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The "Exercise" was:

Each participant was asked to answer with 'one word' what would come to their mind when hearing the word GOD.

The answers were put in 2 columns: Traditional & Spiritual.

Some answers did fit both (or neither) and landed up under 'Either'.

The exercise was enlightening to the class seeing the results, and it invited quite some discussion.

Below is the result of the 'Exercise'.

Last part of the class was used to go over the "Quotes and Remarks", which you can find below.

TRADITIONAL         SPIRITUAL           EITHER

Almighty                Spirit                 Love

Savior                   Universe              All Encompassing

Church                  Inner Light           Friend

Supreme                 Expansive             Creator

Father                   Inner Peace          Non-Believer

Trinity                   Unknown             Tension

Power                    Giver                 Patience

Judge                    Compassion           Unexplainable

                          Connectedness        Pantheist (Everything is God)

                          Divine

                          Presence

                          Life Giver

                          Being

                          I AM

         added later    (Healing Energy)

                          (Ground of all being - Tllich)

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Quotes and Remarks

1. "God is the ultimate source of life. One worships this God by living fully, by sharing deeply.

2. "God is the ultimate source of love. One worships this God by loving wastefully, by spreading love frivolously, by giving love away without stopping to count the cost.

3. "God is Being - the reality underlying everything that is. To worship this God you must be willing to risk all, abandoning your defenses and your self-imposed or culturally constructed security systems." Spong about 'his God'.

4. God and the divine are described as a creative energy, which is perceived to include, but also supersede, everything traditional theology attributes to God,

5. The divine energy is not stable or unchanging, but works through movement, rhythm, pattern, arid restlessness - within the evolving nature of life itself,

6. The divine co-creativity operates within the evolutionary process rather than as an external agent based on a cause and effect relationship. O'Murchu

7. "Notions such as ‘God’ and ‘divinity’ are to be used sparingly, because these are human concepts (descriptions) that may limit rather than enhance our understanding of life̓s ultimate source and meaning." QT The God Question

8. ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Mt 5:6 - In a contemporary paraphrase: You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. God is food and drink in the best meal you will ever eat. That mysterious appetite began like an itch, but it was a spiritual itch, a feeling of restlessness, like a tiny pebble in my shoe that I couldn't get rid of. Linda Douty A Hunger for God

9. "God has placed time bombs within us set to go off and blow a gaping hole in us to keep us searching." Alan Jones Soulmaking

10. “I once had a dream in which I, even though a man, was pregnant like a woman with child. I was pregnant with nothingness, and out of this nothingness God was born.” "I pray God to rid me of God.” “God created all things in such a way that they are not outside himself, as ignorant people falsely imagine. Rather, all creatures flow outward, but nonetheless remain within God.” “We must learn to penetrate things and find God there”. Meister Eckhart MME

11. ‟There is a shadow side to all reality - even to our concepts of God!"

12. “We are part and parcel of this immense intelligence, this Spirit-in-action, this God-in-the-making”. Ken Wilber Brief History 42

13. "The God of the metaphysical age is dead. There is not a personal god out there external to human beings and the material world. We must reckon with a deep crisis in ‘god talk’ and replace it with talk about whether the universe has meaning and whether human life has purpose." Robert Funk no.1 of 21 theses

14. “There is no conflict between God and man, no hostility between spirit and body, no wedge between the holy and the secular. Man does not exist apart from God. The human is the borderline of the divine. Life passes on in proximity to the sacred, and it is the proximity that endows existence with ultimate significance. In our relation to the immediate we touch upon the most distant. Even the satisfaction of physical needs can be a sacred act. Perhaps the essential message of Judaism is that in doing the finite we may perceive the infinite. It is incumbent on us to obtain the perception of the impossible in the possible, the perception of life eternal in everyday deeds. God is not hiding in a temple. The Torah came to tell inattentive man: "You are not alone, you live constantly in holy neighborhood; remember: `Love thy neighbor - God - as thyself." We are not asked to abandon life and to say farewell to this world, but to keep the spark within aflame, and to suffer His light to reflect in our face. Let our greed not rise like a barrier to this neighborhood. God is waiting on every road that leads from intention to action, from desire to satisfaction.” Abrahan Heschel Man is not Alone 265

15. "Religion is not merely an assent to a set of beliefs, but a rich, multifaceted fabric of teachings and experiences that connect us with the divine." Elaine Pagels Beyond Belief

16. When God breathed life into the world, He not only made a piece of clay come to life, but he also enabled that piece of clay to transcend life. That is my spirituality. Goldman GaH 45

17. “I would rather believe in God and die to find out the there is none .... Than not to believe in God and die to find out that there is a God.” [Why? Afraid of meeting a 'judging God'?]

