Now Phil, let's not get defensive about this stuff.

Phenomenology, following Kant, asserts that we can only know directly that
which reveals itself to us, and the content of our knowing of it is filtered
by our knowing equipment.  We are thus locked up in the egocentric
predicament, unable to set aside our ways of perceiving/knowing/experiencing
in order to have a "God's eye view".  This isn't a new position, and it
certainly plays a role in Gestalt therapy.  In working with  clients, the
vital point is to track down hermeneutically what THEIR individual views of
things is and the meaning THEY give to concepts and experiences.  Exploring
within experience is what this is about, having curiosity about the ways in
which our clients have put their experience together.

I have indicated some reasons which experience itself gives us for postulating
the existence of the transcendent world.  The use of the descriptor "stubborn
fact" is just another way of indicating that we all constantly have the
experience of being resisted by the phenomenological world, we find ourselves
having to put forth effort to pursue our aims, and we often fail or at least
have to move to an alternative goal.  What, how, and why we meet with
resistance can probably not be ultimately known us, i.e. without our human
lenses, with "God's view".

The difference between religious faith and the kind of trust a new trainee or
group member puts in the trainer/grp leader is that the latter either proves
to be or not to be true, whereas knowing God cannot in principle be put to
anything like the same test.  Like you, I base my own religious faith on my
experiences with God and my shared experienced with other religious people.
However, I do not know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God exists, and I
certainly do not know what God is in and of himself or as he knows himself.
The last sentence brings up another point, my personal experience of God is of
him as a loving father, among other things.  I do not know if maleness makes
any sense about God as he/it really is, but that is how he appears to me.

Warmly, Sylvia