Ananta
Janmasthami
August 30, 2021
The Answer Is Blue.
(One that we don’t have here.)
*For me.
I made an art piece a few years back called ‘The Answer Is Blue.’ I never talked about it though. I figured I’d write something today. And my brain is a little scattered so please forgive me for these thought fragments and ramblings. I am an artist. I was thinking about the ways we interact with this existence this am. How it’s so vast and complex. How we try to make simple answers of it all. For the most part, it can be, but that is a matter of mindset.
I heard a joke about a “Flat Earther” recently.
It goes a lil sum like this:
Flat Earth Guy dies, goes up to be with The Lord.
The Lord says “You made it!”
They laugh and begin a conversation about how eternity is.
Flat Earth Guy says to The Lord “So now that it’s all said and done for me, I gotta ask you a serious question. Seriously, Is the earth flat, or is it round?”
The Lord walks Flat Earth Guy over to a panoramic view of what used to be his universe and says “Look, It’s round.”
Flat Earth Guy looks over at the Earth and says to himself “OH MY GOD this conspiracy goes deeper than I thought.”
This is most of us though. We have ideas about the world, and there isn’t much that is going to change that. I on the other hand decided a while ago, I wanted to scrutinize what I believe. At least to a certain extent. I wanted to know that my ideas will at least hold up to some questioning or debate so that I’m not just blindly following nonsense. I do know that there is SO much we don’t know, but I needed to know that whatever I believe makes some sort of sense.
So I started to look at what I believe as far as God goes. What is consistent throughout other beliefs. What things contradict one another. What works in accordance with things I think are “rational”.
God is, according to everyone that I’ve spoken to that believes in God, beyond our comprehension. Omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent. So whatever Name we put on God, while possibly exclusive to our relationship with God, is in no way a limitation of God.
Kinda in the same way we have relationships, behaviors, even rules with one another, that dictate the familiarity and interactions we have with them. I recently had a conversation with an atheist who became a bit unnerved by something I said:
“Even atheists believe in God, we all just call It something different.”
He stated that he didn’t believe in anything supernatural or any of the “gods” we made up to explain the world (paraphrased). I asked him what he did believe in. There was a lot of disavowing all kinds of ideas and beliefs presented by Judeo-Christian ideologies and other presentations from other Abrahamic religions but no indication of what he believes. I let him know, that, was not the question. Eventually we decided to not talk about it anymore. … he decided actually. But I was genuinely curious. I am sincere in my thinking that God is unlimited.
Beyond the Names I call Her. Beyond the way He is described physically. Beyond the way It is all pervading. It IS science and Logic. It is the intangible and unknown. The taste of water. The ability in us all. Victory Splendor… and everything else.
Most of all LOVE!
So I am always interested to see other people’s relationships with my Love.
In my own relationship, I know that I am severely limited. I know that I am dependent on something far greater than me, for even the simplest tasks, like waking up, or continuing to breath & staying alive while I sleep. So I looked around for the relationship that made most sense to me in that regard. While I was born into a family that practiced Bhakti Yoga and served Krishna, I definitely asked questions about what that means for me. So many things are decided for us before we have a chance to say or do anything about them. Our names, our languages, where we live. These things happen without our consent and while that’s how it HAS to be, we rarely dig deep and reset (if necessary) once we are able to consent, or make our on decisions. My relationship was forged once I could make my decisions, in that I have a relationship with an understanding of God that will cheat for me. It is known within the circles of “bhaktas”, people that study Krishna, that He is crooked in three places. This speaks to His physical form but more importantly, for me, it talks to the idea that this is the form of God that is crooked. Does not follow rules and even breaks them for those that serve Him. There is a story of Arjuna looking to avenge the death of his son. Arjuna makes a vow to destroy one of the men responsible for murdering his son by the sunset of the following day. Without going into great detail, Krishna guides Arjuna as a charioteer, who eventually battles through an entire army to get to the murderer as the sun set. Krishna rearranges time for Arjuna. Depending on what version of the story you hear, Krishna may have arranged for a cloud to hide the sun so it looked as though it set, or Krishna brings the sun back up into the sky. Either way, the point is, we know that Krishna is responsible for Arjuna’s ability to keep his vow. There are quite a few instances where it seems as though Krishna shows favor to those that serve Him, but the scriptures also speak to the idea that Krishna satisfies everyone. While I used to think that was a contradictory concept, I had to unpack all the things I believe, regarding karma, regarding being present in these temporary situations and bodies, regarding longer timelines for our souls than what is obvious from our current perceptions. I see that there is a larger picture. I thought of how I would often have to sacrifice compromise with siblings in situations so that everyone would eventually be satisfied (this time it sucks for you but next time..yada yada). More importantly, I realized that we are all Flat Earth Guy to an extent. We know what we know and irrespective of who tells us what, we are gonna believe what we believe.
“In whatever way people surrender unto me, I reciprocate with them accordingly. Everyone follows my path, knowingly or unknowingly, O son of Pritha.” BG 4.11
This is it! If you want to be an atheist, have at it. God is science. God is intelligence. God is Proof. All that inconceivable space, all of the things that are inexplicable and those that are (in one or a million ways), that’s God. Whatever you want to call It.
But the answer to my personal questions and problems, is Blue. A Blue that this world doesn’t have. Our spectrum of color is limited… but Blue is really close. A Blackish Blue to be more specific. The One that knows I am dependent and I need SomeOne to cheat for me. I could believe that the sun rises for all the scientific reasons it does. I could believe that I wake up everyday because of biology or whatever. AND!!!! The crazy thing is, that would be true. All the science, all of the medicine and whatnot… all true. But that’s not appealing to me. I love the idea that there is SomeOne that is looking out. I love that there is SomeOne that is in love with me, for real. Teaching me that real love comes from some a place that is complete, and requires nothing from me. Gives me free will. That is how I aspire to love. Knowing I need nothing from anyone. Just looking to serve. I’m sure that there is a different way to approach these Truths, but this one speaks to me. It had reciprocated in a way that I felt on a level that cannot be intellectualized. Understanding that one can have a relationship with God as a lover… not in a mundane or material sense, but in a deeply profound sense in which language is insufficient when trying to define. I believe that the goal of this life is Love. As I approach that… what I see looking back looks like all the things I know about Krishna. Not from an explanation, but from an inexplicable place of experience.
Ultimately, if God is and can be any and everything, we get to have the relationships we want, right? And it is all very real and valid. Because God has no limits. So the answer to my question of ‘What is the purpose of life?’ The answer is Blue.