Archives for posts with tag: God

Does the Word “God” Bug You?

March 5, 2010 //
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What is "God" to you?

I’ll confess, it used to bug me. I used to run from the word God. I realize now that I was running from an old definition of the word God that no longer seemed true.

My Story

I grew up in the southern part of the United States amidst fundamentalist Christian faiths. I attended church up until I entered high school. The God that I was exposed to as a child was seen as this old man who sat upon his throne somewhere in heaven with Jesus and angels by his side. This God somehow caused the Bible to be written, and we were supposed to do what it said. I was told that all of us were born evil and we’re doomed to a fiery hell after death unless we “accepted Jesus” as our Savior, in which case, we went to heaven.

Over time, there were a number of things that made me question all of this. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the story I had been fed was a myth. Fueled by this disillusionment, I ran away from any organized religion which propagated this story. As I moved through college, marriage, children and career, my focus turned outward to worldly success and accomplishments. Off and on I found myself drawn to reading and studying other spiritual texts and spiritual practices such as meditation. As I grew older, these pulls became stronger. I came to the realization that material success was not the meaning of life. At that point, I moved more deeply on to my spiritual path. This led me to seeing God again, but not the old God that I ran from, but rather a God that was sensed as a power and presence that permeated everything.

At first, I avoided using the word God to describe this power. I used many other terms such as Spirit, Divine Intelligence, Infinite Love, etc. Ultimately, I healed the negative baggage that I held concerning the word God. Now when I use the word God, if I sense that my listener may be applying the traditional definition that I learned as a youth, then I will clarify my meaning. I also came to see the value in the Christian teachings of my youth even if they no longer worked for me. I now see how they have served and continue to serve humanity and honor those who feel called to that path.

Recently I wrote about “The Evolution of Consciousness, God and Prayer“. In that article I discussed how God doesn’t evolve, but that our view of God does. Numerous sources (such as Spiral Dynamics and Integral Theory) point to the same reality. Humanity grows through worldviews (see the other article for details). I can see in my life a movement through the traditional view in my youth into the modern view in much of my adulthood and then on into a postmodern view and integral view as I have aged and hopefully grown wiser.

Change God’s Name?

Today I received my weekly e-mail newsletter from Bishop John Shelby Spong. Each week, he answers a question from one of his readers. This week, the question was in essence should we come up with a new name for God? The writer pointed out that the name God continues to hold a lot of old baggage, that it continues to be constantly misunderstood, and it appears so easy for us to drift back into the old language and the old images. He suggested we consider words such as “Love”, “Energy”, or “Life”.

In his reply Spong outlines essentially the same evolutionary process I described last week. If you’d like to sign up to receive his emails, here’s the link. He also points out as I did that our definition of the word God has evolved through time and continues to evolve.

He adds:

“I do not believe that in the last analysis any human being can actually define or redefine God, whether we call God the Holy, the Sense of Transcendence or anything else, but I do believe we can experience this presence and I do believe it is real. When we experience this presence I know of no other way to describe it except as “God.” History teaches us that the word God is never static; it is always in flux and ever changing. I suggest that we not be frightened and allow that process to continue.”

So I ask you, does the word God bug you? If it does not, then I simply ask you to be clear on what the word means to you. If it does bug you, then I invite you to become more familiar with this expanding evolutionary process. Ask yourself why the word may hold any baggage for you, to explore those emotions, to work through them and to heal them. This is the evolutionary force playing out in your life right now.

Mark

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Categories Science and Spirit, Spirituality

The Evolution of Consciousness, God, and Prayer

February 23, 2010 //
13

Moving up the spiral of life....our view of God and prayer changes

The title sure sounds pretty heavy.  Don’t let it scare you away.  First, a brief reminder… the underlying theme of all the articles I write here is that there is a direction to life… that things are evolving and that evolution has a positive direction… that within evolution’s “arrow” there is free will choice which leads to an infinite variety of experiences…some of these experiences, we label positive, others negative, but the general direction of evolution is ever upward and higher… therefore, my continuous hope is that you take from these writings the reminder that you live in this upward evolutionary spiral of life, that you see the interconnectedness and value of all levels of this spiral, and you understand the role you play through your thoughts, words and deeds to move your self and the collective in a positive direction towards our return to our realization of oneness.  Whew!

