For the next few weeks, HuffPost will be hosting an array of respondents -- including spiritual leaders, world leaders, personalities and celebrities -- who are asked to fill in the blank to the statement: God is...
The series will lead up to and accompany the November 13 opening of the upcoming documentary Oh My God?
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God is a word for children.
For the few who grow up, it is deep, private and wordless, and has nothing to do with the schoolyard chatter of conflicting religions. Yet, paradoxically, it is the very young and the very old who know this best.
It is quite possible to practice the 'awareness of the presence of God'. Those who do come to realize that religions too belong largely to words and concepts, where God is not to be found.
Anyone who tells you they know WHO god IS are to be mistrusted.
Remember it's early in history, it's only 2009, and we're all still primitive little savages, oblivious to the effulgence of our own existence.
It is revealing that 'God' is also the most extensively used expletive in the multiple languages of our world. It springs unbidden from our deepest hearts, when we're not 'thinking'.
Thought is the enemy of 'the awareness of the presence of god.'
Knowing is different from thinking, or hoping or having 'faith' in. It's been remarked that 'Belief, surely, in the absence of certainty, is close to lunacy'. The world is full of lunatics.
Not enough of us have practiced, or even considered, the 'a.o.t.p.o.g' to have an opinion on the matter. Those who have know the futility, the pointlessness -- indeed the catastrophic dangers -- of declaring an opinion on the matter. There are religious sects in Asia that maintain it is a blasphemy to even mention the word, because to do so is to confine its meaning such that one obviously hasn't a clue as to what it means. In the Knowledge of the Presence of God there is power beyond words... so why not just shut up and get on with it for God's sake.
Lawrence Blair, Ph.D. is an author, explorer and filmmaker. Brought up in the UK and Mexico, he has been a resident of and expert on Indonesia for the past 35 years. He is currently featured in the documentary Oh My God?.