Divine Presence

Spiritual paths rightly emphasize the pivotal importance of presence, of working to be present. One of the more subtle questions about presence is: when we are present, who is present? We may look within ourselves when present and find that we cannot put a finger on or identify or define exactly who is present. It seems like an emptiness at our core. That is no illusion. That emptiness is our connection with the Divine. In its essence, we cannot place the emptiness as being inside of us or outside. That distinction vanishes in the higher world. But clearly, in this case we looked within ourselves and approached from the inside.

We can also approach that Presence from the other side, from outside, from the Divine, an approach that has the distinct advantage of not being so readily claimed or subverted by our ego, for it is more than personal from the start. The key factor enabling this is that we are always surrounded and embraced by the Divine Presence. Our work is to immerse ourselves in that clear and present reality, through a direct and total perception engaging our mind, body, heart, and soul. It is both a deep letting go and an opening toward. The letting go makes room within us, while the opening toward orients us to the within of all that appears to be outside us, enabling That to touch us, to reach us.

The Divine Presence is not separate from the material world, not separate from all that we see and touch. The Divine Presence is embedded in all of this but not bounded by it. This perception is not pantheistic, but rather panentheistic and compatible with all major religions. God is everywhere, in everything, in everyone, and also is not limited to being in the physical world. Our work is to remove the veils that block that perception.

Looking at the world around us as being utterly imbued with the Divine is a radical departure from taking it all for granted, taking it all as ordinary. But that radical view can be our starting point. We adopt a mental model of the world as the external clothing of the Divine. A long-term engagement with prayer helps set the stage. When we look at our surroundings, we bring this new understanding into our looking. Gradually our looking penetrates and the Real penetrates us. Our heart begins to awaken to the awe and wonder and tender love that arise naturally from this seeing. And then the seeing itself becomes more real, more obvious. What was a mental model becomes a direct perception. We move from the idea of the Divine Presence to the Reality, from looking to seeing. We move toward living in a transformed landscape: the ordinary becoming sublime. We find ourselves in the constant and loving embrace of the Divine.

And this can go further. Not only are we surrounded by the Divine Presence within everything, but in opening to that Presence we begin to get a hint of the One Who is Present, namely God. The perception itself of this ubiquitous Presence gives us an awareness of its immensity, at least matching that of the physical world. But asking for, looking for, the One Whose Presence this is takes us beyond the spatial categories of large or small, beyond here or there, beyond inside and outside. We look toward the One Whose Presence penetrates this entire physical reality, the One Who is the benign and loving force behind all that we see.

Just as our own presence is incomplete without us, without our I, the physical universe is incomplete without the One, the Divine, the Constant Creator. And just as our personal presence is unified within the embrace of our I, the whole of reality, the physical world, the inner world, and the spiritual world, is unified within the embrace of the One.

For this week, look beyond the surface of the world into the Divine Presence embedded everywhere.

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