The Mind of God

One way of describing the leading edge culture in DC is that the people who are part of it care about the future. They are articulate and know how to debate, and don't shy away from intense passions and all the creative friction they create.

These characteristics were on full display last Saturday night in a What Is Enlightenment? magazine Salon that I led.

It was a raucous event with many strong views presented and challenged. We spoke about how our spiritual convictions shape our participation in the world. Can o worms! "God is love." "no, god is unity!" "why are you so sure that the universe has a purpose?" "what does peace mean?" etc. Full-on debate in a variegated field of dogma and authenticity. Add a marine recruiter, a young woman who drove 4 hours, a woman who coordinates oversight of the CIA for the Senate, a fiery and dignified widow of a congressman, a high level government consultant or two or three, an ardent nihilist, a committed Buddhist, a author of four spiritual books, a Senatorial candidate for Virginia, several people from A Course in Miracles group, various adherents of Integral theory, or evolutionary theory, or new age theory, or some other theory, and add passion, well-argued dialog, a great deal of respect and laughter, stir it up and you get the concoction we created on Saturday night.

An unbelievably wild and joyful evening. 55 people, 2 1/2 hours thriving together in that fuzzy photo, and 30 people out for dinner afterwards.

The meaning of language is certainly woolly. Amidst all the inquiry about God, human purpose...what it all means, anyway...sometimes two people thought that they disagreed. Yet most everyone else saw clearly that they did not. Yesterday Andrew Cohen published his weekly email (Quote of the Week). I was completely struck on how it summed up what most of us were in fact reaching for:

The Mind of God

It is a perpetually enthralling revelation that we are, at all levels, products of time and the creative process. But it is literally enlightening to begin to experience at the deepest level of the Self that we are truly one with the mind of God -- that energy and intelligence that originally chose to take the eternal leap from Being to Becoming fourteen billion years ago.
                                                                                        -- Andrew Cohen