Three Godde Concepts

I admit to using the word “Godde” as a very loose placeholder for the “who” and “what” people believe in and potentially experience, allowing it to be defined variously. Many don’t believe in a Godde and may object to the use of “Godde concept” in reference to their beliefs, but they do believe in a “something.” I use the word “Godde” here to refer to that something as even an atheistic faith has an ultimate belief or ultimate commitment. I prefer a flexible shorthand to trying to spell out who and what others may or may not believe in.

The concepts of Godde we bring to our doing of spirituality plays a significant role in the practices and teachings we’re likely to spend time on and the people we’re going to spend time with. Building a spiritual portfolio means focusing on the ‘nuts and bolts’ of doing spirituality in the here and now. Our concepts of Godde lends impetus, meaning, direction and focus to our practices. For the most part, however, our Godde concept is unconscious. This results in many of our responses being driven by assumptions we’re largely unconscious of. It is therefore important that we become conscious of our Godde concepts if we are taking responsibility for developing our spirituality.

Our Godde concepts are shaped by the major faith traditions even if we don’t fully align ourselves with them. By doing them some injustice (mostly by way of oversimplification rather than disrespect) we can build models of Godde that are loosely referential to the the object of the faith while still being faithfully representative of the major faith traditions. This gives us three broad generalizations to work with.

We may find it best to explore these generalizations through the use of an analogy … so imagine putting finger puppets on each finger on your hands. The relationship between your self, others and Godde is the key here.

Three Godde concepts may be explained in relation to this analogy:

• Godde as Self with a capital “S”: If you consider your self as one of the finger puppets and look deeper, you see that you are a finger which is part of the hand. Under each finger puppet is a finger, which in turn is attached to the hand. So, the “Self” with a capital “S” underlies everything. Hence, we are all one and the same, our “self” is in fact the Self.
• Godde as Emptiness with a capital “E”: Using the same analogy, when you look deeper you will discover that the finger puppet is in fact empty. There is no finger in it. There is no finger in any of the finger puppets. In fact, Emptiness is the underlying substance of everything.
• Godde as Other with a capital “O”: Using the same analogy results it breaks down a bit, but I will try and stretch it to accommodate. When you look deeper through your self you will discover that we are all connected, but we do not discover that we are Godde. When we meet Godde we discover that Godde transcends the self and that Godde is not the hand connecting us – and yet Godde is known in and through both. Here, we simply discover that Godde is completely and wholly Other.