I do not see God as a separate being among other beings but as the source, ground, and substance of all being. In other words, God is not a person-like being. I think that God is all there is and that God is also the emptiness/fullness from which all that is arises. Human social intelligence has naturally anthropomorphized God. That is fine in the context of myth—that’s how myth works—but in modernity we must distinguish metaphorical mythic truth from literal rational truth. Mature rational intelligence requires that we think of God abstractly as a pervasive mystery that is also our deepest identity.
The common objection to such thinking is that it dehumanizes God. Well, that’s exactly right. Anthropomorphizing sees as human something that is not human. To move beyond the anthropomorphic version of God is to remove human attributes that no longer fit our best understanding of God. The objections to doing this are not usually about truth but, rather, emotion. We want a God we can relate to like a person. We want a God who can love us and care for us and whom we can feel connected to in a human way. To this I have a threefold response.
First, grow up! Reality is what reality is! What is and what I might prefer are two different things. It is not God’s job to be our friend or to take care of us. The evolutionary processes through which God has brought us into being are quite impersonal and often brutal. Yet, evolution was produced in us the capacity for joy, love, and compassion. It is our job to be friends to one another and to take care of one another.
Second, our true relationship to God is far more intimate than any human relationship can be. In the deepest parts of ourselves, we know ourselves to be entirely one with God. Enlightenment arises from the simple experience of this reality. While we may want psychologically to remain children and be cared for by a supernatural parent, reality pushes us to encounter our true, eternal identity. Though our physical bodies and ego identities are quite mortal, our deepest identity is eternal and universal, and there is a deep peace to be found in that.
Third, my experience is that this God-saturated reality has a deep intelligence that somehow guides and teaches us. I don’t know how it works. For sure, God is not a white-bearded old man on a throne in the sky who watches and guides us like a benevolent grandparent. Yet, I have often felt guided and taught along my spiritual path. Here is a recent experience that illustrates what I mean.
In July of 2025, Louise and I visited our daughter Laura in the Burlington Vermont area. Saturday was rainy, so we decided to take in a matinee of the new Superman movie. We had lunch at a café near the theater and found ourselves with time to kill. We found a new-agey sort of boutique near the café. It was a fun place with lots of nice stuff.
I rarely buy anything for myself in such places, but something caught my attention this time. On one of the display tables was a small basket of charms. They were oblong, made from pewter-like metal, about the size of a quarter, with a symbol in relief on one side and a word or phrase stamped on the other. I found myself attracted to one with a lotus blossom on top and “Namaste” on the back. Lotus blossoms symbolize the unfolding of enlightenment. Namaste literally means “I salute you”, but it has come to signify respect for the divinity in another person. It just seemed to me that I should have it and keep it in my pocket as a reminder. I talk a good line about all things and all people being manifestations of God, but I sometimes find myself being judgmental, impatient, and occasionally angry with others in a way I’m not proud of when I notice it. I thought it would be nice to carry the charm as a reminder to help me stay centered in awareness if divine omnipresence.
In October I did my New Warrior Training Adventure weekend with the ManKind Project. Three weekends later I did the Primary Integration Training that is a follow-up to the initial weekend. We were asked to bring something that is sacred to us to invoke sacredness in the shared ritual space. For me that sacred thing was my Namaste token. Until then I hadn’t fully realized how sacred it had become to me.
I returned home on Sunday night, and by Tuesday my token was lost. I knew I had brought it home from the weekend, but I had no idea where it had gotten to in the intervening day and a half. Probably it had fallen out of my pocket somewhere when I pulled out my keys or eye drops.
I was a little upset. I thought about my loss as I lay in bed early Wednesday morning. In the past my attitude would have been that it was just a material thing, and material things aren’t that important; it’s the spiritual things that are important. But, in recent years I have realized that material things are manifestations of spirit and that this material world is the one and only spiritual world. It was precisely in being with the feelings about losing the token that this realization became fully meaningful for me. MATTER MATTERS! And not just sacred objects but everything! Yes, everything is impermanent, and we need to accept impermanence, but that does not mean that impermanent things don’t matter. We too are impermanent things. Desperate attachment is not good, but this world and the people and things in it are here for us to love and appreciate. I understood that before, but I suddenly experienced it all the way down. It was a moment of deepen spiritual awareness.
Lying there in bed, I had a definite sense that I had been in conversation with the universe, with reality, and that the universe had set up the whole situation to be a teachable moment. That insight felt like part of the lesson: the whole of reality is spiritual and intelligent and somehow actively engaged in expressing and experiencing its intelligence and love in and through everything including me. It’s more than I can understand, but I have experienced it too many times to dismiss it.
Lying there, it occurred to me that, since I had learned the lesson, maybe the universe would give my sacred token back to me. I thought of checking the seat in my car and under the cushion where I sit on the sofa to watch TV. I didn’t really expect to find it either place. I decided to check the cushions first because it was cold outside. I found it, plainly visible, under the first cushion I pulled up. Holy shit!
Carl Jung called this sort of thing synchronicity. I not aware that he or anyone else has ever offered a satisfying explanation. I don’t have one. Somehow reality is profoundly and intelligently interconnected. It is able to behave in ways that conform external events to our internal sense of meaning. It all seems very purposeful in a very broad and grand sort of way.
© John Speers 2025
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