God is not an object

 

 

After you have awakened the consciousness, the Seer sees whether the consciousness has been awakened in each and every part of your body. Then the Seer engulfs the entire body. Then the body becomes an instrument for the Seer to penetrate further. That is what asana teaches.

BKS Iyengar.

 

In the contemplative wisdom traditions, God is not object.  Any material object of the world that we might stamp an image of God upon would not be nearly large enough to contain the infinity which is God.  In these contemplative traditions – which have deep and ancient roots in the many and varied religions of the world – the word used to describe the Divine differs and some traditions forgo trying to name this “otherness” altogether.  In its essence, what these traditions refer to with the word God is the infinity of presence itself, the reality of life unfolding in each and every moment.

The Trappist monastic monk Thomas Merton has said that “God is a subject, the 'I' behind the 'I-am-ness' that is myself" meaning that God is the Seer or the presence that resides behind the small individual sense of self and perspective on the world.  Merton has said that “God is closer to me than I am to myself” describing what is a profoundly intimate yet universally available experience of inner belovedness and loving.  For Merton, the bridge into God was through the contemplative practices of solitude, prayer, silence, and meditation.

 

In the yoga sutras, the purusa or soul is the inner Seer or presence which is not part of the material world but which imbues our embodiment.  Yoga including asana and pranayama move our intelligence and consciousness into the deepest part of the body as the bridge into God.

 

Brother Steindal-Rast has described God as “a direction” that we go towards interiorly in our practice and prayers, following the inner pathway towards the deepest and most intimate parts of ourselves.  It is in this interior place where find belonging and belovedness. 

 

And in the Shambala Buddhist tradition, there isn’t a concept of God or even divinity.  Still, as the Buddhist nun Pema Chodron has taught inner presencing and belonging is available to us as we learn to open up our hearts to wider and wider aspects of being.

 

In the contemplative traditions, our yearning for God is met by God’s yearning for us.  God, what is flowing into us as our life force wants in return to be known by us and through this knowing to be manifested in the world. 

 

These things are hard to describe with words since they are intimate and interior experiences that go beyond what the rational mind and ego can comprehend.  But where logic might fail us, metaphor, dreams, and images can help us to grasp what is possible. 

 

Images I have of the way we are connected to God as an inner presencing comes to me from two experiences I had with my daughter when she was just born. 

 

In the first, a nurse was holding her, checking out her delicate fingers and toes, touching her soft belly, listening to her heart.  The nurse was talking but my daughter sleepy was not paying much attention.  I was standing by her side and spoke to her to let her know I was right there.  She turned suddenly, wide awake and looked right at me as if to say, ‘Oh, that is the voice I long to hear more of, the presence I long to be held by.”  “I am here listening,” came the voice back to her from my heart. "We are connected by love!"

 

In the second, I was looking at her tiny face, the flower bud mouth, apricot thin ears, the small nostrils opening and closing like delicate moths wings with each breath.  Naturally, I was captivated by her entire presence, absorbing her with all of my senses. And then there it was, in an electric instant, her recognition of me through her smile. “Oh, I delight in you,” it said to me, “make me laugh again!”  Our hearts connected in the shared rejoice of being together.

 

Such is the tender and dear connection to God closer to us than we are to ourselves, amazed at our existence, imminent, mutual longing to be known, in love.