God is the ground of all being

• God has created the world out of his own being. Johannes Scotus Eriugena
• The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God. Paul Tillich
• The idea that consciousness is the ground of being is the basis of all spiritual traditions. Amit Goswami
• God is the fullness of being, and all other things are derived, partial and imperfect expressions of the divine being. Keith Ward
• God is a peaceful ground of being. He is the energy of nonviolence. To ask Him to help is to ask Him to turn us into profoundly peaceful people. Marianne Williamson
• I experience God as the power of life, the power of love and the ground of being. I don’t say that’s what God is; I say that’s my experience of God. John Shelby Spong
• God, who is the ground of all being, dwells in, around, and through all things-ultimately emerging as the real-and appearances that mask that reality will fall away. William P. Young
• God, as being itself or the ground of being, is the source and end of life. We are not fully ourselves, not living into what we can be, until we come to know and be one with God as the true goal and end of life. The more we realize that end, the closer life comes to fullness of being. Flora A. Keshgegian
• The twentieth-century Protestant theologian Paul Tillich, drawing on ancient traditions as well as modern ideas, thought that the essence of God, what is most real, is “being.” For Tillich, God is the “ground of being.” This means that everything that is, has being, or participates in being. Flora A. Keshgegian
• I would like my art to be about the possibility that each of us has to realize our connectedness with this great Spirit, whatever you want to name it, our inherent Buddha nature, Christ consciousness, primordial reality, the ground of being, God. Whether you want to go for a personal or impersonal perception of Spirit, is up to the individual. Alex Grey
• The Goddess is the Encircler, the Ground of Being; the God is That-Which-Is-Brought-Forth, her mirror image, her other pole. She is the earth; He is the grain. She is the all encompassing sky; He is the sun, her fireball. She is the Wheel; He is the traveler. He is the sacrifice of life to death that life may go on. She is the Mother and Destroyer; He is all that is born and is destroyed. Starhawk
• “Let’s set the ‘our-Father’ image of God aside for a bit and give ourselves some creative latitude in how we think of God. One of the terms for God in our tradition is ‘the Ground of Being.’ Let’s imagine what our spiritual lives would be like if we thought of God more like soil for a plant than a father of a young woman. If we imagine God as the earth in which our truest beings are rooted, it might change how we search for, and how we experience God. Doug Hammack
• There exists an infinite, eternal Being, subsisting of himself, who is one without being alone; for he finds in his own essence relations whence, with the necessary movement of his life, results the absolute plenitude of his perfection and his happiness. A Being unique and complete, God suffices to himself. Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

.

Consciousness (God) is the ground of being

• Consciousness is the ground of Being. Amit Goswami
• Consciousness is not mind; it is the ground of all being, the ground of both matter and mind. Matter and mind are both possibilities of consciousness. Amit Goswami
• Consciousness is the ground of all being; everything is consciousness. Beyond that, definition is impossible because any way we may attempt to define it would limit consciousness. Ricky Ray
• Consciousness comes first; it is the ground of all being. Everything else, including matter, is a possibility of consciousness. And consciousness chooses out of these possibilities all the events we experience. Amit Goswami
• The consciousness of the subject in a subject-object experience is the same consciousness that is the ground of all being. Therefore, consciousness is unitive. There is only one subject-consciousness, and we are that consciousness. “Thou art that!” say Hindu holy books known collectively as the Upanishads. Why, then, in our ordinary experience do we feel so separate? This separateness, insists the mystic, is an illusion. If we meditate on the true nature of our self, we shall find, as mystics from many ages and times have found, that there is only one consciousness behind all the diversity. This one consciousness/subject/self goes by many names. Hindus refer to it as the atman; Christians call it the Holy Spirit, or in Quaker Christianity, the inner light. By whatever name it is called, all agree that the experience of this one consciousness is of inestimable value.  Amit Goswami

.

