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Many people believe that the ancient art of sun worship was primitive, even stupid.  But that belief is born out of an inability to see through ancient eyes.  Once you can see the ancient point of view, you might even find it to be a truly enlightened perspective.

The sun was a symbol for the main God, the creator deity.  Let me be very clear.  They did not think the sun was God; they saw it as a perfect representation of God.  In the Bible, the same creation God exists in Genesis I.  In fact, the beliefs of these ancient sun worshippers were not that different from modern religious beliefs.

In modern western religions, there is a creator God; then there are legions of angels supporting God’s divine plan.  In the ancient perspective, there were natural occurrences in nature that were labeled as gods.  But these were not equal players with the Sun God.  They were God’s support staff.  In some cultures, the deceased ancestors were also labeled gods.

If you read Genesis closely, after the seventh day, God takes a back seat and Lord God emerges.  The ancient ones knew that Lord God was not the creator God; but that wisdom was lost through time.  The two God characters slowly morphed into one being.

Eventually, Lord God stopped supporting the creator God and developed his own agenda that included humans forgetting who they really were.  In the Mayan teachings, it says the gods distorted the human’s vision.  In the Bible, it says humans had to work hard and endure pain to fulfill their desires.  In Sumerian legends, it says the humans were noisy.  It seemed that Lord God was a bit jealous of humans who shined too brightly.  He used a little fear spiced with a hint of punishment to stir things up and got the humans to follow his plan.  Suddenly, humans lost their power.  Lord God was happy because he got what he wanted.  His rules became the laws of earth for his followers.

So why was the sun the symbol of the creator God?  Let’s examine some solar qualities.  It gives us light and warmth — not bad for starters.  It shines a bright yellow or gold color which makes it a match to the beautiful and valuable gold that comes from the earth.  The yellow-gold color is also associated with creativity, laughter, and youthfulness — qualities that everyone finds endearing.  But the greatest quality that the sun displays it its unconditional love.  Have you not noticed that the sun shines on everyone?  It doesn’t care if you just robbed a bank or killed your neighbor.  It doesn’t care if you swore at your mother or hit your brother.  It doesn’t care if you are black or white skinned.  It doesn’t care if you are a Hindu, Christian, or Muslim.  It still keeps shining on you.  It never punishes or condemns — those are low-level human qualities (or qualities of Lord God).  Even most humans try to do better than punishment, jealousy, and condemnation.  So Lord God clearly needed some good therapy.

Now let’s take another step toward the sun.  As our earth moves around the sun in space, we face toward the sun and then turn away from it.  The result is day and night, yang and yin, active and passive.  It makes for an interesting experience.  What the sun gives out is dual but pure.  The sun doesn’t judge.  It doesn’t have an experience of good and evil.

The ancient leaders told stories about their beloved sun.  They said he was in the underworld battling evil every night.  They invented evil; it was not God’s creation.  Some part of them wondered if he’d win or lose.  Would the sun shine tomorrow?  These were human fears that were imaginary just like the boogie man that children fear.  The fears of the leaders eventually became accepted by the people as dogma.

Of course, we know that the sun is still shining thousands of years later.  Yes, their worry was a complete waste of time — or maybe it just made life more interesting.  We no longer wonder if the sun will be there tomorrow.  It has won every illusory battle with evil since it was born.  That evil only existed in the stories; there never was any evil.  Evil was an invented reason for the sun’s disappearance each day.  And over time that story caught on.  It served the purpose of keeping people close to the fear of annihilation.  People in fear can be controlled so it keep the Lord Gods in power.  But now, we have scientific wisdom.  It is obvious that there was no battle, no evil.

So why does everyone still think there is evil.  Because we still believe that there can be evil.  Not remembering where evil came from, people assume God created it.  People assume that it is real and powerful.  Religions continue to give this false idea power, and it keeps attendance and donations up.  To believe in evil, means that we still think that God or the sun can quit shining.  We still think that the Sun God has gone into the underworld and left us unprotected.  We still believe that Lord God is angry, jealous, and punishing.  If we drop the stories, these reasons, there is no evil and no battle to fight.

Sometimes an eclipse causes the sun to be hidden, but it is still shining.  Some part of us, our true Self, is just like that sun.  You can hide it but you can’t get it to stop shining.  Many people have been trained to believe that their inner sun burns others because it is too bright, too light, too wise, and too beautiful.  That was exactly the plan of Lord God.  He’s still getting his way after thousands of years.  These people, who just want to be good, put clouds of humility over their sun.  But what if the real sun did that?  We’d all freeze; we’d miss its warmth and light.  Likewise, when people put clouds over their sun, we miss out on the real treasure that they are.  We don’t get to see their gifts or experience their unique expression.

Even with the destruction that the power-hungry leaders of patriarchal history (his story) have caused in our world, each of us have the ability to behave like the sun.  We can authentically shine our light, unconditionally love, or warm another’s heart even when they don’t deserve it.  And that melts away the false illusion of evil just like the wicked witch in Oz when she was doused with water.  In this way, we reclaim the power of the people; we remove the mask of impotence and own our unique place in the world.  We remember the ancient way of living life like a sun or son of God.  And when we remember our true solar self, we also know that we are eternal and safe.  The story, the evil, was nothing but a dream.  The clouds disappear, and we shine brightly once again.