The Distraction of “God”

Question: I have read a number of your books, including "How to know God". Let me say, I had a conventional Protestant upbringing, but I soon rejected the "prison of social conditioning", as you call it, and became an evolutionist and agnostic. Whenever I hear the word God, I see the old man with a long white beard on a cloud,(he is also bald) an image which I reject and you do too. You say God is not a person, it is a process and the Book of Moses, as you indicate in your book, says many times God is without human form. My question is this: Is there a way to generally avoid usage of the word God, because when I hear or read it, it brings up the image of the old man in my consciousness, which is very distracting and, I think, undermines the credibility of the writing. The same actually also applies to the word "angels". Answer: rnInstead of using the word “God,” some people prefer to say universal intelligence, oneness, or unlimited consciousness. If those concepts are more helpful, then fine. But you are going to still run into the word “God” everywhere, and the distracting image you have in your mind is not the writer’s problem. What you need to do is replace the image of the old man in your mind with something that is more congruent to your understanding.rnEven better would be to have an experience of that divine intelligence that you can reference every time you see the word “God.” Then you wouldn’t feel distracted at all. rnLove,rnDeepak