So here’s the connection I want to make today… as humanity evolved in its consciousness, so did its picture of what God or Spirit is.  Then, as our concept of God or Spirit evolved, so did our form of prayer… prayer being our way of communicating and experiencing the divine.  This is not necessarily a new concept, of course, but an interesting connection for me is that if we step back and see the complete unfoldment, it shows us the direction we are heading as we continue to evolve.

Let’s quickly look at the evolutionary path of humanity using Spiral Dynamics memes as the underpinnings.  (As always, more detail about Spiral Dynamics is available in other articles or links on the website.)  When early humanity crossed the threshold in consciousness  to the level of becoming self-aware, our ancestors lived off the land and sought basic survival (beige meme).  In time they began to see the value in living together in clans (purple meme).  At this level of consciousness, our ancestors were in tune with the passing of seasons and their interconnectedness to nature.  Their view of God was one of magical powers rising out of a nature world.  Their prayers came in the form of seasonal rituals, full of music, rhythm and dance.

As humanity evolved, individuals developed strong personal egos and sought power.  This gave rise to the survival of the fittest, kings with their servants, tribal leaders with their followers, the haves and the have-nots (red meme).  At this level of consciousness, our understanding of God grew out of “gods in nature” to the gods that were behind nature to a pantheon of gods ruled by one God (such as Zeus).  Our new view of God brought a new way to honor him… temples and monuments, gifts and offerings, sacrifices.

The sense of inequity at the tribal level led to a new level of consciousness where humanity sought order and structure and rules.  Here we sought meaning and purpose in living and attributed a divine plan that was beyond our comprehension to explain life (blue meme).  Our new view of God shifted from one powerful God who ruled other gods to simply being one God.  This God communicated to us through tablets with rules, sacred texts with laws, through others who claimed to be our intermediary.  We prayed to this God through prayers of petition, asking for favors and intervention in our lives.

The Enlightenment brought the rise of science and rational thought.  Humanity shifted its view of the world to sensing it as a machine that we could learn to control for our own benefit.  Competition, technology and material abundance (orange meme) brought with it a sense that the old man God in the sky was a myth we needed to release.  God is dead.  Prayer is an outdated superstition.

Material wealth did not satisfy us and we sought meaning in community and relationships.  We began to explore consciousness itself, turning inward to find meaning.  We believed that everyone was equal, and the earth was here for all of us to share (green meme).  We released dogma and sought to become spiritual but not religious.  God was resurrected but not as an external being.  God became a “unity”, a unified field of energy, and underlying intelligent force that pervaded everything.  How do you communicate with an intelligent field of energy?  You direct its flow as it moves through you.  You see the power in your thoughts and consciousness and consciously work to direct that power.  As your development had just come through the level of science and reason, you attempt to apply logic to your prayers to convince yourself and shift your belief.  Prayer is now an affirmative statement of truth placed into the infinite field of possibilities, collapsing the quantum uncertainties in the desired direction.

People new to New Thought teachings such as the Science of Mind generally resonate with applying logic and reason through a predefined five-step prayer process.  Ernest Holmes called it “argumentative” prayer, as we argue with our own minds to convince it of the truth.  The five steps take us from identification with the external world of matter to an inward world where we sense the interconnectedness of everything, the power embedded in it, and our ability to direct that power.  Through connecting with Spirit, stating our truth, sensing gratitude and releasing our awareness “into the flow”, we convince our logical minds of the truth and power of our prayer.  Our emotional certainty is seen as a critical factor in directing this flow.

By now you’ve probably stopped and considered where you are in this evolutionary process.  In 21st-century America, most of us fall in one of three general categories, in our belief of God and prayer.  Either (1) God is an external being to whom we pray; (2) God is a myth and prayer is superstition; or (3) God is an intelligent power that we can tap via our consciousness.

