to God, which could also be understood as a return to God’s wisdom and love, from the shackles of sin or of repeating negative karma. This is also related to a higher meaning of healing.

Yet we are not implying here that all of one’s repeating karma can be redeemed or that one’s whole life will suddenly shift into Christ-like sainthood. Rather we are speaking here about small shifts, small changes, in parts of one’s life; it would be unrealistic to expect every aspect of one’s life to suddenly turn into divine radiance. This could be one’s greater hope, but we also need to be realistic about this and realize that most positive changes occur in small steps, and most often there is a personal self-work that is also necessary in this.

Thus, God can directly help us – through wisdom and guidance – to transcend and eliminate our previous karma. In other words, God can immediately heal or abolish our negative karma, if we ask and if we are truly in a receptive state for this redemption. This is the immediate efficacious power of God’s Love-Compassion and Wisdom. Love is the healing force and wisdom directs healing in the best way.

This means that God can eliminate our negative karma and lead us into a higher stage of life. The power of God can always overcome the power of repetitious karma. God can change the karmic cycle. God can free people from their ongoing karma and jump start a new creative awakening – jump start of newly awakened life. This is the possible power of God, and it is as well a possible power of human beings. As Christ is the archetype for this potential power to be a spiritual healer and redeemer of mankind. Inner spontaneous wisdom is the first possibility for karmic redemption. An inner awakening of love is the next possibility. And thirdly is the outer possibility of a spiritual healer or an example of Christ. All of these possibilities show that God and spiritual purpose have power over karma; God’s love and wisdom is greater than the law of karma; so it can potentially heal or overcome any karmic troubles. The power of God’s love and wisdom is ultimately greater than any other principle at work in the world. But it does not just happen automatically. One has to be ready for it and willing to receive it.