Recently I was at a meeting and celebration. Various presenters got up on stage, and great music bands too. One of the presenters, a senior academic, asked the audience the question:
“What is your image of God?“
It was a challenge for us to look honestly within and see what kind of image we had of God, what we believe and feel and think we know about God.
Suddenly my journey with seeking the truth about God throughout my whole life was sitting there with me. Some of the audience got up the courage to stand and speak on microphones about their images of God. I wanted to do that too. But I had so much to share! Where to begin? Share just one bit? But which bit? I felt it would be miserly to share just one bit, but to share it all would take all day and deprive others of the space to speak. What to do? I chose to write this blog.
My Family and my Introduction to School, God and Religion
It began as a young child of six going to school. Once a week all the students were shuffled out of our usual classes and separated into groups according to our religion for ‘Religious Instruction’. It felt weird being split apart from our friends and classmates, and expected to feel some kind of special kinship with strangers who happened to be born as whatever religion their parents followed.
I had been christened Congregational, like my Mum and her Dad before her. I had no idea what that meant, and there were no other kids in that category so I ended up in the ‘odds and ends’ class. We had two very elderly ladies who supervised our class and read the Bible to us. I found it pretty boring and couldn’t wait for the lesson to end. Kids got unruly and distracted, and that didn’t help encourage a studious attitude.
But it raised the question – who or what is this God character?
My family was not religious, in fact, most were quite anti-religious. Mum had loved singing in church as a child and she was probably the most religiously inclined in our family, although it was not overtly expressed until I was in my twenties. Dad had no time for religion. Many people’s only experience of going to church was to attend weddings, and this was so in our case. We were not church-goers, though I vaguely remember being in a church once with relatives, for some reason, being handed a prayer book and expected to join the congregation in singing songs I didn’t know. I recall being most fascinated by the incredible thinness of the book’s pages! Basically there was nothing at home to encourage questions about God.
As an active, curious, imaginative child I had many other things to do: school, taking my younger brother and sister on adventures, collecting bugs and rocks, raising frogs and fish, scientific experiments, reading, art, bikes, pets, games, making stuff… always busy and never bored. We needed no entertainment – our own imaginations and zest for life were more than enough. God and religion were not on the list and there was no pressure or indoctrination. That was great as it meant we were free to make our own discoveries when and if we were ever ready.
We knew someone who’d had a difficult childhood and had become wayward, in lots of trouble, doing terrible things. He was ‘saved’ by the church, and became intensely missionary about Christianity. People considered him to be obsessed, not normal, and they avoided, pitied and rejected him. My mum had compassion and understanding for him though, and I got to see that God and his son Christ were very real for him, a source of great joy and meaning for him. I didn’t experience that myself, but his passion piqued my interest.
Beginning my own Research into God and Religion
I began my researches into religion rather patchily. Sometimes in bed at night I read bits of the New Testament Bible to see if it held any answers about God that I could relate to. I just drifted, reading whatever page I opened to, trying to understand all the strange writing styles and events and characters. It felt like there must be some truth and really interesting stuff in there somewhere, except that I was not finding it. I did find contradictions and more questions than answers though.
God was supposed to be a loving, grey-bearded, kingly and fatherly figure on a throne up in the sky or up on mountains, and yet even on a clear day or night you couldn’t see him up there. I spent a lot of ‘scientific’ time outside looking at the sky day and night and I never saw a guy on a throne. God was sometimes depicted as a huge, terrifying, judgmental hand coming down from the clouds. Attached to what? Surely when there are no clouds and you do something wrong, you should be able to see him attached to his arm and accusing finger? So both images felt wrong and I could not accept them, not to mention that they were quite contradictory to each other.
How could an absolutely loving God also mete out terrible judgments of vengeance and devastation?
Then there was prayer. People did it, and they seemed very earnest about it, so I tried it. I felt silly, talking to someone who did not seem to be there, never gave any sign of having heard me, and in every way imaginable just did not seem to exist.
As I got a bit older and understood more science, another whopping contradiction became apparent. How could God be male when there was only one God? Male without female is like the right shoe without the left: useless and pointless. Thus God must be either gender or both. At least I got that bit sorted out in my mind! But it still didn’t answer what God was, or whether there even was one. I had no image of my own, just other people’s images – all of which I rejected.
Home, Nature and my Neighbourhood – where was God?
