I've been engaging "god" a lot more. Get ready for an obscure tweet Why use this word, "god?" First of all, it's just a word that I grew up with that automatically invokes reverence, benevolence, and awe But also, simply calling it "awareness," "presence," or "the dao" misses that it seems to have certain agent-like qualities. These include an affinity for and invitation toward certain ways of relating to the world The danger – which we see in many participants in Judeochristian religions – is to model god too closely on a human. Then we start attributing more anthropomorphic qualities like judgment and active intervention in affairs As far as I can tell, god does not judge, at least not in any sort of way similar to human morality. God's negative judgement inheres in immoral behavior itself: bad behavior feels bad. (If you're paying attention.) The punishment for immoral behavior isn't a lightning bolt or being sent to hell after you die. It's that you've just hurt yourself, buddy. Now you'll need to invest time healing or undoing the damage if you want to feel better As far as I can tell, god does not actively intervene in affairs. God influence seems to be more like a flower's fragrance; alluring us rather than controlling us. It is most influential when we ourselves choose to breathe it in This influence can be viewed two ways: Through the objective/materialist lens, god's influence seems to be toward a certain type of skillful integration or "concrescence." This is a fancy word meaning "the coalescence or growing together of parts originally separate." (I also suggest the word "polyphony" here. Polyphony speaks to a manner of integration that preserves the unique virtues of the things being integrated. I contrast it to the word "merging.") God's influence is like a magnet or a gravity well in that it can still be resisted through force, even as the influence inheres in that being that exerts the force Through the subjective/experience lens, the process above has a certain feeling to it when one is participating in it (by choice or accident). It feels like grace, flow, opening, beauty, attraction/eros, and love. These are the phenomenological markers of processes that facilitate concrescence The anthropomorphic lens on god can still be helpful, especially when I "listen" and "speak" to god in the mornings – aka prayer. It's just important for me to remember that I am not speaking to a man with a white beard in the sky Thanks for listening. It was pretty headache-inducing for me to write something so left-brained, but I want to have a clear answer to send people when they ask me "What do you mean by god?" Prior to writing this tweet, if someone asked me this question, I would have replied "I don't know. I just get a lot out of listening and speaking to it." Imagine a baby like my goddaughter. My goddaughter does not know what the wind is, but last Thursday, when there was a powerful wind, she seemed to enjoy the way it moved her I still do not know what god is. If I did, it would probably not deserve the word "god." In using this word, I mean to indicate something that is much greater than the human mind, and thus only semifathomable by it