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'Wintry Day'
Saying - So, to say, "God is within me" is true, for that withinness itself is in God - for all is in God.
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Saturday - November 28, 2020
It is a surprisingly lovely day here in northern Maine. Yesterday, the weather was frigid and snowed all day. As on most days, since I moved here six weeks ago, I take a slow, worshipful stroll down to the brook, to what my neighbors and owners of the land call the beaver dam. I come here to stand, listen to the waters flowing over the rocks, feel the coolness of the air on my skin, and engage in devotion - singing, silent contemplation, prayer, breathing practice.
While walking thoughtfully, approaching the stream, and hearing its lively, loud flow from the melting snow leading to an overflow, a realization arises about joy. As I am walking, what emerges would be in Sufi and Muslim terms a form of remembrance (zikr). For Sufis and Muslims, this includes living with the consciousness of the divine Presence. There are specific means to do this. Christian monasticism has referred to this as the practice of the presence of God, the sacrament of the present moment, or contemplation.
This day I did not initiate the remembrance. Instead, while walking, the realization arose that I was moving inside God's Joy. The atmosphere was the Supreme's Bliss. In Buddhism and Hinduism, persons often refer to this joy by ananda, "spiritual joy."
I tried to pen some idea of what this realization was but could not do, so I deleted the description. Such knowings come by initiation, not words. And when one knows ananda within or without, one knows this is not happiness or pleasure. God's Joy does not fit in psychological categories, for it is not of the person.
I say "the realization arose," for these revelations are not a matter of conjuring experience by will or merely a matter of thinking something. Likewise, they are not fantasies. Realizations are manifestations of subtle energies that arise as a grace.
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I have often written of joy, but always of joy within us. Never have I written of moving in God's Joy. Yet, the destiny is for us consciously to realize what the early Christian apostle, Paul, intuited - "For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.' (Acts 17.28, NRSV)." Paul spoke this before learned Greeks who would have recognized he quoted two Greek philosophers. First, he recited from the Cretan philosopher Epimenides (ca. 600 BCE). And next, Paul cited Aratus, a Stoic philosopher from Cilicia (b. ca. 315 BCE). Hence, he claims what he teaches here is universal wisdom.
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For years, we may go within to find that-of-God inside; the outside left us longing for More than it can give anyone. Eventually, this translates to the experience of God outside in the world. That we discovered within, we find in Nature about us, including other persons. Then, we see the More is neither in Nature or us: we are in It. So, to say, "God is within me" is true, for that withinness itself is in God - for all is in God. Accordingly, we can confirm: "I move in God's love, in God's joy, in God's peace, for God is the environment I live within, move within, and which gives me my every breath."
Here, one is not living consciously in the thought of God, as though one must remember God as "God" at all times. Instead, one has become so attuned to Universal Spirit that thinking of It drops in awareness of being-surrounded-by-God apart from thought. In the place of thought, pure Love arises.
In this knowledge, we can say, in the words of Psalm 23 -
The Beloved our Shepherd
The Beloved shepherds me,
I shall have whatever I need.
He makes it possible for me to lie down in green, plush fields
and to walk alongside quiet, still streams.
Yes! Though I walk through a dark shadowy ravine,
You are with me; your rod and staff comfort me.
The Beloved our Host
You prepare a meal for me
before my enemies.
You have treated me as an honored guest -
anointing my head with oil.
You have filled my cup
to the brim.
Indeed, only goodness and lovingkindness will be with me
all the days of my life, and
I will keep returning to the House of the Beloved on-and-on.
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2020
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse. The book is a collection of poems based on mystical traditions, especially Christian and Sufi, with extensive notes on the teachings and imagery in the poetry.
*Translation of Psalm 23 from Hebrew Bible (Tanak), by Brian K. Wilcox. "Beloved" is, literally, "YHWH, Yahweh, the LORD," pronounced in Jewish readings "Adonai" and often in Jewish mysticism "the Name." The latter denotes reverence for God's sheer unknowability.
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