What God Is.....

God is a word that points to many things.

I believe that many of those things are aspects of Truth with a big T.

The question is the word. It has so many connotations, means so many things, has such a history, that I wonder if we need to be using different language.

In my personal life, I feel a kinship and perhaps need to use this word, but it carries many negative connotations for my wife. Both of these stem from our respective cultural backgrounds. And yet when we talk more deeply about the truths that we care about, these are not so far away. But this word gets in the way, and I think has limited our ability and truly come together in spirituality within our family. (And also taught us new heights in tolerance)

thoughts?

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Re: What God Is.....

You have a wonderful knack for introducing fascinating threads! I knew you'd be a fabulous mod! Anyway…

How about Spirit or spirit? I've heard people use this word effectively to get away from some of the negative connotations of God. How would your wife respond to that?

Light and peace,

Nicole

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Focusing on your question

“The question is the word. It has so many connotations, means so many things, has such a history, that I wonder if we need to be using different language.”

And Nicolas answer

“How about Spirit or spirit? I've heard people use this word effectively to get away from some of the negative connotations of God. How would your wife respond to that?”

Realistically we create unity in the world by accepting the task of learning someone else's language. We go to their country and learn how to say hello perhaps.
We don't create peace by suggesting they change their words to ours or change their's and ours to a completely new vocabulary which lets face it words won't solve the actual problem here. But Love will.

God has been called many things Lord, Jealous, Budah, Harry, Jesus, Yaweh.

This last one mentioned is said to mean “I am”  or  “I will be”

But despite the ancient tradition that a name actually told you so much about a person.
This name raises a question……….
What ….will you be? “I will be what”
What ….are you? “I am what”

The apostle John answered this and I think everyone will agree “GOD IS LOVE”

Love is a spirit God is a spirit.
Emotions are also spirit
Like the spirit of love or the spirit of hate. Tho' negative emotions like darkness are a lack of spiritual energy rather than a source.

Reductionism would help if we all new more about how the words we do use mean the same things
Love = emotion =spirit =god= energy=motion
I could reduce it all day until I have no language left at all and am just drooling saliva out of the side of my mouth.

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P.S.
The link at the end of my last comment was to Douglas Adams - Mostly Harmless - teaser.mp3

Pretty good comedy on how we choose not to want to change our descriptions too much

Forgot to mention that I also have a Google bogg on this subject

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Thanks for both these, DPI… I'm quite a fan of Douglas Adams actually…

light and peace,

nicole

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yes, many words, and myriad baggage associated with each.  i've always liked 'Creator' myself.  seems to carry a bit less baggage and opens the mind a little; when i use it in conversation i'm usually asked, 'you mean 'God'!?'  ;D

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How about “Infinte ground of all Potential?” We could even acronym it - IGOAP  ;)

Spirit is closer to where I'm at right now, as I still haven't figured what I think about the Personhood of “God” or alternately, the nature of the collective consciousness.

Creator is still pretty anthropomorphic, which I think puts off people to the same degree God does. Even “Great Spirit” people interpret as just a euphemism. And I think we need to make sure people know we're not referring to the White Haired Guy in the Sky (which I think resembles Zeus more than the Christian God, and yet I think this is the common, folk interpretation)

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exactly! lol @ grumpy big guy in the sky a la Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials

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How about Philip K. Dick's VALIS?  It stands for Vast Active Living Intelligence System.  He defined it in his book of the same name:

“spontaneous self-monitoring negentropic vortex…tending to progressively subsume and incorporate its environment into arrangements of information.”

Its not exactly God in the Christian sense… closer to the Holy Spirit and Logos.  Its the aspect of God actively manifesting in the world and subtly influencing human experience.  But Dick's ideas were varied as he liked to consider all possibilities.  VALIS is God hidden in plain sight, and so the difficulty of explaining it is partly the difficulty of the human mind to grasp the obvious, the seemingly mundane.  Plus, Dick believed in entropic counter-forces(archons) that lacked intelligence and obscured this divine information.

Philip K. Dick's Divine Interference
by Erik Davis

“Sutin points out that mystics traditionally interpret their experiences within the faiths they are raised in. “Phil adhered to no single faith. The one tradition indubitably his was SF-which exalts 'What IF?'”

“The world we experience is a hologram, “a hypostasis of information” that we, as nodes in the true Mind, process. “We hypostasize information into objects. Rearrangement of objects is change in the content of information. This is the language we have lost the ability to read.””

