When I was eleven years old I was gifted my Advanced Dungeons & Dragons core rulebooks for Christmas. The Players Handbook, Dungeon Masters Guide, and Monster Manual were accompanied by two additions, Deities & Demigods and the Fiend Folio. I was engrossed with the sheer wealth of the worldwide pantheons scattered throughout history amongst these tomes. Most notably Deities & Demigods that hangs on the wall of my home studio alongside a Clash of the Titans Cinefantastique magazine and my cherished Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Illustrated Screenplay. I’ve always had a fascination with lore and legend, especially stories surrounding the spirit of the adventurer unraveling details of their riveting campaign in a world unknown to me. Little did I know what would be lurking down the road between my Bachelor of Fine Arts: religion, but not what I expected. Religion 101 wasn’t available so I took a graduate studies 400-level course. What I didn’t learn until decades later was that Christianity closed the door on Jewish Mysticism, Kabbalah.
When I took Religion 495 in college at University of Georgia in Athens, it opened my eyes to an entire worldview of religious practices. I never knew that the Christian Old Testament was a translation and continuation of the five books of Moses, the Torah, from Jewish traditions. I grew up in a city where there was only one option, Christian or not. Southern Baptist to be exact. I did have a handful of Jewish friends and classmates, but 99% of our class came from families steeped in fire and brimstone upbringings. If you weren’t a member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at school, you weren’t accepted. Christianity seemed more like a club than a calling. I always felt like an outcast from Sunday school to church and later FCA meetings and praying on the football field. For me, my God was always within me, closer than ever. Never above nor below. My God didn’t wield Heaven and Hell and certainly didn’t bring down fire and brimstone from the heavens onto manmade heathens. I knew my God four weeks before I was born with my wings still intact and in full view to only myself. My God told me that Kabbalah is all true, and it should be considered as a key role in spiritual enlightenment.
George Carlin observed in 1996 that “God is one of the leading causes of death. Has been for thousands of years. Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians all taking turns killing each other ‘cause God told them it was a good idea. The sword of God, the blood of the Lamb, vengeance is mine. Millions…dead…because they gave the wrong answer to the God question: ‘You believe in God?’ ‘No.’ Boom. Dead. ‘You believe in God?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You believe in my God?’ ‘No.’ Boom. Dead.”
My God will never be someone else’s God because our relationship was planted, nurtured, cultivated, and harvested throughout the course of my life, even before I arrived one month early, weak and broken. Born an angelic creature with devilish tendencies. A miracle happened that day. My blood was ordered to be fully replaced in a transfusion. At the last minute, a Doctor rushed in and cancelled the order. My mother’s prayers healed me. A month later, my wings disappeared overnight, but I knew they weren’t gone. Just invisible.
I met my God one month before my wings disappeared, possibly even sooner. He told me “boot camp, remember David, boot camp.” Three years later my Mother taught me how to pray before going to sleep at night. My childhood prayer rug is resting gently behind me lying in front of my fireplace. It’s black, grey, ivory, and crimson. It resembles a universe, but even more so an eye. The God Mom introduced me to was different than the one I first met who felt innate, natural, and loving above all else. The Christian God I was taught to pray to required many rules including dealing out his wrath to the wicked unless they followed the Ten Commandments.
Why do I refer to Him as my God? My inner divine spirit knows that He doesn’t play favorites, there’s no admission fee, and going to church for Catholic Mass on Sundays or Jewish synagogues on Friday and Saturdays won’t grant you access to what’s next. There’s no FCA club to join, no Bible Belt Southern Baptist Crusades. No outfit that will fool Him, let alone the others. I don’t believe in Heaven nor do I believe in Hell. They are both manmade prisons of the mind designed by paranoid rulers, not good humans. When it weighed on my own conscious, I realized rather quickly that no matter what they considered unholy never made a dent in my spiritual armor. Let’s get back to Religion 495 at the University of Georgia in Athens.
When I arrived back in Athens, Georgia from my summer studies abroad in Italy, I had three classes left to take before I could graduate. History, that included passing a United States and State of Georgia Constitution exams. Religious Studies was the second requirement. The final was a physical education credit — I chose jogging. I wasn’t able to register for Religion 101. Only a graduate-level course was available. Something happened on the first day of Religion 495 which opened my eyes that felt absolutely aligned with my own inner knowing. While I never went to class after that first day and scored a 16/100 on the final, somehow I was awarded a passing grade.
Somehow, with God’s help, I made it out alive and enlightened. That one day that I went to class made a considerable impression on me. The power of prayer is real. Alive and breathing. We are not required to participate, but when we do it raises love to an even higher vibration. Why is the universe expanding? Love is the highest vibrational energy and it grows exponentially. The entire universe is a single heart, mind, body, and soul. We are One.