We began by exploring our experience of the God in your history. Many of you spoke of the terrifying, punishing images of God that were passed onto your through church and even your parents. God was remote, cruel, stalking, watching your every move. So you tried very hard to be very good to avoid hell or punishment. And this was impossible. Some of you spoke about the confusion about God. "Do what I say not what I do". Some of you spoke about the absence of God. Others of you described how the image of God lives in the extreme from loving connection to damnation. Others spoke about the God of childhood, the white male surrounded by children. For all of you it seemed that you have found over time some crack in these images of God. Perhaps by calling God by another name, or leaving God behind, leaving official religion behind and finding spiritual practices and teachings elsewhere. Some of you have discovered with that with age God, the Holy becomes more and more unknowable.
We then moved into the mystery of God/Holy. We discussed how any image any idea, any concept, even any emotion about God are ultimately simply beliefs stored in our brains from the past. The mind is built to create images, to turn experience into concepts, to create memories. It does so in a split second. So whenever we have a taste of God, the mind will inevitably say something like" Ah thats it. I got it!" Now it is mine. I can keep it, talk about it, write great spiritual treatises about it, teach it. Nothing wrong with any of this. It is what we humans do when we discover something important and precious. We turn the experience into a memory, into an idea or concept. We can't stop this. The brain is wired to do this. And it is incredibly useful. The problem arises when we confuse the concept of God, the memory with the living experience. And since the idea, the felt sense of God started before we can remember, and is the imprint of the powerful authority of our parents, we unconsciously associate God with all kinds of beliefs and ideas that having nothing to do with the mystery of God, the Holy. Some people call this making God into an idol. So we end up worshipping the idol, the concept, the belief, rather than the mystery. Notice how the mind will even try to concretize mystery!
It is important to see that in the scientific world of no god, then rationality, the scientific method becomes God. All can be known rationally and eventually proved and verified. This makes it very difficult for those of us coming from secular, atheist background. Not only is God dead, actually God never existed, but there can be no opening to mystery because it cannot be known scientifically. Mind you many atheists I have known live in awe and wonder at this creation and love deeply. But they would never call this spiritual.
God is known directly through experience, through the touch of divine consciousness, not through a microscope or telescope. It is our souls that slowly discover through repeated openings the mystery of the unfolding holy through the course of this precious life. This is the mercy of grace. In the meantime we have our work to do. We need to clear the soul of the beliefs, ideas, distortions from our histories and the superego. This is a process. Gradually the soul becomes clarified and it becomes clear, transparent, sensitive enough to be receptive to the touch of grace, to this mystery of God and the Holy. By practicing presence and by understanding our not so conscious assumptions about who we are and what we believe, the soul becomes transparent enough to receive the light of revelation.
So you can see that not knowing is an important and necessary opening for mystery. And yet many of us are very ambivalent about not knowing. We use knowing to decide whether we are stupid or not. We use knowing as a way to be secure and to be in control. We use knowing as a way to be successful. Knowing is important. But knowing is useful to fix the plumbing or to the discover the Higgs Boson! We learn all the time. The problem is the kind of knowing at the spiritual level is different from our usual mind's way of knowing. Some people call this knowing gnosis, direct revelation, or divine intuition. This is profound knowing and it only arises out of the emptiness of not knowing. Not knowing is an open, awake and receptive mind. Ever had a moment in the shower or walking down the street, when the light goes on, and in a flash you know something deeply. Often it feels like the stars line and there is deep alive understanding. That is gnosis. ! And it seems to come out of nowhere!
For many of you, our last time together was difficult and tender. Not surprising when you think about the images of God that we carry around. You can anticipate that the superego will put up a fight and try to beat you back into your conventional beliefs conforming to what you learned about God years ago. So take care of yourselves. Ground yourselves, meditate, and most of all banish the superego.
Next Monday we will be holding Spirit Singing with Kath Roos. I hope you will join us. This is a precious way to enter into a celebration of presence. And you don't need to be a great singer.
Our next session of practicing presence will be October 29th. Hope to see you all then.
This and the playlist is posted on: practicing-presence.blogspot.com
Take care and in peace. Alison
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