Robert Wright outlined in great detail how our view of God has changed in his recent bestseller, “The Evolution of God.”  There were several key points that he made that are worth listing here…. God doesn’t evolve, we do; our perception of God changes as our cultural needs change; and there is a continuous direction towards positive change over time.

In fact, Wright sees this positive trend as potential evidence of a divine power when he says: “If history naturally pushes people toward moral improvement, toward moral truth, and their God, as they conceive their God, grows accordingly, becoming morally richer, then maybe this growth is evidence of some higher purpose, and maybe — conceivably — the source of that purpose is worthy of the name divinity.”

So where then is this evolution taking us?  How is our perception of God continuing to evolve?  How is our method of communication with the divine growing?  Both mystics and Spiral Dynamics point in the same direction.

Joel Goldsmith, founder of “The Infinite Way”, gave a lecture in 1959 where he outlined this evolution of prayer we have been discussing.  He said, “Most in orthodox religion still use pagan forms of prayer, which came to them when their churches were first founded, and their own forms of prayer had not developed: they used the prayer of petition… these ancient paganistic forms of prayer were the only forms of prayer the church had to work with… there is nothing wrong with these forms of prayer, anymore than there is anything wrong with our form of treatment… it isn’t a question of right or wrong, it is a question of the degree of consciousness.  Because we are in a human state of consciousness at the moment, it is necessary that we start our prayer work with words and thoughts.  In the metaphysical world these are called treatments; in the mystical world they’re called realizations.  The attainment of harmony is never accomplished by words or thoughts… they are but the introductions, the aids, given to bring us into an atmosphere where words and thoughts are no longer necessary to lift us to an inner communion through which God’s grace reaches us.”

Ernest Holmes also spoke of this evolutionary process.  He advised us that “God comes to us as we come to him” meaning that how we see God and communicate with God depends upon our consciousness. “God is not a becoming God.  God is not an evolving God.  God is that which was, is, and will remain perfect, complete, happy and harmonious.”  Again, God is not evolving — humanity and its perception of God is evolving.

As stated, Holmes taught an argumentative style of prayer designed to shift our consciousness.  In other words, he gave us a method to meet us where we were in our awareness (desiring logic and reason and applied science).  He also taught another method called “realization”.  In this method, you did not need convincing, you went straight to the truth.  He defined realization as turning “to that Living Presence within… recognize It as the  One and Only Power in the Universe, unify with it.”  He added, “there is a point in the supreme moment of realization, where the individual merges with the Universe, but not to the loss of his individuality; where a sense of the Oneness of all Life so enters their being that there is no sense of otherness.”

Spiral Dynamics tells us that humanity is making a great leap in consciousness.  As we step into the second tier of awareness, we are able to see the entire spiral below us and value each level and stage as being necessary for our perfect unfoldment.  We see the interconnectedness of all of nature, we understand its natural systems and flows (yellow and turquoise memes).  We begin to see our individual self is part of a greater Self… the conscious, spiritual whole… where everything is part of one great living system… where we value all religions and all spiritual paths, seeing their necessity to bringing us to this point on our journey… where we live and wonder, awe, unity, harmony and love.

My wish is that as you have read through this, you have stepped outside our evolutionary path for a moment in your awareness and witnessed it from a higher level where you can see its beauty and perfection and view where you are along the road.  Hopefully, you have glimpsed both the path you have walked spiritually and the road that lies ahead.  Evolution’s arrow is returning us all back home.  Our consciousness is evolving back to unity with the divine.  Your next step calls you.  Surrender to your evolution.

Mark

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Categories Consciousness, Science and Spirit, Spirituality

Is God evolving?

January 24, 2010 //
3

I mean, it makes sense if you think about it… if evolution is real… and I believe that it is… then why wouldn’t God be evolving?

Now let’s stop and check in… did you have a reaction to that question?  Did something inside you say that can’t quite be right?  If you read yesterday’s article, you might be thinking right about now, well “maybe the answer to the question is God evolving is–it depends”.  Hmmm?  Depends on how you define God?  Let’s think about that….