God is the ground of our being

• In God, I move and breathe and have my being. Oprah Winfrey
• Spirit is the presence of what concerns us ultimately, the ground of our being and meaning. Paul Tillich
• Every participant partakes of the power of Being in its entirety, while Being is unchanged and undivided. Plotinus
• Being aware of awareness itself, only consciousness can get you there to the truth of yourself, the immortal inner being. Rajneesh
• Faith is a determination to keep in touch with the unnamable Being that dwells in the heart of all existence–you and me, included. Robert Fulghum
• The goal remains constant: for all beings to fulfill the possibility built into existence and being by God, the creator and source of all. Flora A. Keshgegian
• God is pure existence. Being. Allness Being. That in who we live and move and have our being. Allness being. Anthony Lambert
• We are here to awaken to the reality of our true identity – that we are sparks of the Eternal Imperishable Spirit, who is the source of all Creation and the very essence of our being. Shriram Sharma
• The most intimate motions within the depths of our souls are not completely our own. For they belong also to our friends, to humankind, to the universe, and the Ground of all being, the aim of our life. Paul Tillich
• The ground of being is the ground of our being, and when we simply turn outward, we see all of these little problems here and there. But, if we look inward, we see that we are the source of them all. Joseph Campbell
• A process for discernment: God is my ultimate source of truth and wisdom, and dwells forever at the center of my being. Therefore, any thought, emotion, or action that takes me further from my center can be neither truthful, nor wise. Bill Crawford
• You create your life through the inner power of your being, whose source is within you and yet beyond the selves that you know. Use those creative abilities with understanding abandon. Honor yourselves and move through the godliness of your being. Jane Roberts
• The bible reveals reality as a “great chain of beings” (plural) with God at its top as creator and governor of all below him with a fixed gulf between him and the rest marked by the difference between being uncreated, self-existent, and being created and dependent. Roger E. Olson
• Standing on the bare ground,–my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space,–all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don’t know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox’s or bear’s, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there. Meister Eckhart
• The roots of all living things are tied together. Deep in the ground of being, they tangle and embrace. This understanding is expressed in the term nonduality. If we look deeply, we find that we do not have a separate self-identity, a self that does not include sun and wind, earth and water, creatures and plants, and one another. Joan Halifax
• If you can love death you become deathless; if you can understand non-being then your being becomes the very ground of being-hood, the very ground of God. If you can love non-being then nothing can destroy you, you have transcended time and space. Then you have become one with the total, and this is what holiness is – to become whole is to be holy. Rajneesh
• At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our life, which is inaccessable to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. Thomas Merton

.

God is dynamic being…

• For early church theologians who used the language of being to describe God, the character of being was static. As we have discussed, God, being itself, did not-and could not-change. Flora A. Keshgegian
• Neither Tillich nor Rahner, however, understand being as static or given. For them being has a dynamic aspect as becoming; there is development in human life, in history, and in creation. Flora A. Keshgegian
• They maintain a notion of God’s being and purpose as fixed. There is a God-given end to existence which fixes how being ought to be realized. In that sense, God precedes, determines, and completes all that God intends. Flora A. Keshgegian
• Such development, the process of becoming, has a goal. As determined by its essence or nature, any being has an end for which God created it. God wills the fulfillment or actualization of that end. By living in obedience and faithfulness to their essence, beings are fulfilling God’s will. Flora A. Keshgegian
• No longer is God’s creation best characterized by stability. God’s will is neither absolute nor unbending. It is not directed toward keeping things as they are, in a hierarchical order with everything having its proper place and role. Instead, God wills change. God’s order is dynamic. Everything is in flux. And that is a good thing. Flora A. Keshgegian
• The worldview that sees change as a given and as a good thing often includes the notion that growth and development are nurtured in relationship. The relational web embraces the divine and all of creation, in a dynamic network of interaction. God is not to be viewed as atop this network, but as the grounding of it. Divine dynamism is present throughout the relational web. Flora A. Keshgegian

.

…in the process of becoming all that is

• The Neo-Platonic philosophers describe God as the ‘mystery of being’, which is in the process of ‘becoming’ all that is. The mystery of being is arising as all individual beings. This profound idea brings us to the greatest teaching found at the heart of the spiritual traditions of the world: Atman is Brahman. The soul is God. Tim Freke
• In this universe creation is in process, and so are we. All is growing and developing and becoming. God’s will, no longer needing to maintain a set order, intends and supports such growth and development. The universe is not a finished product and neither is God. This way of seeing the world is dramatically different from more classical approaches. The clash between these worldviews, one affirming change and the other condemning it, continues to play out in many theological arguments today. Flora A. Keshgegian
• God joins with us in the process of becoming. In that sense, God’s overall will for the world does not change or waver. God wants the good of all, like a loving, nurturing parent wants her children to have full, healthy, and good lives. But the specific content and direction of God’s will is not set. It changes as new occasions and concerns arise and as God is affected by the life of the world. God’s will takes shape and draws purpose within and through relationship, in the changing circumstances of life. Flora A. Keshgegian
• Chief among these is process theology, which draws upon the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead to suggest that being is becoming, in process, and that the universe is not static, but dynamic. God is not only open to and capable of change, but change is the essence of the being of God. Change is at the heart of God. In that way process theology seeks to challenge the biblical and philosophical traditions of Christianity and bring them together in new ways in order to celebrate change and to embrace becoming. It is no longer sufficient to argue that change may be consistent with God’s eternal will. Rather God’s will is for change; it is change itself. God in Godself is changing, and God is the author of change. Flora A. Keshgegian

.