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Pentecost, It Is

The night you came to me
Out of endless timelessness
To say, Hello, I love you --

Wasn’t that a great night?
To think of all those stars
and you out there, and now

In here? How wonderful,
how sweet it was and is --
your love for me --

And that was only our first date.
Since then it’s been hours, days,
years of holding hands

Discovering your secrets
disclosing my own, for healing
only your love can provide.

-- Judith Robbins
Whitefield, Maine

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 Reflection on reading

Consciousness - becoming aware of the Presence, of 'being'

The Buddha is said to have given a "silent sermon" once during which he held up a flower and gazed at it. After a while, one of those present, a monk, began to smile. He, it has been said, was the only one who had understood the sermon. According to legend, that smile (that is to say, that 'realization') was handed down by twenty-eight successive masters and much later became the origin of Zen.

Seeing beauty in a flower could awaken humans, however briefly, to the beauty that is an essential part of their own 'innermost being', their 'true nature'. Jesus tells us to contemplate the flowers and learn from them how to live.

The first recognition of beauty was one of the most significant events in the evolution of human consciousness. The feelings of joy and love are intrinsically connected to that recognition. Without us fully realizing it, flowers have become for us an expression 'in form' of that which is most high, most sacred, and ultimately 'formless within ourselves'.

Since time immemorial, flowers, crystals, precious stones, and birds have held special significance for the human spirit.

Like all life-forms, they are, of course, temporary manifestations of the underlying 'one Life', one 'Consciousness'. Their special significance and the reason why humans feel such fascination for and affinity with them can be attributed to their ethereal quality.

Once there is a certain degree of 'Presence', of still and alert attention, in human beings' perceptions, they can sense the divine life essence, the one indwelling consciousness or spirit in every creature, every life-form, recognize it as one with their 'own essence' or 'being', and so love it as themselves.

Until this happens, however, most humans see only the outer forms, unaware of the inner essence, just as they are unaware of their 'own essence', and identify only with their own physical and psychological form.

In the case of a flower, a crystal, precious stone, or bird, however, even someone with little or no Presence can occasionally sense that there is more there than the mere physical existence of that form, without knowing that this is the reason why he or she is drawn toward it, feels an affinity with it. Because of its ethereal nature, its form obscures the indwelling spirit to a lesser degree than is the case with other life-forms. The exception to this are all newborn life-forms-babies, puppies, kittens, lambs, and so on. They are fragile, delicate, not yet firmly established in materiality. An innocence, a sweetness and beauty that are not

of this world still shine through them. They delight even relatively insensitive humans.

So when you are alert and contemplate a flower, crystal, or bird without naming it mentally, it becomes a window for you into the 'formless'. There is an inner opening, however slight, into the realm of spirit.

Is humanity ready for a transformation of consciousness, an inner flowering so radical and profound that compared to it the flowering of plants, no matter how beautiful, is only a pale reflection?

Can human beings lose the density of their conditioned mind structures and become like crystals or precious stones, so to speak, transparent to the light of consciousness?

Can a human defy the gravitational pull of materialism and materiality and rise above 'identification with form', keeping so the 'ego' in place, and condemning it to imprisonment within its own personality?

It will take a shift in consciousness, that means, to be awaken. But it can 'waken' only those who are ready. An essential part of the 'awakening' is the recognition of the 'un-awakened you', t.i. the 'ego' as it thinks, speaks and acts, like an imposter pretending to be 'you'.

When you recognize the unconscious in you, you are awakening.

A lady lost a ring, dear to her. She was very upset! Didn't realize that she would have to let go of the ring at some point. How much more time do you need before you will be ready to let go of it? Will you become 'less' when you let go of the ring? Has 'who you are' become diminished by the loss?" There were a few minutes of silence after the last question.

When she started speaking again, there was a smile on her face, and she seemed at peace. "The last question made me realize something important. First I went to my mind for an answer and my mind said, `Yes, of course you have been diminished'. Then I asked myself the question again, `Has 'who I am' become diminished?' This time I tried 'to feel rather than think' the answer. And suddenly I could feel it all. I can still feel it now, something peaceful, but very alive."

