Category: Explore Selections From The Book

“The Soul’s will is the will of God.”

August 18, 2023

 

 

I tried to step back to see what question my “soul” would ask. “How can I merge with You? I’m not sure if that’s the best way to put it, Lord: be at one with You, at rest with You, at one with Your will?”

The question is adequately formulated. The goal—one way to describe the goal—is to be at one with God, the God of All. At bottom, the Soul’s will is the will of God. The Soul is at one with God.

It is not that you and I are literally the same substance, the same particular. It is that we are “at one,” in perfect harmony, and not accidentally so. It is in the nature of what the Soul is, that it is at one with God. Remember that these metaphysical (philosophical) categories are crude and inadequate in the first place.

Back to your question: how can you become at one with God? Of course, the answer is that you already are—your Soul, that is. The task is to come to realize that this is so, to realize it not merely in theory, but in intuitive, felt understanding, in your emotions and feelings, and in practice.

“That’s the goal, Lord? It sounds simple. The one-ness is already inside. All we have to do is to bring our conscious selves along.”

That is right. It is the simplest thing in the world. And everyone, at some level and at some moments, knows it, at least glimpses it. But it is very difficult to actualize in practice. The empirical world—the world of desires and the senses—seems so real and is so powerful that is extremely difficult to redirect one’s energy.

And the empirical world is real, in its own way. The world is not an illusion, a mirage. If it is a mirage, it is one from which you can drink water. No, you must respect the empirical world while at the same time emancipating yourself from it, not letting yourself be identical with your interests in this world.

So the world of our experience (and desire) is quite real—it is the arena in which we live our lives and loves, joys and sorrows. In spite of that, we should not let ourselves be ensnared by it.

“You couldn’t keep Me away.”

August 10, 2023

Abigail and I wanted to get married and the only window of opportunity was semester break.  We learned at the end of December that the law required a thirty-day waiting period, making the timing almost impossible.  The only practical thing was to “elope.”  No announcements, no visiting family, a two-day honeymoon in Annapolis.  We would have a simple interreligious wedding with a rabbi and a priest (my own family background was Protestant, but he was a friend from my grad school days) and the mandatory two witnesses.  We barely managed to reserve the chapel in time and, when we arrived, almost late, a very serious young man guarding the entrance refused to let us in.  “We’re here to be married,” I explained, thinking our wedding finery would speak for itself.  “Yeah, likely story,” his eyes said.  “It’s the old dressed-up-like-a-bride scam.”  Finally, we persuaded him that we were not disguised Visigoths, and he let us pass.

To us, the ceremony was not just the last step of a legal process.  It was important to be married “before God.”  His presence was required.  Yet it all seemed so slap-dash that I actually worried that God might not be present, but I was told,

You couldn’t keep me away!  My presence will be fully with you.  I bless this marriage above all others (no other more than this one).  I will be present in every pore of your (plural) being.  Just show an open and humble heart, and I will be there lodged within it.

(At the time I hear the voice, I also get a sense of what the words mean, and show that sense in parentheses.)  It was a simple and beautiful ceremony, and we did feel blessed.

 

Like Two Singers Doing a Harmony

July 27, 2023

“Yes, I always think of You ‘pushing’ me, rather than my being ‘drawn’ to You.  I respond to orders rather than seeking union.”

That is good.  The shallow seeking of union with Me is a delusion.  The goal is to be “in tune” with Me.  The work will flow from that.  This is not just a matter of doing your duty.  It is coming into alignment with Me—like two singers doing a harmony.

“Early people saw my presence everywhere…”

July 13, 2023

As early peoples caught glimpses of the divine in art or in nature, it must have been natural to think there were gods in things.  In fact, I had been told.

Some elements of polytheism are merely superstitious, but other aspects are genuinely responsive to the many ways in which I present myself.  It may seem odd to your modern mind to think of fire as a god, but why do you think I made fire mysterious and fascinating?  It is a physical metaphor in itself—it is created out of nothing and disappears into nothing, grows and dies, gives life and warmth as well as pain and destruction, and it looks both hypnotically attractive and frightening.

As you know, I am very powerful.  I do manifest Myself in storms and thunder, in the ocean and great waves—in the power that drives the universe and that manifests itself in each particular event.  The large cosmic forces are divine and so are their concrete manifestations in specific incidents.  That does not mean that every rainstorm is a specific communication or is there to advance or retard some particular action, but it does mean that every rainstorm expresses an aspect of Me.

Early peoples saw My presence everywhere, saw the spiritual indwelling of things, their powers and potencies and the divine element in all that.  But there was always an awareness, however dim, that there was a single spiritual reality behind them all.

