Redemption Realized

The problem for most of us is that we don't REALIZE how united we are with God. Except in rare moments of mystical experience, most of don't generally feel such intimacy with the Divine. Even if we believe devoutly that God is present with us, our usual experience is that we are "here" and God is "there," loving and gracious perhaps but irrevocably separate. Teresa of Avila says, "We just don't understand ourselves or know who we are."

At worst, we give lip service to God's presence, but then feel and act as if we were completely on our own. I think of church committee meetings I have attended. They often begin with a sincere prayer, "God be with us (as if God might be in attendance at another meeting) and guide our decisions and our actions." Then at the end comes, "Amen," and the door crashes shut on God-attentiveness. Now we have said our prayers and it is time to get down to business. The modern educator Parker Palmer calls this "functional atheism…the belief that ultimate responsibility for everything rests with me."

There are many reasons why we fail to recognize our deep and irrevocable communion with the Divine. Some are simply defensive. A direct experience of union or deep intimacy may be beautiful beyond words but it also requires a certain sacrifice of our self-image as separate and distinct. We become vulnerable, less in control. We can no longer maintain the illusion that we are masters of our destiny. Other reasons are inherent in our dualistic way of thinking. As soon as we use the label "God" or "Divine Presence" we make an object of it, separate from ourselves. 

Taken together, these reasons encourage us to dwell in the more comfortable and controllable world of "God and me" rather than the vague vulnerable realm of "God in me and I in God."

At the same time, there is a certain value in viewing God as distinct from oneself. Such a perspective not only acknowledges the irrevocable beyond-ness and incomprehensibility of the Divine but it also permits us to have a sense of relationship with God.

Both Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross maintain that the human mind can never grasp the real truth of God; it is always beyond us. Any conclusion or image we come to about God, no matter how wise, will always remain incomplete. Thus there can be no clear right and wrong about how one views one's relationship with the Divine. "God and me" has its truth as does "God in me" and even "God as me." Any of these taken by itself, however, leads to distortion. Even taken all together, they are incomplete.

When Teresa and John use phrases like "seeking God" or "finding union with God" the words actually refer to a deepening REALIZATION of the intimacy and union that already exists. The spiritual life has nothing to do with actually getting closer to God (can we get any closer to God than we already are?). It is instead a journey of consciousness. Union with God is neither acquired nor received, it is REALIZED, and in that sense it is something that can be yearned for, sought after, and with God's grace, found.

     Gerald May M.D.