The Universe Made Me Do It

“Your house will sell when the Universe says it’s time,” a friend told me.

“You’ll meet your soul mate when the Universe says it’s time, and not a moment before,” another friend told me.

“If it’s meant to be, you’ll get that new job,” someone else said. (It wasn’t meant to be.)

If you listen much to people discussing what’s going on in their lives, you’ll hear a lot of rhetoric about what is meant to be. The Universe wants this and the Universe wants that.

This is hard for me to visualize. I still think of the Universe as a bunch of stars and planets and comets in an infinite bell jar of space. I can’t yet visualize the central headquarters where the Universe decides what is meant to be. And where does the Universe receive its mail?

The Universe has become a personality. People talk as if they’ve turned their lives over to a Supreme Being named Universe who has the ability to track everyone’s life. Universe knows everyone so intimately that it can do everything from manage our financial affairs to finding a space in a busy mall parking lot.

The Universe has become God. Or God has become the Universe.

Addressing God as the Universe overcomes a few modern-day issues with that outdated vision of Hairy Thunderer. The Universe is androgynous. It is the “it” that is meant to be. There is no more “Our Father who art in heaven” For all of those people who do not want to see God as a He of any sort—or a She of any sort—choosing the term Universe gets rid of all that.

Countless people grew up under the influence of mean and ugly church experiences. They were abused by organized religions or by people who twisted religious concepts to justify abusive behavior. Turning to the Universe is liberation from all that imagery about a jealous and wrathful God who willingly casts souls into eternal Hell. There is no such legacy for a jealous and wrathful Universe. The Universe just is. (God just is, too, but He’s carrying tons of human baggage.)

For many people, God symbolizes a judgmental entity whereas the Universe symbolizes a system of natural laws. We can deal much more sanely with a system of natural laws than we can with a Supreme Tyrant. We can deal much more sanely with karmic cause and effect than we can with having leaders of organized religions telling us what to do to earn our pass into heaven

People who are spiritual but not necessarily religious frequently mistrust the version of the God packaged and sold by judgmental televangelists. The God they love is the Universe. In the Universe we trust.