God is the being that underlies and gives rise to all

• It is the substratum underlying all apparent diversity. It is the extraordinary in the absolutely ordinary. It is the common ground. Interestingly, common means both ‘ordinary’ as well as ‘universal.’ Leo Hartong
• The One is all things and yet no one of them. It is the source of all things, not itself all things, but their transcendent Principle… So that Being may exist the One is not Being, but the begetter of Being. Plotinus
• It appears that the ground of being which underlies and sustains us despite our various inadequate and conflicting stories must be extremely tolerant, generous, and forgiving. All things considered, it wouldn’t hurt if we were, too. Alexei Panshin
• Underneath the world of sense perceptions and the world of mind activity, there is the vastness of being. There’s a vast spaciousness. There’s a vast stillness and there’s a little ripple activity on the surface, which isn’t separate, just like the ripples are not separate from the ocean. Eckhart Tolle
• Ultimate reality is the highest, deepest, eternal, unchangeable, source and ground of everything we see, touch, and experience with our five senses. It’s that which gives being and meaning to everything finite, mortal, changeable. It’s also that toward which we creatures look and live – whether we know it or not – our telos; our goal and purpose. Roger E. Olson
• It’s quite simple really. Being always transcends appearance-that which only seems to be. Once you begin to know the being behind the very pretty or very ugly face, as determined by your bias, the surface appearances fade away until they simple no longer matter. That is why Elousia is such a wonderful name. God, who is the ground of all being, dwells in, around, and through all things-ultimately emerging as the real-and appearances that mask that reality will fall away. William P. Young
• At the center of the Christian faith is the affirmation that there is a God in the universe who is the ground and essence of all reality. A Being of infinite love and boundless power, God is the creator, sustainer, and conserver of values….In contrast to the ethical relativism of [totalitarianism], Christianity sets forth a system of absolute moral values and affirms that God has placed within the very structure of this universe certain moral principles that are fixed and immutable. Martin Luther
• The result was the conception of the plan and structure of the world which, through the Middle Ages and down to the late 18th century, many philosophers, most men of science, and, indeed, most educated men, were to accept without question—the conception of the universe as a “Great Chain of Being,” composed of an immense, or … infinite … number of links ranging in hierarchical order from the meagerest kind of existents … through “every possible” grade up to the ens perfectissimum. Arthur O. Lovejoy
• When you awake to the ground of Being, you realize that when something came from nothing, the nothing didn’t disappear. That unmanifest, unborn dimension is the ever-present ground out of which everything is still arising in every moment. It is what the Buddha called “the deathless,” and what others call “eternity consciousness.” When you awaken to this dimension in your own awareness, you will find yourself always already resting in the eternal moment before time began. This is the recognition that liberates: Prior to everything, I already am. The experience of this recognition is not one of becoming liberated. It is of being already liberated. What you realize when you awaken to that ground is that there is a part of each and every one of us that is already free—from everything. That part of yourself, which is the ground of Being, has never been bound, trapped, or limited in any way. That’s the part of yourself that I want you to discover. It’s not the part of yourself that needs to become free. It is already free, right now.  Andrew Cohen

.

Everything has its being in God…

• The nearest thing one knows in God – for instance, if one could understand a flower as it has its being in God – this would be higher than the whole world. Meister Eckhart
• I understand Being in all and over all, as there is nothing without participation in Being, and there is no being without Essence. Thus nothing can be free of the Divine Presence. Giordano Bruno
• Being is most pure and absolute, that which is Being simply is first and last and, therefore, the origin and the final cause of all. Because eternal and most present, therefore it encompasses and penetrates all duration, existing at once as their center and circumference. Bonaventure
• On one level, to be means to exist. To state that something has being is to suggest that it is. It has existence. But being is not just about the existence of things, it is also about the essence of things. Essence refers to nature of things, the nature of being. So being not only gives things existence, but it also makes them what they truly are and are meant to be. Flora A. Keshgegian

.

…for God is the source of all being

• God is not a ‘being’ removed from creation, ruling it from outside in the manner of a patriarchal ruler; God is the source of being that underlies creation and grounds its nature and future potential for continual transformative renewal in biophilic mutuality. Rosemary Radford Ruether
• As the ground of being, God is both the source of all that exists and also the purpose or essence of what is. The goal of faith for Tillich is to participate as fully in being as possible. By becoming most truly one’s essence, a being exists more truly in relation to the divine as ground of being. Flora A. Keshgegian

.

