what I mean by “God”

When I say “God”, I mean the Tao, Source, the Divine – the underlying spiritual nature of the Universe.

I do not mean the Christian God, or or any other religious deity.

I was raised an atheist and found my spiritual path on my own. I have never been part of any organized religion. I think of religion as primarily a form of social organization, not a path to God.

I do not think in terms of beliefs. I think in terms of experiences.

“Beliefs” to me are working theories to explain my experiences. These beliefs are a combination of my intuitive knowing and comparing notes with other people who have had their own spiritual experiences.

My felt experience of God is that it is pure unconditional awareness that is timeless and wordless. It is not entirely neutral though–it feels like a gentle and curious sense of love with no agenda whatsoever. Like the Sun, God’s love shines on everyone and everything equally. There is nowhere to get to, nothing to prove, nothing better to become. Everything is already OK and everything is already complete and whole.

My intellectual understanding of God is that it is undivided consciousness, that is experiencing itself through being/becoming us and the rest of creation. Paradoxically, there is actually only one of us–the underlying nature of reality is all one thing, and separate consciousness is an illusion. (A rather persistent one). Time is also an illusion.

We create all the meaning the world has for us.

The world is not inherently meaningful, but humans are meaning-making machines. Therefore, we often create a lot of meaning around spiritual experiences. Most of this is projection, or an attempt to comprehend the elusive and ineffable in human terms. God is not human.

Whatever interface you want to use to the Divine is fine. It doesn’t matter one way or the other; just don’t confuse your interface with God itself.

I usually treat spiritual beings or other specific beliefs as metaphorical or subjective experiences of God–as part of the interface to that which is beyond the human experience. So basically, use what works for you.

God is something you have to experience; you can never fully define it or communicate it because it is beyond language.

I have a longer page on what I mean by “spirituality” over on Sparkly Dark.