“VALIS invades this spurious world of control in order to liberate us. For Dick, this “living information…replicates itself-not through information or in information-but as information.”[5] VALIS is a virus, a kind of metaphysical DNA that encodes the Logos or “Word” that opens the Gospel of St. John. Birth from the spirit occurs when the information plasmate “penetrate(s) the world, replicating in human brains, crossbanding with them and assisting them…””

“In order to snake its way into the Black Iron Prison, “the true God” must mimic “sticks and trees and beer cans in gutters.” Dick's God “presumes to be trash discarded, debris no longer needed,” so that “lurking, the true God literally ambushes reality and us as well.”[7] Here Dick suggests a kind of liberation info-theology, a set of guerrilla tactics for our saturated data age: stick to the fringes of the spectacle, pay attention to marginal or discarded information, and never let your beliefs get in the way of surprise. Dick knew well that the political and metaphysical search for secret orders of power invites the black iron prison of paranoia, but he also recognized that “Surprise is an antidote to paranoia.””

“But how does chaos and disorder fit into Dick's various information cosmologies? Like Thomas Pynchon, Dick was obsessed with the second law of thermodynamics, and he coined words like kipple and gubble to denotes the corrosive power of entropy and its ability to render form into formlessness. Along with Norbert Wiener, Dick viewed entropy metaphysically, casting it in some tales as evil incarnate or as the sign of some cosmic Fall. In contrast to this, Dick later came to laud the positive and “negentropic” (or anti-entropic) power of VALIS's restorative information. This makes good human sense: as finite, far-from-equilibrium organisms, we are whirlpools of order and information whipped together for a time against the steady downstream drift of entropy.

However, the pseudo-realities forged by the archons play havoc with this Manichaen scheme. In a world of manufactured illusions, the gremlins of entropy-malfunctions, interference, decay-can paradoxically liberate us by gouging holes in the smooth surface of simulation; these corrosive gaps create the space for breakthroughs and insights, imaginative or real. In a number of Dick's works, it is only the anomalous decay of objects that alerts the characters that the false world around them is not what it seems. Even the disguised God of VALIS appears as “trash discarded, debris no longer needed.” In a sense, entropy is what kills all our illusions, and this dark liberation becomes even more important in a world of potentially insidious, or at least overbearing, technological constructs. As public spaces devolve into theme parks or malls, where the creative force of organic life is managed down to every blade of grass, entropy-mildew, rot, decay-even becomes the final sign of nature and its spontaneous freedom.

As the original information theorist Claude Shannon discovered, there is a curiously perfect match between the thermodynamic equation for entropy in physical systems and the one describing the noise that crops up in information channels. Similarly, Dick's fascination with real-world rot and rust translated into a fascination with noise and interference in the communication networks that often link his characters.”

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Well now I must officially read more Philip Dick. Where shall I start?

Is there a word that means both the potential and the manifestation?

The Tao, I think may hit this, or alternatively the One and the Many.

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in considering further, i can see that you are right about 'Creator'.  the 'creationists' have attached their slant/stigma to it.

'Spirit' to me, carries 'new age' attachments; let's all divine our futures in our crystal balls ;D

yet, introducing new euphemisms would seem to turn off those who are irrevocably attached to their preferred word.  people might think, 'they're trying to rename God…grumble, grumble…'

i think we could find preconceptions attached to any one-word handle we choose to consider.  it seems, for now, we may be relegated being descriptive if we wish to unambiguously communicate the idea of 'God'.  

as short concise descriptions go, Nicole, i like, 'The One and The Many' ;D

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Joshua, yeah, we'll do like N and make an anagram TOATM :)

Marmalade, you are a dangerous man to have around - yeah, see Negoba? Now he's going to get us all reading PKD… ok, time to give up my job, resistance is futile…

light and peace,

nicole

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Negoba, you said:
“Well now I must officially read more Philip Dick. Where shall I start?”

I'd recommend the Valis trilogy.

If you're interested in PKD's ideas, then I'd recommend Pink Beams of Light from the God in the Gutter by Gabriel McKee.

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What God is?  I always liked my philosophy professor's definition:  God is “that Being the greater than which cannot be conceived.”

Perhaps that is why we have so many names and expressions of God – just one isn't enough to describe God adequately.  We can always think of something greater and grander. 

