"To remain without thought in the waking state is the greatest worship."
(Nisargadatta Maharaj, Hindu sage)
"Knowing—thinking, defining, judging, opposing—
keeps us from entering the inner/outer Kingdom."
(Anne Hillman, author of Awakening the Energies of Love)
A process of active divinization is happening in the world, and we are each absolutely necessary to its unfolding. All faiths and traditions, liberal and conservative, and everyone in between, all people, animals, plants and things, all thoughts and beliefs are part of this great work. We are called to move from fear-driven reactivity to the flow of being and becoming, which is born naturally from our immersion in Divinity.
As the mystics across time and geography attest, we are made of God. Nothing can change this truth, although our religious or scientific beliefs may disguise it. Indeed, the mystics tell us that all things not only spring from God’s Consciousness and Being, they are God’s Consciousness and Being.
Unfortunately, we have forgotten this original truth. Lost in fearful imagination, fighting for illusory egocentric security, we act from the collective beliefs and fears of a warrior culture. The result is conflict, distrust, poverty and war.
How can we each move from the anxious, separate, threatened "me" to the embodiment of Divinity? It is a matter of naming. What we take for personal consciousness—"my" consciousness—is God’s Consciousness, though we cloud and disguise it with endless thoughts, beliefs, stories and emotions. What we call "my" physical body is actually God's Being, bursting with unconditional love, freedom, generosity, and happiness.
We have each had a case of mistaken identity all along. Such joyous revelation! This ancient human understanding has been hidden and forbidden for centuries because of its inherent democracy: everyone can know and be God directly without professional mediation—a realization that can be threatening to religious authorities.
Pantheism, the alternative view of the mystic, simply means everything is God—form and formlessness both—including human beings. Becoming one with God, therefore, simply means becoming conscious of Consciousness itself. All being is divine Being; there is only one Consciousness saturating the Cosmos and bringing this pure, thoughtless awareness into the subjective energy of our own physical being.
When I make this simple shift, the ecstatic joy and unconditional love I feel are immense. In that moment, as I live from God as my essence, "my" behavior flows like a river from divine unity, and an always-new way of life emerges.
Of course, there are obstacles to this simple shift. The first is religious experts. Though difficult to talk about, we are still subtly controlled, threatened, and undermined by religious experts. Yes they have good ideas and practices, but expertise often implies that someone else has something you do not, which in this instance is patently untrue. Another obstacle is inflation—the idea that becoming God means you are God and others are not. This is a colossal misunderstanding. A third obstacle is contraction, the bodily state we are in most of the time of recoil, fearful self-gripping, and the emotional pain of historical wounds. Such a response recreates the very pain it seeks to avoid.
Yet the mystics tell us that one day we will move from seeking the truth to being the truth. In that shift, the idea of "you" dissolves into God and the Kingdom shines everywhere. It happens in the direct experience of the equation: Consciousness + Being = Bliss. And from this fountain of blissful unity—the wu-wei of Taoism, the Christ-Consciousness of Christianity, the sat-chit-ananda of Hinduism, the awakened consciousness of Buddha—flows a radically different kind of life. Here there is no effort, no goal, no thought, no time, no identity, and no rules. What is left is the gentle ebb and flow of unity, like a great tide moving through everything.
I invite you to try this experiment right now:
Stop thinking, heighten awareness, and examine the world around you with intense, thoughtless consciousness. Notice the inherent beauty, perfection and sublimity of every thing your eyes light upon. You are witnessing the Kingdom! Now bring this same pure and intense consciousness into your body. Feel into its energy, notice the quality of emotion that arises, and let this awakening energy begin to move you in some way. You may feel like swaying, dancing, hugging your child, or going out for a walk. Surrender to the sublime and fluid grace of this energy. Feel the stirrings of Divine Joy and Love, and surrender to the spontaneous dance of Being.
The chorus of a song I wrote recently captures this experience:
"You who are free,
Come and waltz with me.
Open wide your heart,
Trust that you already know your part.
Just feel into the Way.
Come and stay."
One last thing. Union with God does not mean that you have to change the world or undertake great and exhausting heroic tasks. Such culturally-generated narcissism paralyzes us with anxiety, guilt and performance pressure. In awakened consciousness, there is no "you." Rather, as Nisargatta Maharaj and Anne Hillman tell us, the real challenge is simply remaining without thought in the waking state, bringing us naturally into the flow of God's Consciousness and the discovery of Being as Heaven on Earth.
As we learn to live in the merged oneness of Consciousness and Being, the weight of our problems and fears begins to evaporate like mist in the sun.