First off, if your worldview is one that includes what I called the old myth of God (that is of the old man in the sky that is external to us), then you might be thinking: “how can this all-powerful Creator God be evolving?  Would not this God be outside the physical realm of man and not be subject to the evolutionary forces we see at play?”  That sounds logical to me.

Secondly, if your worldview is one that says there is no God and everything is simply part of the physical universe subject to physical laws, then you might be thinking: “the question is meaningless, as there is no God to evolve”.  That sounds logical to me.

Thirdly, if your worldview is one that says there is a God but God is an infinite intelligence and energy that permeates everything such that everything is in God but God is greater than everything, then you might be thinking: “God or Spirit has infused everything with its energy and intelligence as well as created such forces as evolution.  Hence, Spirit is not evolving, but is experiencing the process of evolution through us.”  That sounds logical to me.

So then, is God evolving?  The answer seems to be yes and no.  Within an individual worldview, the God or non-God of that worldview is not evolving.  But if we step back and look at the worldviews of humanity, then we can see that our concept of God is evolving in our consciousness.

The mystic Ernest Holmes wrote “We can know no God external to that power of perception by which alone we are conscious of anything.  God must be interpreted to humanity through humanity’s own nature” as well as “God comes to us as we come to him/her.”  What he seems to be saying to me is that who or what God is to us depends upon our level of consciousness.  God shows up to us in exactly the same way that our own awareness defines how God should show up.  Holmes is not alone in this viewpoint.

Robert Wright, in his recent bestseller “The Evolution of God” agrees as he makes the following points:  God doesn’t evolve, we do.  Our perception of God changes as our cultural needs change.  That we experience continuous positive change in the quality of our lives over time, therefore life has a “direction”.  That “salvation” works to arrange the world so that its people find themselves and think of themselves more and more as interconnected, which is part of evolution’s direction.

Wright concludes  that the fact that there are religions and this evolutionary direction affirms the possibility of an actual divinity:  “If history naturally pushes people toward moral improvement, toward moral truth, and their God, as they conceive their God, grows accordingly, becoming morally richer, then maybe this growth is evidence of some higher purpose, and maybe – conceivably – the source of that purpose is worthy of the name divinity.”

So if we have come to a conclusion that perhaps it’s not God evolving, but rather our perception of God that is evolving then how does that come about?  Do we really have a worldview that colors our perception?  If so, then how did it come about?  How does it evolve?  Tomorrow we go deeper with those questions.

Mark

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Categories Science and Spirit, Spirituality

Do you believe God exists?

January 23, 2010 //
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People are generally going to answer that question, one of three ways — – yes, no, or it depends.

When people ask me that question, I generally stop and ask them back, “what do you mean by God?”  The common definition of God in our current culture is of an old man with long gray beard who sits in the sky on a throne and judges us upon our death.  If that is the inquirer’s definition, then my answer is “no”.  Unfortunately, that old outdated myth is the common meaning of the word “God” that most people conjure up when they hear it.  It’s usually what the media means when they say God.  This meaning is usually what is in the mind of the person who unequivocally answers “yes” immediately upon being asked the question.  Obviously, Pat Robertson would answer yes.

Interestingly, the same meaning is usually what is in the mind of the person who unequivocally answers “no” to the question about God.  Rev Michael Dowd has a great line on this.  When people tell him they don’t believe in God, he asks them to tell him about the God they don’t believe in and says he probably doesn’t believe in it either.  Although he goes on to say he does believe in God.  Hence, the answer depends on your definition.

What this leads us to is the fact that there is a new vision of what God is.  Frequently people who hold this new vision steer away from using the word God because it conjures up the old myth.  I know I tend to use the word “Spirit.”  There are other words given to this new vision of God.  They include: Infinite Mind, Infinite Intelligence, Oneness, Suchness, Divine Being, Divine Mind and so on.

