Seeing Yourself as God Sees You

A Spiritual Exercise

Dec 2, 2005

Saying For Today: … God is God and God-ing.

“God is God-ing, creation is creation-ing, you and
I are verb-ing, continuously unfolding in a dance with the Divine.”
David A. Cooper, God is a Verb: Kabbalah and the Practice of Mystical Judaism

Following is a spiritual exercise based on a meditation by Rabbi David A. Cooper. Relax and allow the Sacred to manifest from a deeper level than your consciousness. Before doing the practice, pray for the guidance of the Spirit and that only good will come forth to aid and lead you in the meditation.

1. Find a place where you will not be disturbed, sit quietly, close your eyes, and breathe naturally.
2. Imagine you are on an empty beach on a warm, sunny day. You are sitting or lying on the sand, relaxed. You are alone, safe, and you feel free to let go of any concerns or worries you have. Notice how you feel.
3. At one end of the beach is an empty house. Walk toward the house.
4. Walk through the front door. The first room you enter has a full-length mirror. Stand before the mirror, looking at yourself. See all you can about how you look. How are you feeling while you do this?
5. After a short time, no more than a few minutes, you enter the next room. Here, too, is a full-length mirror. But, this mirror allows you to have a vision of God. Allow yourself to spend some time here, immersed in this experience of envisioning God. What does God look like in the mirror? What do you feel like while envisioning God? Does the image change any? If so, how? Do your feelings change any? If so, how?
6. Now, you enter the third room. There is, again, a full-length mirror. You stand before it and experience a combination of the first two rooms. See yourself in the mirror, but, now, through your image experience the Presence of the Divine. This means that you are seeing yourself as God sees you. How do you look from the perspective of the Sacred? How do you feel, seeing yourself through the eyes of the Divine?
7. When ready, leave the house by the way you came. Return to the place on the beach where you were sitting or lying on the sand. Feel free, relaxed, at peace. Remain here as long as you desire.
8. Take a few deep breaths and open your eyes, when you are ready.

We often think of God as a substantive, an immoveable subject that is acting upon all things, like a great Cause outside the process of creation or the Ground of Being. However, we are now learning that God, based on our understandings of the Universe, is much like many of the ancient mystics taught us. God is verbal, even as we are verbal. God is God-ing, even as we are in process. Possibly, we can fairly say that God is both God and God-ing, or God is God-ing, or God-ing is God. However we view God, it seems reasonable that God, while substantive in nature, is substantive plus action, or God is God and God-ing. Therefore, to experience God is to experience Something in movement, in change, even if that change is grounded in changelessness. The above exercise seeks to connect to this God-God-ing and to see ourselves as one with that Process of Manifestation, the Dance of Creat-ing.

Questions: What was the above exercise like for you?

OneLife Ministries is a pastoral outreach and nurture ministry of the First United Methodist Church, Fort Meade, FL. For Spiritual Direction, Pastoral Counseling, spiritual formation workshops, Christian meditation retreats, or more information about OneLife, write Rev. Dr. Brian K. Wilcox at briankwilcox@comcast.net.