Several years ago, standing alongside fellow seekers in a temple, my voice joined with other voices to sing hymns of love for Consciousness, for God, for Shiva, for Allah. . .  After some time, I felt enraptured by waves of immense bliss and infinite love.  My experience of who I am began to shift. No longer did I exist only in my own limited personal identity.  My “being” encompassed fellow seekers, the love we share, the temple, the early evening sky, the entire cosmos.

“I” consisted of all Existence; pervading all time and all space; permeating the fabric of all existence.  I experienced myself as being complete bliss and pure love.  This experience of myself lasted only a glancing moment.  Yet, this glancing moment changed me forever.  It seemed that I was given a glimpse of the answer to my burning question, “Who is God?”

My glimpse into the answer grounded me in faith that there is an answer.  What a sublime practice faith has become, reminding me as I move through daily life, “this too is God.” This too is God!  This too is God!  This practice of this understanding brings the teaching that God is ALL pervasive to life in my life.

Joy becomes mine as I more consistently recognize that I can never be separate from the Lord, whoever I conceive Her to be! No matter what happens, no matter where I am, no matter I’m with, I am never without God.

So, who is God?

“Who is God?”  Indeed, perhaps the most profound answer to this question lies in our own experiences.  For it is to those experiences that we turn and through which we ultimately find personal understanding.  Contemplating the question, “Who is God to me?” lead me to the remembrance of when I have experienced the Divine.  These experiences encompass both the profound life changing experiences such as the one I shared above and the more “mundane” experiences of daily life when the light and love of God pierces my routines.

The luscious fruit of these contemplations, these remembrances, are both scrumptious and enchanting.  Yet, for some mysterious reason, I didn’t really give myself full permission to contemplate this question.  I relegated this kind of knowing to scholars or saints, ministers or priests.

For the longest time, I presumed that intimate knowledge of God is obtainable only after death or in some future life. It is certainly not obtainable in this life, certainly not in this moment, and most certainly not by ordinary people, like me.
Yet, saints throughout history have offered all of us the treasure of their own great understanding of the Truth; “the Kingdom of God lies within.”

Still, I didn’t fully believe that. I think now, because I never asked the question, “Who is God to me? How can I experience the fullness of Consciousness in my daily life.  I resisted completely accepting that the Knowledge I seek is closer than the air I breathe.  The divinity I long for is closer than my own breath.

William Wordsworth, the great poet of the 19th Century captured his own experience of God in this poem,
“And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all
thought,
And rolls through all things.

I, like so many others, have felt that disturbing presence, that sublime joy which stops time and dissolves the illusion of separation from God.  Returning to the memory of those moments become golden threads that together weave a holy shawl for me. I can enfold myself in this shawl, protecting my faith from the howling winds of doubt.  And, I can use any number of tools, such as Z Point to clear all the ways I feel the cold fingers of doubt.

With my mind’s natural tendency to lay claim to the region of knowledge and truth, I sometimes listen only to the mind and ignore the quiet murmurs and reflections of my heart.  I know I’m not alone in this.

When I adopt the innocent vision and curiosity of a child, I’m back in the current of LIFE, enjoying the bubbling energy of faith, knowing everything is all right.  Everything is unfolding as it should.  How easily children seem to see and embrace the magic and mystery of life.  Their lives pulsate with awareness, albeit unconscious, of the Presence of Great Mystery.  Might we discover the mystical magic of daily life if we approach each day, each moment with humble and innocent curiosity?