The past couple weeks or so have been really rich with God, in practising and cultivating his presence in my life. It has not been full of spiritual ecstacy or indescribable holy euphoria, (although there were short moments were that arguably seemed the case). It has, instead, been different.
After all this hard work of trying to keep an existential awareness of God throughout every moment of my life since March 2009, I sense another breakthrough.
God just simply feels "closer". Now this feels like a different type of "closeness" than what people (or at least myself) normally mean when they say "I feel close to God". I am not talking about having intense emotional experiences where one feels intensely intimate with God, whether through corporate ecstatic worship (i.e. Hillsong concerts), or crazy/supernatural phenomena happening in my personal devo. This type of "closeness" I have been experiencing lately is not closeness in terms of the depth of intimacy two friends experience when having many warm encounters within a set time period, and how one feels emotionally "closer" to another friend. The type of closeness I'm talking about feels somewhat akin to closeness in "physical proximity", just like how someone can stand apart from you in a room at different distances. For example, the "emotional closeness" between a couple could be very emotionally intimate, but if they are both in a big room, their physical proximity from each other can vary at different times during a time period, let's say at a social gathering or party. On a certain night, the "emotional closeness" could remain the same, while the "physical proximity closeness" could differ throughout the night (e.g. when both are going around, doing different things, talking to different people, going to the washroom etc.)
It is this latter type of "closeness" that I am beginning to feel with God. In a spiritual sense, he is feeling more and more closer in "spiritual proximity" as opposed to "emotional intimacy". It is weird. It feels as if a new continuum/guage of the former just recently formed itself in my spiritual consciousness that has previously never existed (or at least I was never previously aware of it) before. Although sometimes I don't have intense spiritually euphoric moments with God in the latter guage/continuum, with respect to the former, I still feel he is more closer in "spiritual distnace rather than emotional distance. It is just like how me and my human best friend can feel different distances in physical proximity at a party even though at different moments I feel different levels of friendship intimacy with him.
It is starting to get to the point where if I guage whether or not I was in the presence of God or not during a certain time (i.e. 9am-10am), I would guage whether or not we were both present in the same place, rather than guage whether or not we had mutually strong emotional experiences during that time period (of 9am-10am). Just like how if you were to ask me if I met with my dentist and was in my dentist's presence this morning, I would either say "yes, I went to his clinic and saw him, and we interacted with each other" but I wouldn't say "yes, I had an intense emotional experience full of intimacy with him." I either experienced him in his presence or I didn't. Just like that.
When the Bible talks about different chracters (i.e. David, Paul, John etc.) exhorting others to "come near to God" or "pursue and run towards God" or "come close to him", perhaps they sometimes are talking about "objective spiritual distance" between God in addition to emotional distance with God. Just perhaps. I am not an expert on exegesis/hermeneutics so I am not sure. All I know is that I am starting to detect a difference in kind/quality in my spiritual intuition with God lately.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Monday, September 6, 2010
another breakthrough
last night, when my soul was desperate for renewal, weary at the very depths of my being, starving for spiritual nourishment, I spent some solitude with God. I told him my worries, my inadequacies, my inner struggles, and just what was on my heart. That was really relieving, more than I had anticipated.
Then I asked Jesus to reveal to me how to become the type of person that didn't worry, idolize, and get bogged down by the things that were worrying me, bogging me down, and things that I were idolizing.
At that moment, I remembered what I read the day before from Madame Guyon's classic "Experiencing the depths of Jesus Christ". She gave some very helpful hints to achieve experiential union with Christ.
"But in coming to the Lord by means of "praying the Scripture, you do not read quickly; you read very slowly. You do not move from one passage to another, not until you have sensed the very heart of what you have read."
I then applied some of that to the passages of not worrying from Matthew 6.
With the premise of Christ being and actually living "in me", I tried to apply M Guyon's further advice:
"Now, waiting before Him, turn all your attention toward your spirit. Do not allow your mind to wander. If your mind begins tow ander, just turn your attention back again to the inward parts of your being... (The Lord is found only within your spirit, in the recesses of your being, in the Holy of Holies; this is where He dwells... The Lord will meet you in your spirit. It was St. Augustine who once said that he had lost much time in the beginning of his Christian experience by trying to find the Lord outwardly rather than by turning inwardly.)"
Once your heart has been turned inwardly to the Lord, you will have an impression of His presence. You will be able to notice His presence more acutely because your outer senses have now become very calm and quiet. Your attention is no longer on outward things or on the surface thoughts of your mind..."
and about the mind wandering when we try to practice the presence of God, she offers this wonderful and very helpful advice:
"When your mind has wandered, don't try to deal with it by changing what you are thinking. You see, if you pay attention to what you are thinking, you will only irritate your mind and stir it up more. Instead, withdraw from your mind! Keep turning within to the Lord's presence. By doing this you will win the war with your wandering mind and yet never directly engage in the battle!"
I tried to intently apply this advice. And low and behold, something very mystical and unexpected happened!
After a few minutes, as I was "centering down" it felt as if the consciousness of Jesus himself just entered in my consciousness. It was like a holy/divine version of a demon posession. It felt that way because I felt another being's consciousness take presence in my being (well, it was more like I acknowledged it all of a sudden). I was surprised at first and didn't know what to think. I believe that that person was Jesus himself. He didn't present himself by force, but very gently, and I liked it. I felt like i could "turn this off" at any moment, but I didn't want to. In fact, I kept on saying to the Lord "LORD! Please, in your mercy allow me to experience this state of my awareness 'being in you' last forever! I don't ever want it to go away!".
