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What does guidance from the divine presence look like?
After pondering this question at length, I decided that the guidance I felt could be described as a calm, compassionate, yet silent presence. This presence 'invited' me (by virtue of my wanting to be like it) to see things from its perspective; as I did so, I noted that my anger and my discord melted away.
I have seen this described as "union with God" but it is much more subtle than that. What people seem to imagine when they hear that phrase is a kind of vanishing of the personal self, like drops of water becoming a part of the ocean. The most useful metaphor I could find for what I actually felt, though, was the idea of being a musician in an orchestra: I could contribute my part to the greater whole by learning how to play in key and in rhythm with the other musicians around me. That doesn't mean that my individuality is annihilated, simply that I choose, for the sake of my eventual betterment, to surrender for the moment to the larger will.
I found that quieting my mind by means of contemplative meditation, rhythmic breathing, and mindfulness exercises helped me to better cultivate this presence and its calming effect on me. The stillness in my mind became the stillness that is the divine presence. I felt more sane, more rational, more able to weather the turbulence of life because that turbulence had less of a hold on me and in me.
I have also found that harmony with the divine presence is an ongoing process, not something that happens once and for all, like a light switch being clicked. The stresses and changes in my life, and the fact of dealing with unaddressed hurts from my past, has led me at times over the past year to feel as though I have been drifting away from the well of calm. That connection can be lost; and that loss does not mean that the connection was never genuine, just that I allowed the fog to descend once again by failing to cultivate the stillness within me.
My examinations of religious literature have led me to believe that this is the primary experience described by most of the mystics throughout history. It takes some unraveling to come to this understanding, but over the years of writing this journal I have made a dent in the work required to elucidate this.
I am deeply mistrustful of "revelations" from the divine that come in the form of concepts or words. Much of the time I think that what is happening here is that someone has a mystical experience, and then takes this profound experience as divine endorsement of whatever thoughts he had swirling around in his head at the time. I cannot discount the possibility that divine guidance might come in the form of explicit words or ideas, but I strongly doubt it. "Truth" is a field of thorns, and words are such a flawed way of expressing wisdom that I hesitate to use them myself much of the time, so it is impossible for me to imagine that they could be the vehicle of "eternal truths."
After pondering this question at length, I decided that the guidance I felt could be described as a calm, compassionate, yet silent presence. This presence 'invited' me (by virtue of my wanting to be like it) to see things from its perspective; as I did so, I noted that my anger and my discord melted away.
I have seen this described as "union with God" but it is much more subtle than that. What people seem to imagine when they hear that phrase is a kind of vanishing of the personal self, like drops of water becoming a part of the ocean. The most useful metaphor I could find for what I actually felt, though, was the idea of being a musician in an orchestra: I could contribute my part to the greater whole by learning how to play in key and in rhythm with the other musicians around me. That doesn't mean that my individuality is annihilated, simply that I choose, for the sake of my eventual betterment, to surrender for the moment to the larger will.
I found that quieting my mind by means of contemplative meditation, rhythmic breathing, and mindfulness exercises helped me to better cultivate this presence and its calming effect on me. The stillness in my mind became the stillness that is the divine presence. I felt more sane, more rational, more able to weather the turbulence of life because that turbulence had less of a hold on me and in me.
I have also found that harmony with the divine presence is an ongoing process, not something that happens once and for all, like a light switch being clicked. The stresses and changes in my life, and the fact of dealing with unaddressed hurts from my past, has led me at times over the past year to feel as though I have been drifting away from the well of calm. That connection can be lost; and that loss does not mean that the connection was never genuine, just that I allowed the fog to descend once again by failing to cultivate the stillness within me.
My examinations of religious literature have led me to believe that this is the primary experience described by most of the mystics throughout history. It takes some unraveling to come to this understanding, but over the years of writing this journal I have made a dent in the work required to elucidate this.
I am deeply mistrustful of "revelations" from the divine that come in the form of concepts or words. Much of the time I think that what is happening here is that someone has a mystical experience, and then takes this profound experience as divine endorsement of whatever thoughts he had swirling around in his head at the time. I cannot discount the possibility that divine guidance might come in the form of explicit words or ideas, but I strongly doubt it. "Truth" is a field of thorns, and words are such a flawed way of expressing wisdom that I hesitate to use them myself much of the time, so it is impossible for me to imagine that they could be the vehicle of "eternal truths."
