Who Do You Think You Are?

Who Do You Think You Are?

Just typing the title words gives me a shame shiver up my spine. 


The question always came with a glare and a dare. 


When in my youth I ventured forward with any hint of autonomy my mother would put on her best daring look and pose the dreaded question that always put me back in place:


“Who do you think you are?” 


While it was framed in the form of a question it was most definitely a declaration that requested no answer. In fact, it dared not be answered. I knew better. I knew just by seeing the preceding glare that I had already said too much. To offer more words would be too illicit more wrath. 


“Who do you think you are?”


Shame shiver. Stunned silence. Slither away. 


And I have been repeatedly asking myself that question my entire life. 


And I know from decades of counseling others that I am not alone in that inquiry. Each of us seem to be encoded with a “who am I” question baked into our being. 


Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose? 


Those questions are at the very core of our incarnations. We seem to enter this realm of experience to encounter those inquiries and then to spend much of our lifetimes pursuing concentric answers to them. And it has been my experience that as soon as I think I have come upon an answer the answer becomes illusive, and I am thrown back into the questions. 


We are each and all of us carefully programmed by our tribe of origin. When I use the word tribe I understand that you may refer to it as family or even culture. I say tribe because of its origins that precede modern culture. We were conditioned and programmed to fit the beliefs and norms of our “people.” We were forced to fit those norms, or we were cast out by our tribe. Beliefs were and, in many ways, still are do or die. Fit in or get out. We need the tribe to survive, and so the stakes were and are high. 


The dare and glare that I experienced as a child was generational in its nature. The question of “who do you think you are” was a demand for compliance. I frequently and painfully pushed the limits that were set for me. The “who” that was handed down was ill fitting. It was too tight. It didn’t make sense to my Soul. I did not believe the limits that I was cast into. And so, I daringly challenged what I was told. I questioned the authority of what did not make sense. I fought to set my own parameters. I really wanted but was too fearful to meet that question with a question of my own:


“Who do you think you are to tell me who I am?”


I again feel the shiver of shame and the echo of my mother’s dare as I type the words. Yet I am no longer afraid of the dare, the glare, or the question. In fact, the visceral reaction to being dared has become a central part of my evolved ability to respond as my own authority. 


While not fully realized I am well on my way to an embodied and empowered response to that question. 


Who do I think I am?


I know who I am, and I know what I am. 


Knowing what and who I am is the very impulse of my incarnation. Those questions of who I am and why I am here have propelled me forward and so underlie everything I have ever done. I now dare myself, minus the glare, to be all I am called to be. I am living into the answer daily. Internal knowing is the why of my being. And that is why it informs how I live and what I do. 


I truly and deeply believe that we are here to ask and to answer that question for ourselves. And developing the capacity to know what and who we are is central and foundational to coming to know our Source. Our Allness. Our Oneness. 


A prayer that is a mantra for me is “Who am I, Allness: and who and What are you? 


“Who am I, Allness: and who and What are you?” 


I am humbly bowled over by the unmistakable answer within my heart. 


“Who do you think you are?” “And why do you think you need to ask?” “You are What I Am. You are the question, and you are the answer. You are All in the process of becoming One.”


And so, now I know. 


All is. I Am. And that is All that is. 