But while my quest to understand religion and find out what God is went on, there was something else very real to me that was non-physical and inexplicable.
I grew up in a working class, poorly educated Aussie family. We had little money and lived in Government housing – a family of 5 crammed into half a house. Like many of the households in that neighbourhood there was alcoholism and domestic violence. Constant choking cigarette smoke. Women at home taking tranquilisers and painkillers all day. Abusive behaviour. Self-sacrificing behaviour. I could barely stand it, retreating into myself, and retreating into Nature – the only places where all was harmonious and made sense to me, where I felt truth, where I felt I belonged and could be truly myself and at peace.
And there was another sanctuary, like the inner form of the outer Nature. Deep inside me, in the region of my heart, but somehow not confined by the thickness of my physical body, was a ‘place’, more like a ‘presence’. There was a core of light: an inviolable, unwavering, dependable, powerful, shining flame that could be trusted to always be there and not be tainted, destroyed, weakened or taken away no matter how dark and ugly things got around me, no matter how hurt or angry or afraid I felt; no matter how much I would have despaired of life, I had that core of light inside me. It sustained me through challenges that many of the kids in our neighbourhood did not get through.
In my part of the city I knew of a sixteen-year-old boy who was already a convicted, repeated rapist and car thief and went to jail young. Pre-pubescent kids were involved in pack fights, getting badly injured. Young girls were getting pregnant. One boy not even in his teens was already a drug dealer and was involved in his brother’s death from an overdose. A woman was carted away on a stretcher, dying of an overdose of a painkiller while her young daughters looked on. A father stood over his son with a big leather strap, supervising the boy’s homework, and every break in attention was met with a beating. The boy turned to a life of crime, and ended up suiciding. A trouble-seeking father was beaten to a pulp at a party and sustained permanent brain damage.
When I was 13 or 14 years old, one older boy who’d been vicious and threatening towards me and my siblings, recently home on leave from the Vietnam war, stood proudly in his army uniform talking about the war. He seemed to love the war and I felt that fitted with his cruel character. I asked him: “What do you like most about the war?” His answer: “The killing.” He was serious!
Stories like this were repeated in various forms throughout most of the neighbourhood. At night you could hear the screaming fights of parents and the thumps of physical violence in other homes.
Where was God? Not anywhere around here!
Asking Difficult Questions about God which went Unanswered
Once my Dad befriended a man from the Salvation Army and, enthused by his new friend, took me and my brother to attend their Sunday school. I resented having my Sundays taken away, expected to sit listening to stuff that didn’t make sense. I was rewarded for the quality of my drawings and ability to regurgitate ‘facts’, but that seemed to me to have nothing to do with religion. I was disgusted. I asked difficult questions. They were not answered. I told my father I refused to go to Sunday school any more, and that was the end of that.
Religious missionaries frequently came and knocked on doors – mostly Jehovah’s Witnesses, plus a few Mormons. I asked them difficult questions. If God made only Adam and Eve, and all of humanity came from them, wouldn’t it mean that brothers and sisters had mated incestuously, and the children should be deformed? How could God be male if he was the only one of his kind? How do they know he exists?
If the one and only God wrote the one and only Bible, why are there so many different versions?
If all men are equal, why do religious people act as if they are superior to others and say that they’re the only ones who are right? What about women? If God is love, we are his children, and we are to treat all people as equals, why aren’t we? How can we be made in the image of God when we all look so different?
The door-knockers usually became uncomfortable and left, unable to answer my questions.
As a teenage high school student and young university student I found that science had nothing useful to say about God either. It pretty much conveyed the idea that God was just a comfortable superstitious belief and had no basis in fact or nature.
No answers for me in science, nor in any religions, with all their fighting and denigration of each other.
I did not seriously study the non-Christian religions, but dipped a toe in enough to sense that they were just as equally empty of any real love, equality or divinity. And yet they all seemed to have the same core principles, that no-one was recognising or living. I kept saying that all religions are really one and need to re-unite. But no-one listened; I didn’t feel that they even understood what I was saying. I stopped talking about it.
Finding the Answers for Myself… Growing my own Sense of God
As an adult I thought I must be an atheist, convinced there was no God, or at least an agnostic, undecided about the matter. Intellectually that kind of fitted, except for a constant sense that underneath all that, I was actually religious and knew that God existed in some form, without any ‘evidence’ to prove it to myself or anyone else.
