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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

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return to the main-page article on "God"

In preparation for these sub-articles on "God," I rummaged through many of my old writings. I'd forgotten some of the information, especially, from the great scholars of Genesis - how thrilling it was to see it all laid out again.

And yet, if one's perception of "God" rests upon biblical scholarship alone, I already feel a sense of emptiness creeping over my spirit. "Holy" books, at best, are but sign-posts, pointing us to God; and if all one has is the sign-post, how miserable and meaningless it all quickly becomes.

I think Eckhart Tolle made a very wise comment about "honey" -

"The word honey isn’t honey. You can study and talk about honey for as long as you like, but you won’t really know it until you taste it. After you have tasted it, the word becomes less important to you. You won’t be attached to it anymore. Similarly, you can talk or think about God continuously for the rest of your life, but does that mean you know or have even glimpsed the reality to which the word points? It really is no more than an obsessive attachment to a signpost, a mental idol. The reverse also applies: If, for whatever reason, you disliked the word honey, that might prevent you from ever tasting it."

Sign-posts quickly devolve to "mental idols," mere conceptions of the mind about God without necessarily experiencing God.

Elizabeth Fry also speaks of these unsatisfactory mental conceptions of God. God is "not found in buildings or places" or even in the intellectual abstractions of the mind, but "God is found within one's soul, within one's inner consciousness."

But then the question becomes, how can we make God real to ourselves within one's consciousness?

There is an answer, but it cannot be addressed here. I would recommend, as I have before, two books to help us:

There is a difference between consciousness and thinking. Our thoughts do not represent the true self. The authentic person is the background, monitoring-presence that knows one is thinking.

And as we follow the "bread-crumbs down the rabbit hole" we will discover that what we deem to be personal consciousness is, in fact, linked to Universal Intelligence - which some call "God."