Several nights ago I woke up with a cramp in my calf.  As I lay there trying to relax both leg and mind, I knew that the pressures of my recent days had brought me to this point of dysfunction.

Finally, being unsuccessful in letting the thoughts go and the cramp worsening, I got up, put my robe on, and left the bedroom so as not to disturb my sleeping wife.

I began to first hobble groggily, then walk through the living room, kitchen, hallway, circling through my apartment praying and stretching as the pain and tension subsided.  I walked for about 10 minutes until my mind cleared and the pain went away.

On what was to be my last lap I suddenly stopped in the middle of the living room rug as I contemplated both mental condition and body and this thought came searing through my brain: We are the inventions of a far greater mind. 

I began to think once again about what a wondrous invention my body is and how it has really very little to do with me.  I didn’t create it, I don’t understand it, I don’t really maintain it, it even appears, at times, to be self healing, etc., etc. – thoughts I’ve had all to often of late.

I walked on …

I began to imagine a man sitting somewhere in another dimension, an alien from outer space perhaps, ;o) certainly a mind far greater than my own feeble flutterings, perhaps working on a hobby like a person might build a ship in a bottle.

This mind or ‘man’ or ‘woman’ or ‘being’ decides, in its spare time, to occupy his giant brain by building a universe and placing in the middle of that universe a fascinating little ball of matter called Planet Earth.

Then being bored with this universe thing, he (or she) decides to populate it with little beings – all different, with these fascinating micro bodies that are splendid inventions of technology …

You get the idea.

After about the tenth additional lap, my mind whirring, my pace quickening, my imagination running rampant considering the adventures of my newfound friend and creator, I suddenly stopped – actually at the same place on the living room rug where this all began.

“That’s God” came the thought.

Perhaps you saw this right from the beginning, but I hadn’t.  It was a total surprise to me and, well … a revelation.

We are inventions of a far greater mind.

Does the metaphor of the story play out perfectly?  Perhaps; perhaps not.  It is, after all, just a metaphor.  I don’t believe that God is a space alien and of late I don’t even believe in a God that is a He or a She, but rather an It.  Star Wars “The Force” often comes to mind as a good one, and, when pressed, I’m most satisfied with Love or even The Allness of Goodness.

I’m pretty clear that our English language hasn’t yet come up with the words or a better word than “God.”

But going along, for a moment here, with my rampant imagination’s metaphor the other night, I had to ask myself if there was really a ‘thing’ like a body containing this Mind that did the inventing.  After all, why should the Allness of Mind have to be housed in anything, any form of container?  How can the All in all be contained?

And are we something that my friend, the creator, just imagined or did he actually build us there in his study late at night in his alone time while his wife and children slept?

Am I and my body just his imagination at work, or did he actually get out his tweezers and box of nanobot clay and begin to construct?

I once took a beautiful autumn red leaf to my spiritual teacher and asked him, “Who created this leaf?”  His explanation to me was that God was the designer, but not the builder – this too a metaphor.  But the explanation sufficed.  God is the architect, but not the contractor.

It’s His dream, His imagination at work.  I really have very little to say in it all.  I am here just to reflect His wishes, His imaginations.

The thoughts centered me.  They healed me.  They seemed to have put me in my place.  They stripped away the pressures of my life and gave me a completely new perspective on life.  They gave me distance and allowed me to see things from a different angle.

I was not in control.  He is.

I wrote down that central thought and it’s sat here on my desk for several days now to remind me …

We are inventions of a far greater mind.