How we use the word "God"

God is a word that has been used in many different ways. For some people is has been so misused that they no longer wish to use it at all. For many people it is no more than a mental concept linked with painful religious ideals that no longer work for them. We are very sympathetic to this view at The Center. Ultimately it does not matter what you call it, the real point is to get into contact with it. At The Center when we speak of a personal God as taught by Jesus Christ we do not at all mean some human person with unlimited power in a body somewhere “out there.” This wrong concept of God is falling away- mainly because it has no real validity in the realm of experience. In place of the mean or angry God “out there”, people from all different denominations and walks of life regularly have direct experience with a great power or presence or light that fills them and often changes them in a way and at a rate that is impossible otherwise. People who have an experience like this often experience their consciousness merging with this Divine light and becoming one with it. This experience is profoundly transformative.

God is the transcendent absolute-- the infinite Divine Love that is the backdrop of our selves and also of the entire universe. It is the power that connects everything to everything else and everyone to everyone else. It is the power source of all authentic action thought and feeling. Above all God is something that can be experienced in very real ways and this experience is the source of true living. When we speak of a personal God we mean that it is possible to relate to God personally, we mean that you can invite its presence into your life and it will come, that you can give it permission to raise your consciousness to a point where you can actually perceive it, and it will. When we speak of God communicating to us we do not typically mean that God is using words to talk to us, in place of that we have regular experiences with deep and profound peace pouring through us, or joy glowing within us, or Love emanating from the Divine itself at the core of our being and filling every cell with light. These are the deep communications of the Divine, the Divine speaks to us in states of being that transform.

Ultimately there are no words that can describe accurately what God is and there is no mental image that has its imprint. The Divine must be experienced in order for it to be known. It is not necessary to have any concept of God at all in order to come into union with God. In this approach the concepts come after the direct experience or else the concepts grow as our experience does.