Well, the easy answer to that question would be a simple good feeling, “Yes.” And that is true and all should be well and good to just leave it at that. But it is not enough. Even more than that, it is misleading. Why? Because it implies, at least to me, some sort of emotional stupor you should feel as you experience God’s love for you. Also, because it holds God as other… at a distance… or at least a little separate from you. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The natural state of life is to have an ongoing inner sense of… what… how to say it…. peace? solidity? profundity? fullness? resonance? coherence? None of those words express it properly. You and God are one. Before you can really feel ‘God’s love for you’, you must first embody that state. But knowing that is not a concept or an idea to cling to. It is certainly not an emotion or attitude. When the physiology (I mean here the greater physiology… not just the physical) ‘clicks into’ that state, your consciousness awakens to it. Not as a thought but as a permanent state of being. You do not think about it… it just is. Just as you do not think about your arms all day long… they just are.
But this wakefulness is not just inside you. You see it in everything. It just is… there, there, and there… everywhere, always. You can call it God’s love if you like. But really, love implies some sort of separation, does it not? To love something, you in some sense or another, hold it apart from yourself so you can adore it. When the two merge, it is something other than (or a least a very different) love. Perhaps it is best to say that both are there simultaneously… You are one with God, and God is ‘other’ both at the same time. When God is only experienced as other, it is in a sense belittling of YOU. That is how many relate to the notion of God loving you.
Awaken to the Knowing that you and God are one. It is not just philosophy or spirituality. It includes the science of how the universe is constructed. It is just the way things are.
What an intriguing blog and one that challenges me to evaluate what I mean when I refer to God’s love. My connotation of what it means has changed. So many Christian “teachers” look at the idea of God and us being one as blasphemous and dangerous. God is often viewed as the heavenly father that we need to obey and please. What you say in your blog “When God is experienced as other, it is a sense belittling of YOU” makes so much sense to me. Because of my strong conditioning from misguided Christian teaching, I know my self-esteem and fear issues come out of not truly understanding what it means that I’m one with God.
I wonder at religious teachers’ fear of teaching we’re one with God. I would guess they just don’t understand it. A misunderstanding, and a lack of humility around it could lead people to do crazy things out of their own conditioning, thinking that they are God and infallible. Perhaps that’s one reason religious teachers fear and teach that fear, trying to keep people “in line”? Or else they truly think that’s the only way to “salvation”. Or on the other hand, they teach God’s love as a feel-good nebulous emotional feeling.
When I speak of God’s love now, I feel it as something solid and profound coming from within me, but all around me at the same time, in everything, not as an emotion, but a “feeling”, a sense of well-being and completeness beyond emotion and thoughts. It’s very hard to put into words but I feel I’ve had a glimpse. It’s the underlying fabric and structure of the universe and everything that is – that’s what it feels like to me.
Thank you for the thought-provoking blog! And thank you for your on-going teaching that continues to melt away these layers of conditioning that shroud my true being.
Your recent blogs have been very supportive. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You are nature. Nature is supporting us through you…
It’s sometimes overwhelmingly hard to fully embrace, appreciate, allow that support…
It takes a lot of willingness to trust…
And not trust in the fact that Nature will be there as the cosmic cushion… It’s always there…
But trust that one will recognize its presence… Acting in ones life. And allow the flow to take you further along the path.
When I think of manifestation I think of other. If nature supports however I am that nature, I get confused. Maybe this is cross-realm projection. I guess when you are enlightened you feel all realities simultaneaously. I guess I will know, when I know.
Tracy,
When your attention is not on your arms, they are still there. You can even be using them without really thinking about them. Your attention can be on something else while you still are enjoying their use.
it is like that. Or maybe a better analogy would be a kite soaring in the wind. without the tail of the kite, the kite would spin, however the kite does not have its attention on the tail… it is enjoying the flight.
a common analogy comes to mind: When mother is at home, the child feels free to jump even higher. Yet, the child’s attention is on the play, not on the mother.
Do you remember being afraid to go into the basement as a child? Many do. Yet when mother goes in the basement with you, it becomes a wonderful playroom. It is like that
Merely reading the title of this blog and my mind started singing “Jesus loves me, yes, I know, for the Bible tells me so”. How did that conditioning get so deep when my parents did not really tend to a religious education for us? Not just the belittling you, but you being little and somehow this conditioning creeps in, and not only in the separation from God, but also in the third party of the Bible validating it. I’m not sure where I’m going with this unraveling…
Thank you for this topic and explanation It has brought on the “deep pondering time.”