Your 'inner Voice' - Divine Inspiration or your subconscious Thoughts and Feelings?

I received several interesting responses on yesterday’s diary entry. One of them expressed a very common thought on this topic and I would like to elaborate a little bit on this idea. Someone said that he did believe in God but not as a person but as positive energy inside every human. This person – and many others – believes that being inside us, this energy only helps those who help themselves. It is the positive and good in us which guides us. It is then up to us whether we listen to this voice or ignore it.

It is not the first time that I hear this theory and it is not the first time that I feel this philosophy is one of people who are not convinced anymore with the traditional, religious imagination of God but are slowly moving towards a religion-free attitude. It seems as though they are in a state in between, not yet able to fully deny the presence of God but not anymore wanting to believe what different religions want them to either.

I fully acknowledge the fact that there is something like ‘an inner voice’. I believe however that this is a combination of your feelings and your experiences, a way of your subconscious mind to tell you what would be good. I don’t think that this ‘voice’ or belly feeling is anything divine. On the contrary, it is something that is very human – and sometimes it can tell you to do something which could bring you into trouble! I generally think it is good to listen to this voice but then again, you have to realize where it comes from. If it is a result of your inner desires, it is fully fine and you should definitely listen to it. If you notice that you feel from inside to do something out of anger for example, because your ego is hurt or any similar reason, you know where it comes from and you should not listen to it! If you do, you can get a violent response and regret your decision later on.

Believers of this theory always have a very great explanation for such situations, too: that was not the divine voice but your ego. You were just not able to distinguish in between them! Or, if you got into a bad situation without even hearing your ‘inner voice’, people say that you were not listening and did not give God a chance. They claim you got a lot of signs but just didn’t follow them.

In the end it looks as though you are trying to play God’s lawyer, defending him. Your argument is that he did give you signs and that he is not bringing you in bad situations, you are doing that yourself. If we come back to yesterday’s example of a rape victim, this means you, too, are blaming the rape victim that she was raped.

I know that anybody with this philosophy will fully oppose this statement. It is logical however and true. You are probably just trying to find a way to express your belief that does not offend anybody – neither believers nor non-believers. Realistically however there is no way in between. Non-believers will not accept that God is an ‘inner voice’ and believers will probably not be very happy that you reduce God’s powers to only this much.

Give up, you cannot satisfy both parties. You are on the way to not believing – just take the last step and accept that whatever you do is your own decision, influenced by nothing else than your own feelings, thoughts and subconscious events.