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Yes, I loved that when Joe, my philosophy professor way back when, dear Joe how I miss you, introduced me to that phrase. Now who was that? Let me quickly look it up… of course! Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God.

You're right, I think, it's because God is beyond our imaginings that even the right word for God is very very difficult.

Love and peace,

Nicole

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For most of world,

“God” is control word. It has same meaning as Master, Sir, Daddy, Lord, or Mickey Mouse. I think it is word that started the BDSM movement.

For the Science of Mind people, “God” means a principle at work in universe. I like that. But some people say, a principle is so cold (not as cold as many Asian women, but that is story for another thread…)
What is this principle?

Why do I ask question I m not going to answer?

Some say God is Tao. Good.

What it is that smart gaia people here at pod already know is
God is not object to you. You already know this.

Good. We so smart.

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God cannot be object, yes, being the truest Subject. Thanks, dearest Mouse of mine,

Love and light to you,

Nicole

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Thank you, Goddess Nicole. 100% of the people I have spoke this to…..whether they are priests, college graduates, Buddhists or New Age people in this country…. have looked at me like I was:

a)the Devil Incarnate
b)the Devil Incarnate …but spouting words they can never understand.

I d like to throttle their visa card wielding necks…just to let loose some of that inherent God in them out, ofcourse!

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i find that really puzzling, sweeting… it is so obvious! anyway… sigh… people are complex.

love and light to you,

nicole

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Hello Mouse

My mind has been on all things Philip K. Dick these past couple of weeks.  I was just reading an article by him and it made me think of you.

How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later

“It reminds me of a headline that appeared in a California newspaper just before I flew here. SCIENTISTS SAY THAT MICE CANNOT BE MADE TO LOOK LIKE HUMAN BEINGS. It was a federally funded research program, I suppose. Just think: Someone in this world is an authority on the topic of whether mice can or cannot put on two-tone shoes, derby hats, pinstriped shirts, and Dacron pants, and pass as humans.”

“In my writing I got so interested in fakes that I finally came up with the concept of fake fakes. For example, in Disneyland there are fake birds worked by electric motors which emit caws and shrieks as you pass by them. Suppose some night all of us sneaked into the park with real birds and substituted them for the artificial ones. Imagine the horror the Disneyland officials would feel when they discovered the cruel hoax. Real birds! And perhaps someday even real hippos and lions. Consternation. The park being cunningly transmuted from the unreal to the real, by sinister forces. For instance, suppose the Matterhorn turned into a genuine snow-covered mountain? What if the entire place, by a miracle of God's power and wisdom, was changed, in a moment, in the blink of an eye, into something incorruptible? They would have to close down.”

Blessings,
Marmalade

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oh my God! Reality in Disneyland! What a travesty, how could anyone even suggest such a dreadful pass! LOLOL!

i especially grok that title, How to build a universe that doesn't fall apart two days later :)

peace

nicole

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Obvious? They wouldnt say tis was so obvious. In fact, I lived in a small small world with the blinders pulled over my eyes, and saw one day that the one they made do the pulling….was me!

Marmalade- too interesting. WIll have to read another day. Today I didnt go set up tarot on the street. I have to starting tomorrow for cash reasons alone. Guess I have to keep facing the monogamous men and women with their wives/husbands, mistresses, toyboys, virginal teen girls with their 500 lover problems….sigh. Can I die now?

I love you all. (Dont take words like all too literally - but you nicole, definitely)

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no tarot today? hope it goes well tomorrow, hon. Love you too! lots!

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The more I reflect on this the more I like “The One and the Many”

Interestingly, the acronym is TOATM, but taking out the small articles, is

OM

O, as a circle represents the one as a pictograph, M represent the many, it is itself a representation of arborization.

Just a little warm fuzzy realization moment, thought I'd share.

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awesome! OM…

thanks for sharing that moment with us, dear friend!

Nicole

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The words have been dropped from my consciousness outside of communication.

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My blogg is on this question too What is god
I'll save cyber space and just post the link. Cos one of these days some campaigne group is ganna be marching arround inside the virtual streets with their banners protesting about the rapid human consumption of cyber sapce.