It kept coming back to me: I had to find the answers for myself.
I felt there had to be some connection between the stillness and harmony of Nature, and this enigmatic concept – God. It seemed to me that if there was a God, it was that special something which was in all the awe-inspiring order, beauty and intelligence of Nature, not just a finite figure up in the sky or in some mythical paradise.
And whatever God might be, it had a similar feel to that core of light inside me.
It had a similar feel to the feeling of selfless care and love for others that I felt in my heart, and to the ‘conscience’ that was always there guiding my choices and preventing me from doing wrong. I did not attach the name ‘God’ to my core of light and love or my conscience, as I was still in rejection of all the images of God that existed in society around me. I suppose my own private sense of God was growing and developing, without form, while humanity and its works and beliefs continued to look like a loveless, godless mess.
Enter ‘Evidence’ of God… and the New Age
I didn’t speak about God with other people; it was such a fruitless topic. But one day when I was a 21-year-old university science student (as I’ve shared with a few people and written about before), I was at an end-of-year departmental party. A professor of mathematics said to me: “You can’t study Pure Mathematics for long before you realise there must be a God.” This was an awesome moment! Here was a modern reductionist scientist who’d found satisfactory ‘evidence’ of God in nature.
And as I looked more and more for myself, it was inescapable. We were being taught about the senseless randomness of particle movements, ‘blind, directionless nature’ and purely physical evolution, which might appear accurate on small scales, but did not ‘cut the mustard’ in the big picture for me. And modern science to this day still has no grasp of how the miracles of embryology or consciousness are even possible.
Enter the New Age. Some denied the existence of God, some spoke of God being not male, but a Goddess, some spoke of having conversations with God, some said there were lots of gods and they were all really just archetypes in the human mind, some claimed God was an alien, some that God was a physical man living in a certain country, some said they had seen God and drew pictures of ‘him’ or ‘her’. For me, it all went into the trash can of illusion pretty quickly.
All I had was my enduring non-image of God as possibly being connected with the feelings of light and love and conscience deep inside me, and the essence of all of Nature. It fitted with what Jesus said about the Kingdom of God being inside us, and yet God being everywhere and being all-knowing love and light.
Enter Theosophy, Esoteric Studies, Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, God, and Me…
Enter theosophy, esoteric studies, Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine in 2002. A great leap forward in my understanding of God! Initially I had an academic approach and many interesting revelations from the knowledge imparted in books and presentations. But I still squirmed at the mention of the word ‘God’ and had trouble even saying it because of all the false pictures I had seen in society up to this point.
However, as my choices changed upon the basis of experimenting with the new knowledge, for example quitting drugs, changing my diet, claiming a higher level of awareness and responsibility, etc, my ability to directly sense and experience things that are beyond physical and scientific understanding has grown.
My inner voice of wisdom has grown. My sense of God has grown, and is still growing.
I have not seen a grey-haired man on a throne or a big hand coming from the sky! I have not felt sinful, lesser, guilty or judged by some power above me! But I have felt the indescribable stillness that is the foundation of the harmony, order and intelligence in Nature.
I have felt and seen in another human being the magnitude of love, truth, joy, harmony, stillness, responsibility, care and understanding that are to me defining attributes of God, and felt them grow within me too, from contact with that greatness freely given without expectation or imposition. I have seen the light and love in my core shining in the eyes of another person, and increasing numbers of people, and know without doubt that we are all one, we are all held in the body of God and we all contain the all.
I still don’t have an ‘image’ of God, but I feel I now know something of God, for real. It’s taken 6 decades, and this is still only the beginning!
By Dianne Trussell
Further Reading:
My True and False Experiences of God
The Many Faces of God
Science without Religion is Lame, Religion without Science is Blind
Living religion: a relationship with self, love and God
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The Truth about Universal Medicine 
Many times in my teens and through until my 40’s there were times of despair and isolation, but an inner knowing and sensing of a flame of light burning deep within, that could never be extinguished. `It was this light that always ‘got me through’ those rough patches.
“There was a core of light: an inviolable, unwavering, dependable, powerful, shining flame that could be trusted to always be there and not be tainted, destroyed, weakened or taken away no matter how dark and ugly things got around me, no matter how hurt or angry or afraid I felt; no matter how much I would have despaired of life, I had that core of light inside me.”
So true Elizabeth and ‘Our Father’s House has many mansions’ for us to deepen our connection with.