God's point of view

“You are both other and same as Me.”

July 6, 2023

“Lord, are we all part of You?”

You are both other and same (as Me). I need you to be other so that I may encounter another self. I am a Person and, like other persons, define Myself by responding to other persons, and being responded to (by them).

But I also need union, not distance—just as other persons do. You and Abigail are both other and same. You need to be different people—love is a bridge between differences. You also merge spirits at certain moments, though not totally. That is also a kind of completion or fulfillment. Life, including My life, is the dialectic, as you might call it, of same and other, confrontation and union.

We are both other than God and yet the same as God? But same and other are opposites. This did not go down easy for a former logic professor, but I went on. “Lord, are those moments of union with God the goal or are they just nice accompaniments?”

Neither. You shouldn’t strive for moments of union per se, for peak experiences. That is self-indulgence, and a mistake of some who seek mystical experience. It is like orgasms—you should not seek them for their own sake. That is an abuse, a kind of idolatry. They happen naturally as the outcome and expression of love. But the experience of union is not just the accidental accompaniment of loving God. It is the essential expression.

Then, late at night, I felt the boundary between me and the world becoming thinner and less distinct. Slowly, subject and object were blending, becoming intimately bound, not standing apart from one another. I was noting this intellectually, but it was not an intellectual experience. It was an ontological experience, an experience of my whole being. Finally, for a few moments, it approached total one-ness, the complete loss of awareness of self. At that point, I pulled back.

“Lord, what is the meaning of this kind of experience?”

There are many levels and kinds of experience with Me—including music. Do not make too much of it. It is good, just let it happen. It does not mean that you are about to become a mystic or anything unworldly. It is not unlike—it is on a continuum with—a wide range of spiritual experiences, in and out of religious practice and sensibility, that people have all the time. But it is definitely good. It will give you energy and peace and insight, so let it in.

Many times one “loses oneself” in an experience, but those moments are less threatening than merging with God. I pulled back, but felt a nagging sense I was not supposed to. “Lord, I feel you want me to do more of the mystical stuff, ‘entering’ You and so forth.”

Yes, and you can remove the scare quotes. There is nothing strange about it. That is how the universe is. The parts can communicate with the whole. It is no more mystical or mysterious than your ability to move your arm.

Actually, since Descartes introduced a sharp mind-body distinction, how the mind moves the body has been a philosophical mystery. But, in actual life, it is not. The parts can communicate with the whole and vice versa. I had never thought of the universe that way.

 

Is God a person?

June 29, 2023

When I asked, I was given a complex answer.

Yes and No. I come to you—but not to raindrops—as a Person, and therefore I am a Person. One cannot be a Person in some modes without being a Person.

But I am also much more than a Person. Just because I seem so familiar to you—we talk just as persons do—should not mislead you into thinking I am “just a guy.” It is true that I have many of the attributes of a person—desires and a history, for example. But again do not assume that desire and history mean just the same for Me as they do for human beings.

“I am not bequeathing any authority”

June 22, 2023

 

When I was told to “tell God’s story,” I was cautioned against claiming divine authority.

I give you information, insight, but I am not bequeathing any authority. Pass it on in that spirit.

“But, in fact, having this line of communication with You does make me feel superior, Lord.”

You are not superior. You have drenched yourself in sin for fifty years. Do not feel superior to anyone. Your only superiority is your willingness to obey, and that I have given to you. I opened your heart to love and to Me. You did things to prepare, but I have opened the hearts of some who did not. It is neither deserved nor a gift—it is a fact about Me. I am expressing Myself through you—neither more deserving nor more blessed than the paint used in the Mona Lisa.

Well, okay, no matter who the artist is, paint is just paint. But I couldn’t help thinking that, if you’re paint, what could be better than to make it into the Mona Lisa?

Still, I did not feel like a prophet or seer. As I started reading about different religions, I found an endless cast of characters—priests, saints, mystics, apostles, evangelists, gurus, shamans. None seemed to fit me. “Lord, what is my role supposed to be?”

Just to be a serious reporter of what you are told when you pray.

“It is at the heart of my Being.”

June 20, 2023

In spite of the voice, I wondered why, most of the time, God is irritatingly elusive. But I was told,

You see Me all the time.

I looked around and tried to see God, but nothing registered. Martin Buber talks about saying Thou to nature, and that was about as close as I could get. If God wants to be so coy, why does He bother to get our attention at all? How, I asked, could our response possibly matter to Him?

It is very important. It is at the heart of my being.

Human recognition is at the heart of God’s being? I found that intriguing, but it only heightened the paradox of an invisible God who wants to be seen.