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I thought a lot about this question. But does god even know the answer? I mean  to start with would he not have had as many questions as we? After all he did just create the answers. (made them up) Maybe she had to invent the concept of  questions first? Did I just call god she oops, blonde moment.
Why ….is a question that can be expressed by pure emotion, with out a single word. Simply through pure curiosity itself. Curiosity is good if your not a cat.
I wrote a short story a few years ago which is now a blogg. I called it  “The theory of everything The Birth of Hydrogen the first lucid dream”  Bit of a mouthful but I liked it so I kept it.
Again to save Cyber space I've posted a link (I am painting my virtual banners now ready to march The Matrix virtual streets come the revolution, SAVE CYBER SPACE!)
Tho if anyone has difficulty with white on black text let me know!!

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Oh dear, Daily Plan It, you're not going to like me LOL! I have used up so much cyber space on this pod alone, copying blogs and other articles.

Welcome to our group. I enjoyed your blogs and enjoy your quirky sense of humour very evident in your second post.

Light and peace to you,

Nicole

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If we didn't make certain mistakes certain people would be out of a job since many people's job is to point out or correct the many mistakes we make.
Youtube Video

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Link

lindsey asked is there a god? So I replied……. Link

It touches heavily on What is God

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DPI, great to see you here and elsewhere exploring the big questions. I am quite interested in positive and negative feedback loops and what you describe in your first link is the role of positive feedback in creating evil in our world. I think that is a concept worthy of much exploration, for we know other ways to reverse positive feedback and the first is to not feed them!!! As you discussed, there are natural tendencies to allow seeds of hatred grow, and we must be mindful that we do not feed these processes. Thank you for your ideas.

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All words get in the way of the direct experience of the thing itself.  What's in a rose? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet…

God has for me become a word laiden with so much cultural, judgemental, masculine BS that passes down the line that it becomes less the effecacious as a word and more of a demand to believe - where's the freedom, where's the love?

I have always liked the tao, first chapter, or abhidharma (ultimate ground of being in buddhism) or ein sof in the kabbalah…. all are descriptions beyond, behind and before the words which separate us into remote regions of the ration.  They are meditational constructs to help us drop the separation between our egoic selves and the basic ground of being.

As a carrier of the sacred pipe, I also love the term wakan tanka of the lakota.  wakan means mystery, tanka means great.  But there is so much more….and thus it is undefinable and behind and before all things to say nothing of within. 

As part of the pipe song goes -

wakan tanka tokaheya chewakiyelo, heyayo
wakan tanka tokaheya chewakiyelo, heyayo
mitaku ye ob waninkta cha tokaheya chewakiyelo, heyayeyo

“great mystery, you are number one in life, ho!
“great mystery, you are number one in life, ho!
“all my relations knows that you are number one in life (in my life), ho!”

The meditation becomes deeper and deeper with the repetition of the chant.  Open's doors to the defineless ground of ultimate being.

Aho mitakuye oyasin (all my relations)
Donbear

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I would have to agree with Silent Temple

But if I had to state what god is I would refer to this Zen saying:

At first, a mountain is a mountain. Then a mountain is not a mountain. Finally, a mountain is a  mountain.

Gavin

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Gavin, yes, that sums it up beautifully. Don, I love those lakota chants, I miss you whenever you're not around sharing that native wisdom. J, exactly and DPI keep linking us, you rock!

Light and peace,

Nicole

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Just found this in the new Contemplation and Beyond Pod that Jayne and Chad started… Clare posted this -

Armand M. Nigro SJ

Jesus had invited me to spend an hour with him. I was a bit uptight about it, so for days I prepared by boning up on my seminary course in Christology and I re-read the documents of Vatican II. I glanced over my notes on Lonergan’s “Method in Theology”, read the latest work on process theology and breezed through another on liberation theology. After all, I didn’t want to seem too far out of it.

I looked through the four Gospels again, too, just in case he referred to something in his past recorded there.

And I cleaned up my room (as I faithfully do each year anyway), because he insisted on coming here instead of us meeting in the chapel or on neutral ground.

When he came I started to genuflect and kiss his hand, but he pulled me up and said, “Can’t we just sit down together?”

I felt awkward and didn’t know how to start the conversation. Reading my mind, he said, “Relax! I just like to be here with you and enjoy the scenery from your window. The river and skyline look beautiful today.”

Well, I could hardly believe that.

If I’m busy and can’t afford that waste of time, he must be infinitely busier.