What if we are all of God and there is an energy that is determined to keep us away from our return to this inner knowing through apre-determining our thoughts and actions, that we think these are our own thoughts and this is who we are. A very sorry state of affairs for the majority of the human race being separated from truth.
“What do you like most about the war?” His answer: “The killing.” He was serious!
There is a part here where you talk about your childhood with your enthusiastic and curious approach to life, and I can see the value in this because besides that fact of God and religion and all that comes with both of those words, at the end of the day, something that unites all of humanity no matter what – is the fact that we all are learning all of the time. So in my view, to be actively engaged with that aspect of this life is a great quality to have.
I too felt uncomfortable with the words God and Religion as there are so many connotations to these words and society has used them in such as way that they have lost their true meaning. These words have been bastardised and so it is for each of us to bring back their true meaning and the more we are able to bring back this meaning then the more we can relate to the words and realise that they are not incarcerating words, but rather very freeing and fulfilling ones indeed!
I still too flinch in certain company with the word God and have a feeling of shame which is so sad really and considering so many people believe in God quite openingly it just shows how much it has been bastardised.
Great Question: how does God look like to you…and the classic image that we are fed is of a friendly Caucasian white bearded man sitting on throne on a cloud up in the skies, or a large serious man with a staff of some kind and eying off the ‘sinners’. No different to the image we have been fed of Jesus being blond and blue eyed. So it is wise to ask – where are these images coming from anyways? And why do we fall for them hook line and sinker when in fact most of them are completely false?
As I grew up, I used to imagine god as being a very kind, white bearded man with a white gown. Today, this image is fading away, I still get a sense that God is caring, but I question what exactly is my connection with God? What is my relationship with God? Great questions to open up to and bring into my everyday.
I’ve always known that God is as real as I am but I have not deeply considered exactly what and who god is as I get the sense that God is so incredible I cannot fully conceive his/her image.
We blame God for this world, when all along it’s us who fight ourselves, who cause the chaos. For in our true nature we know divinity’s ebb and flow – all we need to do is honour that and we will be with God again.
We think we are fighting God or each other but in truth we are only fighting ourselves so that we do not express the sheer godliness and gorgeousness we each in essence are.
I would say that your story is one for many, there might be very different experiences but the essence of the story would be the same. A deep knowing that something is ‘out there’ with a plan for us all but 99% of what is presented does not ring 100% true. It was true for me, and like you I tried various means of connecting to what is ‘out there’, but it was only when I found Universal Medicine, did I truly find God and confirm what I knew deep down but had not been able to connect to as what was being presented as God was not true.
“And whatever God might be, it had a similar feel to that core of light inside me.” To know God is to know who you are.
Imagine that we are searching along the spectrum of atheism to fundamental religion for many lifetimes, when all the time God is known in that quality of stillness and harmony within us all and nature.
There are many images of God, or Gods if take account of the many different religions that there are, this blog has made me realise how we expect God to look a certain way, yet we are looking outside of ourselves for a picture or an image, when in truth God can be felt from within, and once we have that connection from within we realise He equally lives in all of us.
God can be felt within, keep it simple, God lives in all of us.
What if our images of god actually keep us from feeling exactly what God is? What if these images are stopping us from feeling something that is so easily accessible to us?
To see God as someone, something far grander than us is something I used to do, even today I can do that and yet when I am honest I can see that God is an equal grandness to who I truly am which is far more than that which I live. Therefore God is no greater than me, I just choose to be lesser than God.
God never leaves us; we leave God. I always find this a great thing to remember.
What strikes me is that people who are regarded as intelligent become religious in the sense of belonging to an institutionalised religion yet hold an authority which is greater than another. I have felt and sensed this. It stopped me in my tracks. How could this way of being come from God? How could this way of being be religious? And what was the reflection being offered to me to learn from? At that time as I reflect I was also not coming from God as I had placed through my beliefs and ideals this person above me and I was making myself less. This way of behaviour changed as I began to see God for who he truly was and then guess what, instead of being made to feel less I experienced jealousy!
I never had one doubt about God and never could find complete truth in what religions are presenting until I became aware of the teachings by Serge Benhayon And the religion The way of the livingness. All feels true in my whole body.
