In Reply to: Re: the ?.. posted by ray on August 21, 2004 at 06:58:47:
I felt like you might come back with the personal diety perspective. My experience of Consciousness is very personal, so personal that it's very difficult to talk about in language easily shared with others, particularly people who are comfortable with Christian categories of meaning.
In the Friday edition of the local paper, there is a religion page. Yesterday's feature article was on the personhood of the Holy Spirit and how referring to the HS as an "it" gets in the way of an intimate, personal relationship in prayer. There was also a brief explanation of the Christian belief in a trinitarian God followed by some compare and contrast with Jewish and Moslem beliefs about God.
Intellectually, I understood the discussion about the Trinity, but emotionally there was a huge disconnect. Interesting, because trinitarian prayer defined the character of my prayer life for many years. The conventional language and conceptual formulas of Christian orthodoxy just don't say much that I find meaningful any more.
For me, right now, Consciousness works better than Trinity as a way of understanding the mystery of God.
I was also expecting a comment about being more childlike. Imagine an infant in its mother's womb. The infant has no way of describing the feelings of warmth and closeness aroused by the maternal-infant bond of the womb. For all we know, the infant thinks nothing at all, because s/he has yet to learn conceptual categories for his or her awareness of the mother's presence surrounding him/her and giving life. That is the kind of place I go with my Higher Power. Beyond names and concepts and images of god, there is a simple trusting awareness of something more (Consciousness) than myself alone.
Can I have a conversation with Consciousness? Sure. I can even assign a name and voice, call upon Jesus. (My preference is "Beloved One.") But I see this as a case where the mind is interacting with its idea of god rather than opening up the direct experience of God, where words, names, ideas & concepts have ceased and the mind becomes empty enough of itself and all the chatter it produces to open to That Which Is.
See how language betrays me on again! That Which Is sounds so impersonal, when in fact, I am trying to relate the most intimate and personal experience that I know anything about. It is a great paradox, and in the tension produced by that parodox, this is where I encounter Christ's Consciousness.