And there were so many important things to accomplish during that hour. I really wanted to get the most out of it. But he just sat there in silence with his hand on my shoulder,

“Lord,” I broke the silence, “where do You stand on the Christological controversy on how humanly conscious you were of your divinity and future life before your death and resurrection?”

“What’s that got to do with our enjoying this scenery together” he asked.

More silence. I was uneasy. I reached for the book on process theology and said. “He really has something on the development of consciousness and the…”

“What difference does it make,” he broke in, “to our time together here? Do you like the way my Father has fashioned those clouds in process and the flowing river?”

More silence. I opened the book on liberation theology. “How can your gospel be authentically proclaimed, Lord, to people enslaved by oppressive economic and social structures?”

“You haven’t forgiven your brother down the hall yet, nor let me heal your anger and unkind judgements of him, have you?” he countered.

“That doesn’t answer my question, Lord.”

“Your question does nothing to our precious time together except mess it up.”

More silence.

“Are you happy with Vatican II and the aftermath of it, Lord?”

“Are You?” he returned.

“Oh, yes – some of the new thinking and changes are really good, but I think some of the liberals have carried things too far and some of the far-right conservatives are obstructive and not thinking with the church.”

“You’re impossible,” he laughed. “Aren’t you happy to spend a few friendly minutes with me without trying to get some new insights for your lousy – I mean brilliant – class lecture?”

“You’re confusing me Lord. I was taught how to meditate 34 years ago in the novitiate. And I’ve studied ever since. I’m not exactly new at this, you know.”

“No, not new – just a bit slow – and dumb. But I love you anyway.” That helped – but not much.

More silence. I saw a shelf I forgot to dust and a letter that had to be answered and a message to return a phone call. I thought of the next class I needed to prepare. I was getting more restless.

“Lord, would you like a glass of juice or something? It would only take a minute to run down and get you one.”

“And what would I do while you’re gone? I prefer we just sit here together”

More silence.

“Do you love me?” he asked.

“Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you.”

“I liked that when Peter said it,” he chided, “but is it really you?”

“Honestly,” I protested, honestly, – you’re not making this hour very easy for me.”

“You’re the one who’s making it hard,” he replied. “I just like to spend time with you, sharing my presence with you and assuring you of my love. You don’t ever have to entertain me when we are together. Just be there, okay?”

More silence. “Who do you say I am?” he asked, nudging my shoulder.

“Well, I’m with the best of our theologians, Lord, who say that you are – you are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being; you are the incarnate word of God; you are our ultimate kerygma and the full revelation of the Trinitarian, Christological, soteriological, antithetic and ecclesial mysteries of our lives.”

There was a long pause before he said, “What?”

Then he, exploded with laughter, rose and raised his arms straight up with his head back, roaring.

He gave me a big bear hug.

“Yes. You’re impossible! But I still love you.” And he left, still laughing all the way down the hall.

I didn’t think that was very funny at all.

I stood gazing out the window for a few moments, still confused, before getting back to the important things on a desk full of work. Then I really missed him.

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Wow this is by far the most true and amazing thing I've probably ever seen. 

You know, going to Sunday School and Church and Summer trips and such for the past few years, with people trying to portray Christ and our relationship with Him…and all that other jazz on how we screw up and such…trying to really make this real, I don't think could have been better than that story.  It is so amazing.  That while we are so wrapped up in stuff like this thread (though don't get me wrong, I've been reading for the past fourty minutes to get caught up haha, and enjoying)  we miss out on what God really wants for us, and that's just for us to get to know Him and His love.  We seek so hard to just put God in a box acceptable to everyone, to fully portray Him for who He is, we miss the point.  God won't be acceptable to everyone, but everyone is acceptable to him. 

I think to be honest that you should call God God.  You shouldn't try to edge around it to make it better than it is, because if it's what you believe, then edging it will just water it down.  If you believe in God, state it.  God isn't supposed to be explainable, I mean as humans we're not exactly built to understand stuff on such a grand scale as God's existence (but man I love you guys and reading and (trying to) partake in some discussion about Him.) but I definitely think that no matter what we call Him, that our actions and compassion and love for others and their circumstances, regardless of what they believe, will show that love that God has for everyone.  Amazing to think that as much as I mess up I can still love others and show His love through this. 

@ Negoba, I think if you believe in God and calling God God, then I think you should, I think that your wife will love you anyway, though it may cause some friction.  Don't edge around it.  I'd say a rel