I understand, I have had so many images of God and what / who God is, now I am coming to live and embody a knowing that God is one all within, from within when we speak truth and Love we are of God. We do not need to seek anything outside of our self, I still can resist what this means in full, but I so know it to be true, the sense of Love, Space and Stillness and Settlement in my body cannot be denied.
Not being able to even say the word ‘God’ happens to many, possibly those who have an innate sense that what is presented by institutionalised religions in their many guises and with conflicting imagery is so far removed from what God is, that they don’t even want to use a word that in itself stands for so much misrepresentation if not utter lies and deception.
The word ‘God’ has been so completely bastardised, that many people resist using the word God.
“How could God be male when there was only one God?”- Great observation Dianne, and one that I am sure no Christian theologist could truly answer. Also, your question of; “How can we be made in the image of God when we all look so different?” – This one feels like it has a basis on the fact that the majority of humanity is in a constant drive towards individualism, standing out as being different and looking for acceptance/recognition from others without connecting to their inner divinity, which would be totally cool with simply knowing their similarity with God without a need for outer confirmation.
“There was a core of light: an inviolable, unwavering, dependable, powerful, shining flame that could be trusted to always be there and not be tainted, destroyed, weakened or taken away no matter how dark and ugly things got around me…” – This statement brought tears to my eyes, because as I read it I not only felt deeply how I have known this to be true my whole life, even in the darkest of times, but also that I could feel God’s never-ending love and patience in my return to my Soul and connection to that inner Light.
I love the exploration you describe here Dianne, and it’s honesty and willingness to look and be open. I’ve come to an understanding that I am deeply religious and this is not something I would have considered or even tolerated in another a few years ago … as I’ve come more deeply to understanding and building my relationship with me I’ve come to know that and understand that God exists, and I can feel that that in nature, with another person, in simple things like a big sky … it’s magic.
You confirm that the images of God that it has suited us to create are not real and nor are the dogmas, commandments and religious tenets that prescribe this or that. God is not found outside of us and nor is He captured by scripture or depiction. His magnificence and love are all-encompassing and until we move closer to and reacquaint ourselves with our own grandness, we cannot even start to do this magnificence justice – but we can all feel it.
God’s ‘ magnificence and love are all-encompassing and until we move closer to and reacquaint ourselves with our own grandness, we cannot even start to do this magnificence justice – but we can all feel it.” Beautiful, and so true.
‘There was a core of light: an inviolable, unwavering, dependable, powerful, shining flame that could be trusted to always be there and not be tainted, destroyed, weakened or taken away no matter how dark and ugly things got around me, no matter how hurt or angry or afraid I felt; no matter how much I would have despaired of life, I had that core of light inside me.’ No pictures, just feeling the connection we all have within our body with the divine, with God. I loved reading your blog and could relate to most of the images you were sharing, thank you Dianne
We have the word ‘God’ and it is a very precious word. Through time it has come to mean the name of a person, an ‘almighty’ person who has so much power and control. But what if the word ‘God’ actually relates to an energy source that all people everywhere can be and are in fact constantly a part of…?
Removing all the images and pictures we may have of God …what a great place to start. God is felt and known from within.
Agreed Victoria, there are so many misconceptions about the word and concept of God and yet when we strip it back we do indeed feel God from within.
Great and deeply insightful account of what most of us have discovered or gone through, in one way or another. The concept of God in popular parlance and the religious versions don’t even come near the stupendousness that is God, especially not when we keep imposing human physical attributes and emotions onto God because we lack connection and true education and instruct.
I too asked awkward questions about God that no one, even vicars, could answer. It wasn’t until I came to some Universal Medicine presentations that my questions were answered in a way that seemed true to me. Understanding more about karma and reincarnation – suddenly so much made sense of the world.
Thank you Dianne for this brilliant blog. I loved re-reading it and getting a sense of the quest you took yourself on to find God. It is great not to have an image of God because whatever image we have is false, as God does not need images but is simply to be felt and experienced.
For me, knowing God is part of the magical relationship we can have with the fact that we belong to something so much grander than we can ever imagine. It’s the magical part of life that doesn’t quite make sense but makes every day incredible.
It’s interesting to consider if our image of God is really ‘our’ image or is it something that we have picked up over the years – a conglomeration of beliefs and ideals or reactions to what others say God is rather than it being something we have freely felt from within ourself…
We are so used to having images for everything instead of living with divine impulse. God can be known, intuited and felt by us while on earth, and most of th images are way off!