That is the joy of 'Being'. You can only 'feel' the peace and joy, once you get out of your head. 'Being' must be felt; It can't be 'thought'. The 'ego' doesn't know about it because thought is what 'ego' consists of. The ring was really in your head as a thought that you confused with the sense of 'I Am'. You thought the 'I Am' or a part of it was in the ring.

Whatever the 'ego' seeks and gets attached to, are substitutes for the 'Being' that it cannot feel. You can value and care for things, but whenever you get 'attached; to them, you will know it's the 'ego'. And you are never really attached to a thing but to a thought that has 'I', 'me', or 'mine' in it. Whenever you completely accept a loss, you go beyond ego, and then 'who you are', the 'I Am', your consciousness emerges.

Although body-identification is one of the most basic forms of 'ego', the good news is that it is also the one that you can most easily go beyond. This is done not by trying to convince yourself that you are not your body, but by shifting your attention from the 'external form' of your body and from 'thoughts about your body' -beautiful, ugly, strong, weak, too fat, too thin - to the feeling of 'aliveness inside it'. No matter what your body's appearance is on the outer level, within the 'outer form' there is an 'intensely alive energy field'.

If you are not familiar with 'inner body awareness', close your eyes for a moment and find out if there is life inside your hands. Don't ask your mind. It will say, "I can't feel anything." Probably it will also say, "Give me something more interesting to think about." So instead of asking your mind, go to the hands directly. By this I mean become aware of the subtle feeling of aliveness inside them. It is there. You just have to go there with your attention to notice it. You may get a slight tingling sensation at first, then a feeling of energy or aliveness. If you hold your attention in your hands for a while, the sense of aliveness will intensify. Some people won't even have to close their eyes. They will be able to feel their 'inner hands' at the same time as they read this. Then go to your feet, keep your attention there for a minute or so, and begin to feel your hands and feet at the same time. Then incorporate other parts of the body, legs, arms, abdomen, chest, and so on - into that feeling until you are aware of the inner body as a 'global sense of aliveness'.

What I call the 'inner body' isn't really the body anymore but 'life energy', the bridge between form and formlessness.

Make it a habit to feel the inner body as often as you can. After a while, you won't need to close your eyes anymore to feel it. For example, see if you can feel the inner body whenever you listen to someone. It almost seems like a paradox: When you are in touch with the inner body, you are not identified with your body anymore, nor are you identified with your mind. This is to say, you are no longer identified with 'form' but moving away from form-identification toward form-lessness, which we may also call 'Being'. It is your 'essence identity'.

Body awareness not only anchors you in the present moment, it is a doorway out of the prison that is the 'ego'. It also strengthens the immune system and the body's ability to heal itself.

There are people who experienced that 'emerging new dimension of consciousness' as a result of tragic loss at some point in their lives. Some lost all of their possessions, others their children or spouse, their social position, reputation, or physical abilities.

In some cases, through disaster or war, they lost all of these simultaneously and found themselves with 'nothing'. Whatever they had identified with, whatever gave them their sense of self, had been taken away. Still there are some for whom the anguish or intense fear they initially felt has given way to a sacred sense of Presence, a deep peace and serenity and complete freedom from fear. It is a peace that doesn't seem to make sense, and the people who experienced it may ask themselves: In the face of this, how can it be that I feel such peace?

The answer is simple, once you realize what the 'ego' is and how it works. When forms that you had identified with, that gave you your sense of self, collapse or are taken away, it can lead to a collapse of the 'ego', since 'ego' is identification with form. When there is nothing to identify with anymore, - your sense of Beingness, of 'I Am', is freed from its entanglement with form: Spirit is released from its imprisonment in matter. You realize your essential identity as formless, as an all-pervasive Presence, of Being prior to all forms, all identifications. You realize your true identity as consciousness itself, rather than what consciousness had identified with. That awareness of Being, connects you with the Being, the Divine, that makes 'all' possible. That's the peace of God. The ultimate truth of who you are is not 'I am this' or 'I am that', but 'I Am'.

Whenever tragic loss occurs, you either resist or you yield. Some people become bitter or deeply resentful; others become compassionate, wise, and loving. Yielding means inner acceptance of 'what is' (the 'here and now'). You are open to life.