Christian Mystics

Now and then, I get an email that asks a particular question that I get asked quite often, although it does show up in slightly different forms. The question comes down to this: “Ok, so what do you think God is?” I suspect most of the time I can hear an unspoken phrase at the end:  “Mr. Smartypants!”

I will actually try to give you an honest answer although right up front I have to admit I can only tell you or try to tell you what I’ve come to understand. Like any spiritual traveler, great faith is a must — but so is great doubt! So, this is where I stand right now in this journey:

First, I don’t find it helpful to think of God as a noun but, rather, as a verb. God is not a He or a She or an It, that would be misleading — although, of course, many people feel quite comfortable with one of those labels and, I say, not?  Still, I go back to my point — God is not a noun, but a verb. God is not an object, but, rather, a process. God is a process that goes on constantly, everywhere, and either we realize our own selves to be verbs and part of that grand process, or we don’t.  Indeed, most of the time I kind of just plod along, but, now and then, I can see it quite clearly.

Explaining it is something else again.

Just what that the process (or verb) is, of course, becomes much trickier, and I find myself in a place where words begin to become much less reliable. I will say it as concisely as possible, although it opens up a vast vista of trying to explain, which I won’t do. I believe the underlying process of the universe from here to there and beyond is simply  this — Conscious creating itself.

Stick with me on this. If one takes that insight as a starting point, even a simple walk becomes quite a spiritual event. There are trees and people, flowers and birds, the wind and the rain, but if one looks a bit out of the corner of one’s eye, active in the largest tree down to the smallest atom is hidden in the sidewalk under one’s feet is a dance in which the dancer is not blind movement of physics in a equation on a blackboard but, instead, Consciousness. The process of Consciousness manifests in ways that can delight or frighten; awe us into silence or,  in a voice or the face of a loved one or a complete stranger or a voice singing, move us to tears.

Scientists and religious Fundamentalists are both trapped not in the heart of Jesus’ teachings but, instead, the philosophy of Materialism. Owning a theory in the lab or holding a golden ticket to Heaven because of being in with the “right” crowd aren’t about spiritual things and perceptions at all. More often, it’s about saving one’s backside and what it does is the opposite of knowing “the Truth that will set you free” and more about limiting one’s life and, at the same time, limiting God’s astonishing work.

We are made in the image of God. That’s not to say God wears glasses and has a beard because I do.  It’s much more intimate. We are animated by life, and life was breathed into us from God, at least according to the Traditional explanation and I think it’s a poetic truth that points to a greater Truth.

We can walk down the street and see the tree growing and giving off oxygen to keep us alive, the tree that is made up of sunlight and rain, of earth and water, carbon dioxide and soil and, in fact, just about everything except an absolutely independent thing that we would call a tree. Any of those ingredients could be taken away and, quite simply, the Tree would not be there — and in it and through it we see the magnificent interdependency that is bound together by a great Consciousness.

But suppose, just suppose, that when you see that tree you see Consciousness at work creating itself, just as you can see it in the bird that flies from the branch above your head or the harried person stomping down the sidewalk arguing into a cell phone. If God, or Consciousness, is creating itself here and there, the big game is that we are being created as well and, to a certain extent, we are doing our own creating. You can see it in science.  Quantum physics makes the absurd point (which happens to be true) that a partial or a wave can be either one or the other because of your process of observation and expectation.

But to get back on the ground a bit. If it is difficult for you to see that God permeates this world and all other words seen and unseen by our faculties, then are you saying that God made the world like I make a chair and then had no further involvement? Are you seriously maintaining that God is omnipresent and total except not in the sunset or in the bird or in the tree or in each of us? If so, forgive me, but it seems like a rather inferior view of God, presumptuous in its limitations we impose or project.

What have you got to lose?  Try it. Realize that God is a process and Love can be one medium. In the big picture, however, Consciousness is that process, and it operates at each moment and in every part of this Universe, both seen and invisible to us. Further, Consciousness creates itself anew in each moment – every touch, tear and cry. Further, we are a process as well, as anyone who looks at their life with honesty will have to agree — we are not the five year old we were those many years ago entering public school. Good grief, we are not even the cells in our body from this time last year.

What we are, though, hidden and shrouded by this life and this body is a consciousness that can be in tune with Consciousness. The miracle is that with all the changes we go through, we don’t fly off in all directions but are would around a central core of Identity and Being, a soul, a consciousness that acts and is the most real part of who we are.

In fact, although this is not what I wanted to get into, I will mention it anyway:

There is much of our life that we will lose sooner or later – friends, loved ones, money, status, that brand new Mercedes or that prized first dollar we made in business. What we will not lose, what we can only become more and more of, is that which remains as we continue on our journey from this life. That breath of God that has mingled with our own individual self, that consciousness that is ours with it’s small “c”  finds itself cradled by and drawn toward that Consciousness (note: large “C”) and we respond to it and we are, at the end of this life, to continue clothed in the only essential part of our deepest identity.

What this means, actually, is that we can never be lost, none of us, by dying to this life and its shedding of our existent senses, for in this we will have found a kind of freedom that tells us that we were created for one purpose — to know God and to participate in the process of Consciousness creating itself.

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