A clear check that you have swayed off path is if you have an image of anything.
One will only find God if he looks in place’s where God resides and that is within us all.
Reading, ‘I still don’t have an ‘image’ of God, but I feel I now know something of God, for real.’ I too don’t have an image but do feel I know something of God but realise I’ve not appreciated and fostered this knowing as I could have. What’s got in the way has been this unconscious searching for an image or something that is concrete ‘proof’. There’s been a degree of not trusting what I’ve known but also knowing it 100%. So there’s also been a need, a wanting to prove what I know, a non acceptance that the world is deliberately set up to ignore what is known intuitively and felt, which includes the truth of God. The world ruling that things are only proven using the 5 senses is a set up. Seeing this for what it is, and how people can choose to follow this or not, I can let go of other’s choices and simply deepen my relationship with God and bring this beauty to the world through my expression.
How wonderful it is to discard all those images we have of God and get back to the truth of the matter as we know it to be for ourselves.
I so agree that we can’t have a fixed image about what God is, as soon as we try to ‘fix’ an image of God, we can lose the sense of who he is and what he represents. The opportunities life offers and how I can deepen my relationship with him and the all, which is what he represents.
I love the fact I began to question the false images of God that were being fed to me as a child. It never felt true, but it is interesting how much effort from religion is put into trying to convince you of these lies and false images about God.
I so love that someone like the professor of mathematics you mention, who must have spent years of studying, researching, analysing, a scholar of evidence-based science would say that they need God to be a part of equation to make sense of what they have found.
I used to need a picture of what God looked like – big guy up in the clouds, or the images of the Greek or Nordic gods of the past. As my relationship with Him as matured, its now simply a feeling. A big ness, depth and width inside me that I can either feel flowing through me… or else I’ve disconnected and gone wooden (equally revealing). No picture needed, just feeling.
I love re-reading this blog Dianne and the ever unfolding deep inner sense and knowing you have of God now.
“I have seen the light and love in my core shining in the eyes of another person, and increasing numbers of people, and know without doubt that we are all one, we are all held in the body of God and we all contain the all”.
I love what you share here Dianne and I think there are many things in life that we can attach to fitting into a certain image – like how we should be at a certain age e.g how much money we should be earning, have kids, be married.. or how we should be as parents/ friends/ sisters/ brothers … And by bringing our awareness back to how we feel in our body, our whole being, we can develop a level of connection and honesty with ourself that helps us to recognise when we may be attached to a harming ideal…
Religion is not something we have to be instructed about. It is something we live. We need no instruction. Religious ‘instruction’ is only a way of making sure you get reduced in your potential and be prepared to drop a spherical way and adopt a lineal one that points only in one direction. As a result, your ability to live religiously and to deepen your awareness about it suffers. When you expect everything happening in and from one direction, you close the possibility of something happening from a different place. You stop developing your awareness and with that you do not get closer to God.
I very much appreciate how you expose the illusion of needing instruction in a relationship that is unique and deeply personal to each and every one of us. Embarking on this journey, no longer looking to another to guide for only you can navigate, feels like growing up.
Thanks Dianne, great to read this again and of your journey observing life and finding your own answers. This is a great line about that source of light we have within “There was a core of light: an inviolable, unwavering, dependable, powerful, shining flame that could be trusted to always be there and not be tainted, destroyed, weakened or taken away no matter how dark and ugly things got around me…”. There is an enormous strength that develops from knowing and staying in connection to this core of light within, and how amazing that the Gentle Breath Meditation can support people to again find this within themselves.
What an excellent question to be asking humanity… What pictures do we have of something that is within everything and is purely love… Most definitely time to be letting go of some pictures.
God can’t but be felt… no images needed
I did not get sold on religion and the church because if this is truly about love then there would not be the obsession to “convert” people which is an imposition and a looking down on people seeing them as sinners and wrong and somehow less than. If God is Love, then shouldn’t there be an acceptance of people no matter what they have chosen? How would punishment from the outside ever convert someone when they feel a gaping hole inside of them? Even if they want to change, this deep dark hole makes it almost impossible to feel complete. This realisation confirms that we have to mend our own gaping hole before love can be truly shared to others and if this is not the foundation of a religion then it has no weight in what it teaches.
There is a sense of God that does not require any images, pictures or institutionalised religions for confirmation. It is just there, a deep inner knowing that is complete in itself.