The “G” Word & Other Hot Buttons

What is it with the “G” word? Why do so many nondualists recoil from the word “God”? After all, it’s just a word, and like all words, it’s simply a symbol we sometimes use to try and transmit a concept. I think it’s a very efficient little three-letter word, and because of that efficiency it’s a really useful one. I frequently use it, but I see some people wince when I do. 

What’s up with the “not that again” reaction? I’ll tell you: it’s conditioning rising to meet circumstance. The circumstance is the “G” word, and the unconscious conditioning is that “I don’t like that word!” Who is that “I”?

Or perhaps it is viewed as not being “intellectual enough”. By who? (I confess to having been guilty of this one for a long, long time.)

Are we just going to stick to our guns and continue to follow the character’s blind conditioning, or have we come together to try and release our conditioning? 

I’ve had people in session work ask me if I could please use some term other than the “G” word. I’m happy do so, because I’m not attached to either using it or not using it. If some other word makes them feel more comfortable, okay. But if I do that, I know that I have got an uphill battle on my hands for the rest of the session. If I am working with someone who’s so attached to their beliefs and reactions about a word, how in the world am I going to be able to help them see something that’s a hundred times more sensitive—their make believe character?

I was raised by an evangelical mother, but when I use the “G” word it doesn’t refer to anything that came out of that experience. And I’m unwilling to have that experience–or any other that I can think of–limit my present vocabulary.

When I use the “G” word I mean consciousness. I mean manifestation itself which is spontaneously arising freshly in every moment. I mean the functional mechanism of Life Itself. 

What You Are—what I Am—is prior to language. There is no word that’s going to nail down IT. 

The “G” word is just one hot button out of many. Spirituality is full of them. Similar to the God-recoil, I have a friend, my best friend for decades, who’s almost violently angry with all things Christian. That’s his hottest hot button. And he’d rather hang onto that position than be clear. Obviously he can’t be both, and he’d rather be right than awake. 

My friend, in effect, is a practicing anti-Christian. His conditioning is blocking him from being awake to this arising. I find that rather sad, because I know for a face that he was awake to at least one moment, because I was on the other end of the phone when he woke up. And then his heavy conditioning pulled his eyelids back down for a long nap.

Since that’s what he’s doing, I’m not going to be foolish to think he shouldn’t be doing it. But it certainly limits our communication, and thus our overall closeness. I can’t be best-friend-close to anyone who’s not at least reasonably clear. I don’t mean that in an elitist way. It’s just that I’m a one-trick pony and if we can’t earnestly, candidly, and deeply talk about spiritual matters, then we have precious little to talk about.

I’m glad to be awake to at least this hot button, but it’s high time for me to dig around and find out what I’m not awake to. Happy hunting.

Here’s another way to help you break through your present box of conditioning. Paula Marvelly, author of Women of Wisdom and Teachers of One, wrote to tell me about her new blog. It’s a gorgeous new website that looks at Nonduality in art, literature and more. Do go check it out, and support this vital and “non-traditional” addition to our community. Thank you, Paula!

The Culturium