the word god

The word God has been used a lot, for better and worse. What I'd like to do here is discuss the better use of it, hopefully diminishing the worse use of it along the way. Of course, only you will be able to say in the end how it works best for you and why.

My assertion is that we need the word God (and what it represents) when we are feeling cut off from the source of all life. At those times, perceiving ourselves as a fragment, not the whole, we naturally long for reconnection with the universe at large.

When we use the word God to reconnect in this manner, to overcome the separation we feel and melt back into an awareness of ultimate unity, the word serves us very nicely—so nicely, in fact, as to render itself mute, at least for a short period.

That is, when the word really works, we no longer need it for a while. When the word really works, we slip back into a sense of ourself as inextricably interwoven with the totality, and the self who longed for reunion, having gotten it, evaporates.

That's why the word becomes mute. There is no one left to say it when the saying of it works out well. When the saying of it works out poorly, there is not only someone left to say it again, but often an army of someones who claim ownership of it.

Ownership of the word God is, in my opinion, the worse use of it. But it's very hard to talk about these things without risking hypocrisy, which is how sacred sounds make a monkey of their organ grinder. My God is your God is all God is muteness.