In this new vision of God, it is a power, a presence, a force, an intelligence, an essence.  One might think of it as an intelligent energy, which permeates everything.  This energy moves in and through everything and gives everything its existence.  This includes all of the world of matter and physical stuff that we can measure and see and sense and it also includes everything that is beyond the world of the seen.  Technically this is called “Panentheism”.

Here’s a few words from Wikipedia, on the definition of panentheism, which might be helpful (especially in distinguishing it from its close cousin “Pantheism”…pardon the technical jargon):

Panentheism is a belief system which posits that God exists and interpenetrates every part of nature, and timelessly extends beyond as well. Panentheism is distinguished from pantheism , which holds that God is synonymous with the material universe. Briefly put, in pantheism, “God is the whole”; in panentheism, “The whole is in God.” This means that the Universe  in the first formulation is practically the Whole itself, but in the second the universe and God are not ontologically equivalent. In panentheism, God is not necessarily viewed as the creator or demiurge, but the eternal animating force behind the universe, with the universe as nothing more than the manifest part of God. The cosmos  exists within God, who in turn “pervades” or is “in” the cosmos. While pantheism asserts that God and the universe are coextensive, panentheism claims that God is greater than the universe and that the universe is contained within God.

So then, God is in everything and everything is in God but God is greater than everything.  The funny thing is many people have never heard this word or this definition, but it’s what they’ve come to believe through their life’s experiences.  Many scientists have come to the same conclusion on their pursuit of scientific truths.  For these people, something leads them to this conclusion (either an inner knowingness or their empirical evidence) that this is what God is… but again, they may not use the word “God”.

So where are we?  When asked “do you believe in God?”  The so-called “believers” who hold to the old myth will answer yes.  Those who hold to a strict materialistic scientific view (often called “scientism”) will answer no.  Then there are those who have let go of the old myth, but have questioned the gaps in the materialistic viewpoint.  They say, “it depends”.

So why do we have these different viewpoints?

In a sense we’re talking about “the evolution of God”.  Robert Wright, in his recent book by that name, tells us that it’s not God per se evolving but rather its humanity’s evolving worldviews that are leading us to see God in a different light.  Both Spiral Dynamics and Integral Theory point us to the same conclusion.

The bottom line is how you answer the question depends upon your worldview.  We’ll look at that next.

Mark

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Categories Science and Spirit, Spirituality

Satan, Haiti and Pat Robertson Ménage à trois

January 22, 2010 //
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I interrupt my regular post today to bring you a bit of humor.  This crossed my desk this morning and it was too good not to share….

As you know, after the recent earthquakes in Haiti, Pat Robertson declared on his television program that the country has been “cursed by one thing after another” since they “swore a pact to the devil.”  Robertson went on to describe how the pack came to be.  If you are interested, go Google it.  Already for me there is a lot to laugh at already….the ludicrous nature of Robertson’s comments themselves…the fact that Robertson continues to be on TV…..the fact that anyone even pays attention to what he says anymore….all pretty funny (even if tinged with a bit of disappointment that he gets headlines that could be better used for more positive things).

That said, the humor meter went up a few notches when Satan decided to reply to Robertson via a letter to the editor this week in the Minneapolis Star Tribune (in the words of Dave Barry, I’m not making this up, you can Google this too….the letter is making the rounds on the internet, to give credit where due–the Star Tribune attributes it to Lily Coyle of Minneapolis).

Here it is:

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Dear Pat Robertson,

I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action.

But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth –glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle.

Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven’t you seen “Crossroads”? Or “Damn Yankees”? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there’d be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox — that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it — I’m just saying: Not how I roll.

You’re doing great work, Pat, and I don’t want to clip your wings — just, come on, you’re making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That’s working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.

Best,
Satan

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Tomorrow’s article will be entitled “Do you believe God exists?”   Depending upon how you answer that question, there are two  corollaries to it: “Who or what is God?” and “Do you believe Satan exists?”  Obviously we know what Pat thinks….

Mark

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Categories Culture, Entertainment, Politics, Uniting Nations