Under the Influence of God
Dear Blessed One,
Over the years, I’ve had many people ask me the very popular and unanswerable question, “What is God?”
Here I go with the best words I can find, in this moment, to share with you what God is.
– The Holy Vibration that animates all form and non-form
– The Still-Point experiencing Its infinite potential
– Prior to thought
– Checkmate ( no matter where you move, you can’t get out of God)
– Here ~ Now
God is not a belief; God is Experience(ing), and ever expanding. Ones personal experience of God truly is unutterable. There are no words that will fully express what God is. As soon as there is a thought forming of what God is, there is limitation. There is no way to express the magnitude and divine precision of God. We can only continue to point.
It is possible to experience your more expansive self, or God-nature. I know many of you have read my first book, Suffering ~ A Path of Awakening, and may know this blip; it seems like an appropriate place to retell it though.
Awareness has expanded so much at times that the local self seems like such a funny trick that I am playing on myself. An example: I went to Mount Shasta to pick up some class supplies and on my drive there, my awareness expanded. Gradually I became aware that I Am so Big. I am all of It and nothing is moving separately from the whole and it seemed so funny to have all my attention on this “little me” driving in this little vehicle, moving around in myself [formless] and not really going anywhere at all. I felt like I should have a sign displayed on my vehicle: “Caution, driver under the influence of God and may be in an altered state”.
How to get there? Be still. Go within. God is not somewhere outside of you.
Attempting to think your way to God-awareness will not work (as my experience has shown me). Quieting the stormy mind is a good first step to experiencing beyond the seemingly limited human self.
Notice there is conversation and activity going on in the head, a critic picking things apart, dissecting, rearranging, arguing, etc. Observe the constant narrator commenting on everything, saying what it is or isn’t, judging, analyzing, limiting, and on and on. Being aware that there is chatter in the head is the first step, and bringing your attention into the body is the next step.
Take a breath, acknowledge that you are thinking and then drop into the body. Find something, anything that you can focus on, physical or an emotion, and give it your awareness. Become breath, or sadness, or backache. Let it have all of you. Dissolve into your experience. Do it over and over as the thoughts intrude upon your body-awareness focus. Eventually the thinking mind will get quiet. It’ll say, “Hey, the last 100,000 times we interrupted, s/he didn’t listen so fuhgeddaboudit.” That’s the ego (or false-self) being right-sized.
This practice not only helps to heal old wounds, and move stagnant energy, but it will also train the mind to be still. The snarly tangle of thought-forms is the very thing that is in the way of experiencing the Peace that holds it all.
It seemed impossible 16 years ago when I began meditating that my mind would ever be still. I was so addicted to thinking that I would pause meditating over and over to think about something for a minute or to write it down so I wouldn’t forget (it was sooo important!) and then go back to my meditation. My mind was devouring me like hungry piranhas.
Whenever I considered dropping into the heart and allowing thoughts to pass on by, my mind would scream, “What?! Who’s going to finish thinking these important thoughts, if not me? The world will turn to chaos!” I had so much going on in my head that needed my attention that I couldn’t imagine not continuing to think through all these very important thoughts, to the very end, until resolution, and all the loose ends were tied up, all t’s crossed, i’s dotted, and on, and on, ad infinauseam. There did not seem to be an end to the train.
Today my mind is like a still lake with silent thought-clouds passing overhead. The clouds do not create a ripple on the water, nor do they leave a mark, just as the thoughts drift on by the unrippled mind. What a precious gift.
Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee
“Be like the bird that, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings.” ~Victor Hugo