God is. I don’t know what God is. But God – Consciousness, Awareness, Presence, One – is.
Joel Goldsmith said that the outermost reach of our quest for God lay in those two words: God is. The human mind can go no farther.
It’s taken me a long time to truly grasp the profundity of that statement. (And if I’ve learned anything, that grasp is anything but full.)
God is. The challenge for anyone reading those words is that there’s no room for them in that equation. You’re left with the disconcerting thought that you and God must be One and the same thing?
There’s an old tale of a spiritual aspirant who dies and goes to heaven. When he gets to Heaven’s door he knocks and from inside God asks, “Who is there?” The aspirant announces, “It is I.” God responds: “I’m sorry, there’s no more room, try again later.” Astonished that his incredible spiritual track record did not win him entrance, the aspirant leaves and after the next life returns only to receive the same message. After many more lives the aspirant at last grasps the Truth and when asked, “Who is there?” answers, “It is thee.” And the door opens.
We gaze about the human world and are filled with anxiety, fear, melancholy. We cling to our money, our guns, our religious beliefs, our science and technology, in the slenderest of hopes they will afford us some protection, if not here, then in the ‘next life.’
And yet life proceeds as it always has, sometimes painfully, sometimes joyfully, always unpredictably.
The religious put their faith in the rituals and rites taught them and wonder why so many of their prayers go unanswered. They pray harder. Or flee their religion and become atheists.
The secularists put their faith in government, science, good works, and wonder why so many of their efforts fail to solve the problems. They try harder, launch new programs, or give up and join a religion.
Both have put their faith in the workings of an unexamined human mind.
The mystics have long taught that God, Consciousness, Awareness, Presence, etc., IS. It isn’t over there or up there, it isn’t in a future life or dependent on us completing life’s obstacle course. They taught that God Is. That God is nearer than our own breathing. That God is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent.
And they taught that the kingdom of God lies within. Not within the good or the holy or the righteous. Within us all. Within Vladimir Putin and Adolph Hitler. And within the rocks and the trees, the quarks and the gluons. God Is.
What stands in the way of this recognition? The mind-made belief that we and everything we see, touch, taste, hear, smell, and think is real.
It’s a miracle, really. A lifetime of mirrors have told us the story of impermanence, yet still we hold to the idea of a ‘me’ that is real and separate.
Even as I type these words sunlight flickers and plays through the leaves of the maple tree outside the window. Not so long ago, the sun was farther south and the tree stood naked. And not so long from now that gorgeous maple will return to the earth which, itself, will return to stardust and later, what?
The mind receives such messages and recognizes their truth. But only temporarily. Because it has things to do, places to go, people to meet. And just like that, it re-immerses itself in the things of the world.
This is why the mystics taught that, inasmuch as possible, we must keep our minds on God, we must surrender to the silence and let God emerge and live these lives for us.
The alternative? Just look around you.
What I’ve learned on this strange little journey, if only a little, is that the consciousness of the Christ, of the Buddha, of God, expands in each of us to the degree that we get out of the way and make room for It.