I'm beginning to think of myself as a Christian Advaitin...

I feel the truth of the statement 'Atman is Brahman', I feel that everything is interconnected, I do not believe that life should be carved up into pairs of opposites.  I also don't believe everything I read, and I feel that a lot of what resonates about Advaita is consistent with the best in Christian theology.

For example, knowledge of the Self, as discussed in Advaita, really corresponds with my experience of the presence of God.  'Atman is Brahman' feels like the presence of the God whom I got to know through Christianity, but whom one might get to 'know' through any number of other avenues.  Also, plenty of Christians believe that God lives inside them, and plenty more believe that the Higher Self and God are one and the same...

This relates to what I wrote a while ago about conversion and respect: perhaps I will never be 100% 'converted' from Christianity to anything else, and perhaps the whole notion of conversion (complete conversion) is disrespectful to the path we have already travelled and the roots or tradition we come from.

A bit of a tangent: Advaita asserts that everything is Brahman, that nothing has an existence separate from Brahman (this, by the way, corresponds very closely with the Christian assertion that God is in everything and everything has its being in God - I know this is not strictly the same, but I'm living this, not writing a philosophical exposition...) but I'm going to say unashamedly that God / Brahman is, at the moment, particularly in (or as) nature for me, and that right now I need that contact with nature to more keenly sense the presence of God.  This also has to do with getting back to where I came from, my roots.  The Australian natural landscape was such an important part of my childhood, and a source of inspiration for me, before I got stuck in my head and lost touch with it.  It's time to find some of that inspiration again...

'Mist and granite boulders, Mount Buffalo' by Kevin McGennan, downloaded 15th July, 2010, from:

http://www.redbubble.com/people/kevinmcgennan/art/3955762-2-mist-and-granite-boulders-mount-buffalo