Rev. Taylor E. Stevens • February 25, 2025

User-Friendly God

By Rev. Taylor E. Stevens • March 9, 2025
I did not grow up with a user-friendly God. If you have read my two previous blog posts, you will know I have taken on the impossible task of putting into words what is far beyond words. It is the primary challenge of what I have done for the past thirty years. I use words, concepts, and images to describe the indescribable. I paint word pictures of what ultimately cannot be seen. I try to energetically convey what is essential and yet invisible. As challenging as it is it is also the dynamic that continues to deepen and to open me to a more mature and engaging spiritual life. I am grateful for the challenge regardless of how frustrating it can sometimes feel. It is within and from the Essential that I live and so express. I spend the largest part of my days opening to creative ways in which to share what I find so alluring and transformative. I grew up in a religious home with almost no spirituality. I was taught about an up and out God that had little felt relevance to my actual experience. It was conceptual without being personal. This religion gave me the impression that something or someone was always watching and judging me as less than good enough. I could never measure up. I was told that this super God loved me, yet I was also taught of a cruel and murderous God who savagely tormented “his” creations. I could not reconcile theology with a whispering of something bigger and greater in my heart. I felt as if I were being lied to. That these fear-based fables were far from the truth that I sensed in my heart and throughout creation. I suspected that it was ignorance that was being preached from the pulpit. An ignorance that wasn’t inherently evil but that carried devastating consequences. As I have said before I felt like the God being portrayed had a personality disorder. Confusion filled me as I felt drawn to and yet repelled away from this “God” of the church. The crosses that filled every space were accusatory. I shuttered at every glance. I took it personally, even as a young child. That “old rugged cross” was indeed an emblem of suffering and shame. I did not have a user-friendly God. And so, I again seek to capture with words my experience of going from what I described above to what I live in now. It was not an easy or comfortable journey. It was arduous. It was a rumble. I gave up many times, only to be drawn back into my own internal fray. It was a burning passion that I grew to know as my primary purpose. I discovered I was here to go from the torment of theology to the triumph of a transcendent spirituality. While there remain occasional wafts of the old thought system, I can honestly say that a delivery has occurred. A personal salvation. A quantum leap in consciousness. In simplistic terms: I have grown up. I have grown up experientially from a theological God to a reality I choose to call ALL. That was the topic of my first blog post. From God to ALL has been the most transformative experience of my lifetime. It has been an internal quantum leap that has changed everything. For me there is no God above except that is everywhere present. It is ALL of creation, which includes me. That was the topic of my second blog. To simply those two missives: ALL Is. I Am. I am a living expression of Allness, here to be the All in All. Everything that ALL is, I am. All is my Essence. It is what I am at the deepest level of my being. All is always becoming within and as me. I am evolving up and forward as All. It is my most authentic why. I think of it and feel it as an “All Call.” Why I am is to answer the All Call within me. That is my purpose. And my purpose is empowered by All. And so, once again I seek to capture in words what is so ethereal, contextual, ephemeral and yet is moving within me in very real ways. It is All Power made personal in my inner experience. It is Infinite, and yet intimate. It is “Almighty,” and yet already within my heart as every beat. Every breath. An image that feels vital and alive for me is that I am a personal wave in the Sea of All. Everything that is the Sea is also in the wave. In my fascination with myself as a wave I forget I am part of the Sea. I identify with being a wave. I look at other waves, seeing them as separate as I see myself. I experientially crash into them, losing touch with the Allness that is ever present in every wave. Stormy or still, the Sea will always be the Sea. When this lifetime of being a wave ends I will resolve back into my natural state of “Sea-ness.” Me-ness is in fact Sea-ness. All is. I Am. Sea is. Wave I am. I smile typing these words as I feel a realization that Divine oceanography is for me more valid that most theology. Right now, I have many high waves of experience in my experience. There are moments I admittedly feel pretty seasick. Yet I remain aware that everything that is happening is happening within the Sea of Allness. I remain aware that at my core I am that Allness. I know that my personal sea will calm once again. For me that is an unmistakable reality. It is for me to surf the waves that are ultimately me, finding calm in knowing that I will always be the Sea. I share these images and these meanderings as they are part of what has given me a now “user friendly God.” The fear-based fright inducing theology of the past is just that: the past. While I personally don’t call “God” “God,” I trust you will feel my heart. When I say “user” I trust you will understand that I mean practical, personal, intimate, internal, reliable. I have learned to use the Laws of Allness to co-create a more hospitable atmosphere in which to dwell. Those Laws are not to be feared. They are to be used. I will elaborate on that in a future missive.  While I did not grow up with a user-friendly God I have grown into One. It has taken many trials and many seeming errors. And yet where I reside today is so very worth the effort. And I relish the chance to share my journey with all of you.

This Thing Called God

By Rev. Taylor E. Stevens • February 19, 2025
This thing called God stopped working for me a few decades ago. I realize for some that may sound blasphemous. If I were referring to the theological God of my upbringing it would indeed be just that. I would likely be struck down before completing another sentence. Which is part of the reason this thing called God ceased to work for me. I grew up hearing that “God” is love, and that God is a Big Guy in the sky that seemed to have anger issues and a major personality disorder. “He” was always smiting something or someone. “He” sent plagues, drowned Egyptians, and ordered a blood sacrifice in the person of “his” only begotten. From an early age this felt bizarre, savage, confusing, and just plain wrong. I was taught that we were made in the image and likeness of “God.” That only made sense in that many people are bizarre, savage, confusing, and behave in ways that are just plain wrong. And that perceptual shift was the beginning of freedom for me. The problem isn’t so much that “God” made us in “his” image. The problem is that we made “God” in OUR image. Humans throughout the centuries invented theologies composed of misperception, projections, and shadow beliefs. The Big Guy in the sky was comprised of all the parts we little people here on earth could not account for or tolerate. We could not reconcile human incongruities, so we cast them toward the heavens and made up a lower place called hell to counterbalance it. It was when this thing called “God” stopped working for me that I felt called to start working for something bigger than “God.” From “God” to Allness has been the greatest adventure and deepest fulfillment of my lifetime. It was a quantum leap in consciousness. It feels as if it took a lifetime and yet happened in a nanosecond. Allness is what I choose to now call Source. Source Essence All is the Infinite SEA in which everything lives and has its Being. It is only up and out because it is Absolute and everywhere present. “All” is in that sense both up and out and down and in. I am comprised of non-dual Absolute All which is Law, and which is Love. It is Infinite Intelligence. It has no personality and so no disorder. People who are out of touch with All will project out a God that is more human malfunction than what the Allness actually is. God is objective and All is subjective. God is an object, albeit a Super-object. It is a huge He that generations have sought to appease, please, get to, ward off, satisfy, sanctify. It is outside of humanity, mostly looking down upon. Subjective Allness is the permeating Essence of literally All that is. It is All intelligence begetting Itself as creation ever creating. It is within us and all around us. It is relational flow. In this realm It is All that is, yet somehow also more. It is Allness somehow always seeking to be more via Its creations. The best thing that ever happened to me spiritually is when “God” stopped working for me. The concept of God was too ill fitting. It was unattainable as an object. It was a big man figure that I could never get or feel close to. As a felt-sense experience of Allness began to move within and through me I realized I was already within what I had been seeking. My breath was the breath of All. The animating presence in my body was All. There was no big man to appease or please. All is Life. All of Life. My life. My living. My love. All love. So, I pray you can feel below and above my words. Feel the Allness that already contains you, me, everyone and everything. Breathe it. Feel it. Let it be free within you. When the concept of God stopped working for me a far greater reality opened for and in me. It is what I term All. It is filling my heart as I type these words. It is a felt-relating that moves as a mobius from my heart to you the reader. It is bigger than God. It is All that is.