This week a dear friend of mine wanted to know why I use the word Source instead of the word God to describe the divine presence that exists throughout all realities. She was concerned because she thought using Source instead of God is blasphemous. I really appreciate her question because I know it comes from a place of love and a place of wanting to understand.
I’ll be candid with you. I’ve used the word Source for so long that I don’t even think about it. It feels natural to me.
So, why do I use Source instead of God?
Many years ago when I became a life coach part of my training was to question all thoughts and beliefs to see if those beliefs are helpful. What I discovered is when I started questioning beliefs and thoughts, not all the views I held were mine.
Say what? How does that happen?
As a child and young adult, we are sponges to the world. We grow up absorbing beliefs from our family, friends, religions, local community and global culture. We tend to adopt these surrounding beliefs without questioning them too much. Our environment continues to influence our beliefs until there comes a time in our lives when we begin questioning original beliefs. Some of these times are when we go to college, get married, lose a job, lose a spouse, face middle age or illness. Maybe you have experienced these questioning times?
As I approached forty, I began to redefine everything for myself. No longer wanting to adopt other people’s labels or ideas (even when it came to Source). As I started exploring my personal relationship with Source, I noticed when I used the word God it conjured up the image of an old white man in a robe with a flowing white beard casting judgment from clouds in the sky.
For me, Source is way more than the image of a person, sex, or ethnicity. I experience Source as a feeling of Sacred Bliss or Holiness. Having recognized the difference in my personal experience of what Source is versus what I was taught lead me to exchange the word God for a label that more accurately described my sense of Source.
Why I chose the word Source is because I believe that Source is the origin of all things, the creator of all things, the energy that makes up all things, and holds all things. The beginning and the end, the specific details and the broader perspective, the finite and the eternal—it’s all Source.
We all have some kind of label for Source. Maybe your’s is God, Yahweh, Allah, The Universe, The Great Spirit, The All That Is, or the Divine? Whatever you choose to call that presence is really only a reference point. It acts as an arrow pointing to the Divine. The word is not the Divinity. The word you assign uses language as a way to talk about the Divine. Because of course, Source is so much bigger than any human label or concept.
I love that my friend asked me this question. I love that she wanted to know why I was choosing to use the word Source. I invite all of you to sit with the words you use, how you define things for yourself. Really think about your thoughts, your beliefs, and your concepts about some of these big things because you may find as you travel down your own path definitions may change. Your labels may need adjusting, or you may choose to leave things just as they are. Either way is okay. The process of questioning is the act of sitting in your own power and knowing what’s yours and what isn’t. I invite you to ponder, contemplate, and meditate on why you use specific words or why you define the things the way you do.
As always if you have any questions about why I do something or why I call something a specific word, please feel free to ask me. Or, if you have any questions about defining things for yourself, I am here to help.