What Place God (or Source) and Consciousness?

What does the word God mean to you now?

I am now 88. I have a very long story to share of my journey through Christendom and beyond.
I became a Christian in an Anglican Church in the UK as an adult over 65 years ago despite having rejected the teaching of the trinity that I received in a Baptist Sunday School when I was 13. I was treasurer of the local Anglican Church for five years in the 1960s but gradually became disillusioned with what I saw as the lack of ‘radical’ Christianity. I subsequently spent over 15 years as a member of a Sabbath-keeping Christian Church that rejected the teaching of the trinity, before that church was torn apart by a church split in 1995 ( a very long story).

It was as a result of that split that I was forced (for a second time) to reconsider just about everything I had ever been taught.
I stopped attending church 15 years ago, but my wife still attends.
With hindsight the rejection of the trinity was the beginning of an ongoing evolution of my thinking and my understanding around the meaning of the word ‘God’.

It was after listening in 2019 to Barbara Brown Taylor talking about her new book, ‘Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others’ that I made a decision to get away from all the divisive, denominational theology (the head knowledge) that had been so much part of my life for so long. Barbara’s thoughts had become one of the real foundations of my thinking, but it was the beginning of yet another wilderness experience.

It was a few weeks after this that I saw two posts on Facebook from a man who had spent 30+ years in and around Pentecostal and Charismatic churches in the UK but who described himself as a very active ‘armchair theologian’. Those Two Posts represent a story of someone moving from Evangelicalism with its fear, guilt and shame (that I had only been vaguely aware of before 1995) to a place not unlike where I had been as an Anglican some 50 years ago. It was only later that I realised how this had helped me to see myself as an outside observer of other people’s thinking.

There was another watershed in April 2022 when I watched a presentation (22 mins including a 1 min intro) entitled Christianity Expanding into Universal Spirituality by Don MacGregor who is a retired Anglican Priest who had previously been a University Chaplain and a Science Teacher.
As a former Anglican I could really relate to almost all of what Don was saying.
I just KNEW that this was a new beginning, but I had absolutely no idea at that time how this was going to transform some of my own thinking.
Don subsequently introduced me to a number of authors including Jude Currivan and Steve Taylor.

It was in June 2022 that I first made contact with Larry Jordan, the author of a new book,
The WAY: Meaningful Spirituality for a Modern World. I think it is true to say that we have been a significant influence on each other’s thinking.

Since then there has been a significant transformation of my understanding of the nature of God. Those thoughts revolve around the hard question of consciousness, the place of Conscious Evolution, Intuitive Intelligence (Intuition as the Inner Teacher?), Universal Consciousness and what I see as the coming together of Science and Spirituality (without the religious dogmatics). This has been reinforced recently as I have come to a limited understanding of some of the fundamental differences between Newtonian and Quantum Physics.

Here are pointers to some of my thoughts:
We are conscious human beings. What is the source of that consciousness and what impact could that have on our understanding of the purpose of life?
Does consciousness pervade the universe?
What is the relationship between God (or Source) and Consciousness?
Could they perhaps be seen as one and the same thing?

It was in Oct 2022 that I watched a series of presentations from Humanity’s Team that included an introduction to A Unitive Narrative. As an introduction to my own story I have added my own highlighting to an extract of that narrative –  see here.

Since then I have been observing some of the very diverse academic thoughts about the place of consciousness. I recently saw an essay that I can really relate to entitled Consciousness: The Sentient Energy That Shapes Our Reality by Derrick Day.
Energy is sentient. Consciousness is sentient energy. That makes sense to me.
We live in challenging and exciting times – a very uncertain future.

We are all on unique journeys. We are all at different stages, or levels of understanding. It seems appropriate that I should be able to give an answer to my own question:
What does the word God now mean to ME?

I am now caring for my wife who has Alzheimer’s. It’s a bit of a struggle at times.
I’ve referred to the watershed that occurred in April 2022. I just KNEW that was a new beginning.
I guess I’ve been a bit of a hermit since then. An observer of other people’s thinking and a bit of a reputation for asking some of the awkward questions to which there are no easy answers.

My questions now are focused on Consciousness – see Thoughts based on Derrick’s Essay, and the Holomovement – particularly The Theory of Change Paper and The White Paper.

See Some Background for more of my story.

As I’ve said in my Background:
My formal education ended when I was 16. I have not had a full time job for over 30 years. I have been using the internet since 1997 and created a web site in 2000 that subsequently became the foundation of my ongoing blogs.

In 2012 I was introduced to Diana Butler Bass and her then new book Christianity After Religion and ended up with a faith that I could hold on to ‘loosely’.
But then everything started to change again in 2013 when I started attending U3A (University of the Third Age) classes where I was introduced to Philosophy, Psychology, Counselling, History of Christianity, History of Religion, Buddhism and Islam – just 2 or 3 hours a week for 4 years.
I’ll leave the reader to imagine the impact that this all had on someone who had left school at 16; who had always been a ‘workaholic’; and who had been a computer programmer and business analyst starting in 1967 (said to have been one of the perfect jobs for someone living with Asperger’s Syndrome or High Functioning Autism). I see all of this as the beginning of my real education at the age of 78. So much has changed in the 10 years that have followed!