My vision …

… for this blog is to provide a space where we can consider, share, and discuss spiritual ideas that are important, ideas that give us the opportunity to unify our split identities – to heal ourselves and our diverse communities. I’ll share my ideas and I hope you will respond with your comments and ideas so we can all learn and grow together.

You have probably heard the idea that we are spiritual beings having a human experience rather than human beings having a spiritual experience. Whether one or both of these is so, most of us hold our humanity and our spirituality as separate in much the same way as western society holds mind, body, and feelings as separate, independent, and mostly unrelated. Both ideas of separation are incorrect. My goal for all of us is to live as integrated, whole beings using all that we are.

I will be sharing ideas here that are meaningful, valuable, and important to me. So important that I have said it these truths are not so, I don’t see any p0int to this life.

Many of these ideas come from great spiritual thinkers of recent times and ancient times. I will definitely credit these teachers for their work. Some that have influenced me the most are (in no particular order): Ernest Holmes, Thomas Troward, Deepak Chopra, Neville, Wayne Dyer, Louise Hay, Neale Donald Walsch, and many others.

I have also been deeply influenced by of the findings of many great scientists that I will also refer to here. I hope to point out how science and spirituality are often pointing in the same direction.

A Thousand Names For God

Each spiritual tradition has its own name(s) for God. They all point to the same God.

I use some uncommon names for God that I want to clarify up front so they don’t create confusion. These unusual names are used intentionally, for specific reasons, and with the greatest possible love and respect for the Divine.

God as It??

You will notice in these posts that sometimes I refer to God or Spirit using the neuter pronoun It. Why “It”? That sounds disrespectful, doesn’t it? Frankly, I was shocked and offended by this usage when I first encountered it.

I grew up with God as a male: “He said … “, and “He did … “. All religious authority figures were male and most authority figures in other settings, except school, were male also. I now know that this was (and in some ways still is) an oppressive, patriarchal convention that hid the truth and deprived all of us of the ability to appreciate who we are in fullness. So, I won’t follow that outdated convention.

I also don’t like referring to the Divine using a combination of male and female pronouns (e.g., He/She, S/He, or alternating between He and She, etc.) because this implies that Spirit is some combination of male and female attributes. In contrast, I believe that It is something much greater than that. My strong intention is to always capitalize the word it when referring to God out of the deepest respect and yet sometimes I might slip. If this usage of “It” bothers you, know that when I first encountered this way of referring to God, it made me very uncomfortable also. But it did help me to begin to take a grander view of what I believed Spirit to be.

Other Names for God …

The word God has a lot of baggage associated with it because each of us has been taught some negative things about Spirit by well-meaning but misinformed authority figures. The use of these other names gives us an opportunity to step back from that baggage and look at what we choose to believe about Spirit rather than continuing to believe what we were taught so long ago.

If you believe as I do that those old lessons that we accepted as children may no longer serve us then it is only right to re-examine them afresh. So from time to time, I will use other words or phrases to refer to God like Spirit, Absolute Love, The One, The Creator, Divine Mind, etc. These alternate names avoid the old baggage and emphasize a relevant aspect of the nature of Spirit for the discussion at hand.

How does this all feel to you? Give yourself a chance to see how you feel referring to Divine Love by some of Its many beautiful names.

The Nature of God

I want to begin a discussion on the nature of God, the Divine. This is obviously a HUGE topic that cannot be covered in one lifetime, much less one small blog post. Volumes have been written about this topic and still there is so much that isn’t yet clear enough, isn’t yet part of how we live our lives. So, this will be a central theme for many posts. Let’s begin.

What do you think?

What is the nature of God? What do you think? It is such an important and foundational question. I invite you to take a moment now and think about your answer to that question. You might want to journal on that idea today. One of my favorite quotes related to this is from Albert Einstein: “The most important question you can ask yourself is: Is the universe a friendly place.” What do you think?

Next

In the next post, I will share with you what I consider to be one of the most significant qualities of the nature of God. I believe that most people who believe in any form of God or Higher Power would agree that their concept of God includes the idea that God is infinite. Do you agree with that? If not, why not? If so, what does it mean to you in your daily life to believe in an Infinite Divine Being?