Having finally completed reading McGilchrist’s The Matter With Things I can finally claim my allegiance to the something greater I’ve always intuited as that which makes reflection a fruitful endeavor, sometimes yielding insight and inspiration. I think ontologically primitive consciousness is a fine place to posit the mystery which has led to the universe we know as its ground of being and have called God by any number of specific names. I’ve accepted that “God”, if only as a placeholder name, is needed to refer to what is the source of all that is sacred.

Specifically what changed is I no longer see consciousness or the sacred as something that evolved from anything more basic. There is nothing prior to or more basic than these.

Christianity does not embrace me as someone who merely holds God - who or whatever that may turn out to be - dear. It is a definitional thing. Those already inside the Christian tent decide what it takes to be one of them, and I’m unwilling to jump any hurdles: I won’t read the Bible and have no interest in the politics of brotherhood and even less interest in group think of any kind.

So as nice a person as Christ seems to have been and even though the parables are great exemplars for human interactions I do not seek to join the party. I’m content to be your barely tolerated gadfly who sits in the back and secretly harbors some holy envy for people who find themselves contained by an ancient wisdom tradition which reaches back through oral traditions to the beginnings of humanity.

I started this thread a long time ago. I’d have to change what I wrote before, classifying myself as a 5 as I definitely see how creation is central.