Alan Watts once told a story that has stayed with me.
After giving a talk on Canadian television, an announcer approached him and asked, “If the universe is governed by an intelligent and beneficent God, wouldn’t He naturally provide us with an infallible guide to behavior and to the truth about the universe?”
Watts knew he meant the Bible. He replied, “No, I think nothing of the kind, because I think a loving God would not do something to His children that would rot their brains.”
A loving God doesn’t hand us a rulebook—He gives us a mind.
Divine Guidance
Divine guidance, as I understand it in spiritual Deism, is not a rigid, infallible code meant to shut down inquiry. It is the natural, ongoing relationship between human reason and the One True God—the perfect, infinite Ground of Being that transcends all form and time.
Reality reveals itself in many ways, and our maturity as observers shapes what we can understand. The universe—what I call the world of Becoming—invites each of us, as conscious beings, to grow through experience, reason, and contemplative practice.
Spiritual Growth
A loving God encourages mental development, right intention, right speech, and right action—not through inflexible dogma, but through the inner movement toward freedom, responsibility, and awakening. Spiritual growth is not obedience; it is transformation. It is the slow, steady refinement of perception and character.
To embrace this path, I live simply, as a contemplative, cultivating solitude, meditation, and mindfulness. My aim is not escape but clarity—living in harmony with nature and all life.
The True Guide Is God
The true guide is not an external, unchanging rulebook. It is the God‑given reason working within us. Guidance unfolds as a continuous journey of awakening, loving others, and living in right relationship with the Earth and all beings. We are meant to wrestle with questions, to grow through effort, to discover wisdom through experience.
God does not do the work for us. God gave us the tools; we must use them.
Dr. Jay Forrest explores rational spirituality, meditation, and timeless wisdom—from philosophy and psychology to Buddhism, Daoism, Stoicism, and mysticism—offering a clear, open‑minded path for the spiritual‑but‑not‑religious.