An Experience Of The Unknown

                  This might interest you.  It is an analogy and you may've heard it before.  My brother Chris related it to me several times in my life.   
An elephant stood in a clearing on the African plain.
Six blind men surrounded the elephant.  Each man touched a different part of the beast.  One touched the ear, another a foot, another the tail, a tusk, the body, etc.  But none could see a thing.
They were then asked to describe the animal they had just experienced. 
"This animal is flat and smooth, very thin," said the man who touched the ear.
"No, it's tiny and wiry, hairy," said the man who touched the tail.
"It's actually very tall and round, with deeply wrinkled rouch skin," said the man who touched the body.
The blind man who touched the trunk said, "You're all wrong, it's long and serpentine, winding, with a small mouth at the end."
"It has large, sharp spikes on it," said the man who touched a tusk.
The man who touched the foot and nails said, "No, this is a small animal close to the ground, with armour plating."
Each had touched the same animal.  Each had come away with a difference experience of it.  It reminds me of how each of us experiences a God, by whatever name.
If you relate to a God who is waiting to judge you, keeps a place of incredible beauty and peace, another of eternal pain, fire and damnation, your experience of God is as a judgmental deity of vengeance, which has no "gray" areas and in fact sounds very human.  "Right and wrong" and nothing in between.  A no-nonsense God.     
If you relate to a God who is loving and forgiving, like a parent for a small child, you'll experience God like that - as a child to its parent - always accepted, always forgiven, always cared for and loved. 
If you relate to a God who has anthropomorphic habits ascribed to it by humans, you'll experience a God of gender (He) of feelings (happy, sad) of age (about 70-ish) of confusion (why do my children forsake me) and other human qualities.  Sometimes, this is an easier way to visualize it and express love, gratitude and worship. 
If you relate to a God beyond all things human, better and finer, out of all realms we understand, you'll experience a mysterious deity of great power that we humans can never grasp but nonetheless can use a blinded faith to bring comfort and primal joy - whether true or not.  What's the difference if it makes one lead a better life?   
If indeed, you cannot relate to any power or presence of spirit or mystery beyond what you see, hear, feel, touch, taste, i.e., all things human, then you most likely will worship only things of this world - as is so visible in our society - with no thought to what may exist in another dimension, except perhaps extra-terrestrial beings.  A life with ones' self at the heart seems shallow, but is certainly a life and deserves respect.  We make our choices, we live out the consequences. 
Yet surely whatever God is, everyone's conception of it is right.  The elephant was always the same animal.  Someone's Allah and someone's Yahweh are to me, the same.  It matters not that we humans concoct so many religions, organizations, titles and rituals by which to show  worship and praise, our needs and petitions.  All that should matter I believe, is that humanity lives with respect for the choices others make regarding a God of any name or disposition, which may represent the home our souls yearn to return to ~ or may be an invention of man. 
Some believe sadness is only the soul feeling homesick for its maker, its true home.  We cannot comprehend it.
When people say they "know" God, understand it, I can only think it's simply their experience of that elephant, the part of God they are in touch with, the part they relate to.     
What part of any God do you "touch" ?