God is being itself, not a being…

• God is being itself, not a being. There can be no subject-object relationship here, no duality, no you and god. Eckhart Tolle
• There is no “you” that is conscious, there is only consciousness.  Brian Thompson
• Zen insight is not our awareness, but Being’s awareness of itself in us.  Thomas Merton
• There’s no one ‘being aware’, there’s only awareness.  Mooji
• I have never been able to become comfortable with calling God “Being Itself” or thinking of God as “absolute” or “unconditioned.” Roger E. Olson
• In Rahner’s theology, Jesus Christ is the actualization of being because he is living in full obedience to his divine essence. Flora A. Keshgegian
• God as Being Itself–not the Supreme Being at the top of a great chain of being but something entirely different–perhaps more like the infrastructure of a city that makes it “work.” Roger E. Olson
• The third major characteristic of God – “infinitude” – is the catchall, the universal modifier of Christian theology. God is not merely a being; he is infinite being. God is not merely good; he is infinite goodness. God is not merely wise; he is infinite wisdom. And so on down the list. God is exaggeration run amuck. George H. Smith
• Consciousness is an attribute while awareness is not; one can be aware of being conscious, but not conscious of awareness. God is the totality of consciousness, but awareness is beyond all–being as well as not-being. Nisargadatta Maharaj
• My view is that the ground or ocean of being, or Source, is beyond the subject/object dichotomy; it is pure being. It is only when matter and energy bubble up from this ocean of being that consciousness also bubbles up, tied necessarily to matter and energy, and vice versa. Tam Hunt
• I don’t call it finding God, because how can you find that which was never lost, the very life that you are? The word God is limiting not only because of thousands of years of misperception and misuse, but also because it implies an entity other than you. God is Being itself, not a being. There can be no subject-object relationship here, no duality, no you and God. God-realization is the most natural thing there is. The amazing and incomprehensible fact is not that you can become conscious of God but that you are not conscious of God. Eckhart Tolle
• As a thinking Christian wishing to avoid idolatry, I learned I was supposed to think of God not as “a being” but as Being Itself–not as one, even the supreme and self-existent one, among many but as the Power of Being, the One OF the many. If God is really God, so the argument goes, and not like us, limited, finite, conditioned, he must be Absolute. Anything less than “the Absolute,” the Unconditioned, cannot really be God. If the God of the Bible is a being and not Being Itself, the Absolute, the Unconditioned, the One behind the many, then, so the argument goes, then he does not really deserve to be thought of as God because, to borrow Anselm’s term, the mind can think of a great being than him. Roger E. Olson
• If God is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from its effect, he becomes a being, not Being itself. Karen Armstrong

.

…and contains all being

• God always was, and always is, and always will be. Or rather, God always Is. For Was and Will be are fragments of our time, and of changeable nature, but He is Eternal Being. And this is the Name that He gives to Himself when giving the Oracle to Moses in the Mount. For in Himself He sums up and contains all Being, having neither beginning in the past nor end in the future; like some great Sea of Being, limitless and unbounded, transcending all conception of time and nature, only adumbrated [intimated] by the mind, and that very dimly and scantily. Gregory of Nazianzus

.

Enlightenment is our felt oneness with Being (God)

• The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and form. Eckhart Tolle
• The divine Ground of all existence is a spiritual Absolute, ineffable in terms of discursive thought, but (in certain circumstances) susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by the human being. This Absolute is the God-without-form of Hindu and Christian mystical phraseology. The last end of man, the ultimate reason for human existence, is unitive knowledge of the divine Ground—the knowledge that can come only to those who are prepared to “Die to self” and so make room, as it were, for God. Aldous Huxley

.

Relating to God as being takes us out of the realms of a personal God

• Regarding God as Being Itself tends to lead away from relating to God as “Thou” with whom one can have a real, personal relationship. Roger E. Olson
• Imagining God as being itself or as ultimate reality begins to take us out of the realm of a personal God. These perspectives also let us view life as a dynamic process throughout creation. Because all life forms have being, theologies of being make room for the array of God’s creation in in the scope of God’s will. Each and every thing is potentially becoming and growing into the fullness of its being. Flora A. Keshgegian
• One reason I resist thinking of God as Being Itself as opposed to a personal being is that it tends to undermine prayer except as meditation. It lends itself easily to the idea that “Prayer doesn’t change things; it changes me.” That is, it undermines petitionary prayer which Schleiermacher, understandably because of his philosophical influences, called “immature prayer.” If God is Being Itself, the Absolute, Unconditioned, then it would seem prayer cannot affect God. In fact, it would seem God cannot be affected by anything outside himself. Roger E. Olson