There was a cool characteristic of this. Usually, when I try to rigorously practice the presence of God, I feel like most of the time, I have to consciously force myself to refresh the presence of God in my mind every few seconds or so (it has become more natural and gradually more "semi-automatic" along the way, though far from perfect). Much like refreshing the page of a website every few seconds, because in my experience, after a few seconds of consciously thinking of God, he's gone! But this time, it was different! It seemed effortless! I didn't have to (at least in a very strenuous way) really "refresh" it every few seconds, and it seems as if God, for a moment just took over and rested in my conscious awareness with hardly any effort to maintain it on my part! I knew this had to be from God because this experience was so off the charts of what I was normally capable of that it couldn't have been from my own efforts. It was that of another league.
And, as I am understanding now, Jesus cannot live, act, or experience anything without the other two members of the Trinity experiencing it as well. I am learning that to be in the presence of Jesus is also to be in the presence of the other members of the Trinity as well. So with this in mind, I felt as if Jesus was sort of "showing me" how to experience life with a "behind the scenes inner interaction with God the Father and the Holy Spirit" while encountering the trials, difficulties, unexpected curveballs of everyday life. This latter part is very hard to explain, but I felt it occur. I will try to sum up what I felt experientially.
1. Jesus does everything, and that means EVERYTHING, as an act of obedience to what he sees the Father do and command (John 5:19). This involves every moment knowing what to do, and being empowered to do it.
2. Jesus is empowered to both know the will of God through divine guidance by the Holy Spirit, as well as carry out the will of God through the divine power of the Holy Spirit.
3. This is to be done through the different faculties of my thoughts, feelings, will, physical body, and social life, because Jesus loved God through all these various fundamental dimensions of his being. (The Great Commandment loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, strength, and other stuff about other dimensions of our being recorded in other parts of the Bible)
4. Since I am to imitate Jesus and to be conformed completely into his image and likeness, I am to learn #1, #2, and #3.
How Jesus showed me how to do this experientially in my first-person consciousness. Once again, it is extremely hard to explain, but I felt myself going through a wordless "spiritual tutorial" in my mind as of how to carry this out.
Wow. What a divine moment.
I recall what St. Teresa of Avila said when she said experiencing the divine assistance of God's grace through the first level of a result of a combination of our grace-and-effort pursuit to "train ourselves to be godly" (1 Timothy 4:7), and then a second level, where eventually it just gets completely taken over by God's providence and grace where the product is a result of an abundance of grace just completely overshadows any result of human training and effort.
The difference is illustrated through an analogy she gave. The first level is illustrated through a bucket being filled through lots of aqueducts being built and supported to pour and direct water into the bucket. The aqueducts represent God-honouring self-discipline. This is the first level. Then the second level is to have a source of abundant water just flowing and gushing out of the bottom of the bucket itself, completely independent of any outside/external sources directing water into it. This is the second level of experiencing God's active/abundant grace.
I think last night, in the realm of practicing God's presence and experiencing the depths of Jesus, God, in his completely undeserved grace, allowed me to experience the second level.
Then I asked Jesus to reveal to me how to become the type of person that didn't worry, idolize, and get bogged down by the things that were worrying me, bogging me down, and things that I were idolizing.
At that moment, I remembered what I read the day before from Madame Guyon's classic "Experiencing the depths of Jesus Christ". She gave some very helpful hints to achieve experiential union with Christ.
"But in coming to the Lord by means of "praying the Scripture, you do not read quickly; you read very slowly. You do not move from one passage to another, not until you have sensed the very heart of what you have read."
I then applied some of that to the passages of not worrying from Matthew 6.
With the premise of Christ being and actually living "in me", I tried to apply M Guyon's further advice:
"Now, waiting before Him, turn all your attention toward your spirit. Do not allow your mind to wander. If your mind begins tow ander, just turn your attention back again to the inward parts of your being... (The Lord is found only within your spirit, in the recesses of your being, in the Holy of Holies; this is where He dwells... The Lord will meet you in your spirit. It was St. Augustine who once said that he had lost much time in the beginning of his Christian experience by trying to find the Lord outwardly rather than by turning inwardly.)"
Once your heart has been turned inwardly to the Lord, you will have an impression of His presence. You will be able to notice His presence more acutely because your outer senses have now become very calm and quiet. Your attention is no longer on outward things or on the surface thoughts of your mind..."
and about the mind wandering when we try to practice the presence of God, she offers this wonderful and very helpful advice:
"When your mind has wandered, don't try to deal with it by changing what you are thinking. You see, if you pay attention to what you are thinking, you will only irritate your mind and stir it up more. Instead, withdraw from your mind! Keep turning within to the Lord's presence. By doing this you will win the war with your wandering mind and yet never directly engage in the battle!"
I tried to intently apply this advice. And low and behold, something very mystical and unexpected happened!
After a few minutes, as I was "centering down" it felt as if the consciousness of Jesus himself just entered in my consciousness. It was like a holy/divine version of a demon posession. It felt that way because I felt another being's consciousness take presence in my being (well, it was more like I acknowledged it all of a sudden). I was surprised at first and didn't know what to think. I believe that that person was Jesus himself. He didn't present himself by force, but very gently, and I liked it. I felt like i could "turn this off" at any moment, but I didn't want to. In fact, I kept on saying to the Lord "LORD! Please, in your mercy allow me to experience this state of my awareness 'being in you' last forever! I don't ever want it to go away!".
There was a cool characteristic of this. Usually, when I try to rigorously practice the presence of God, I feel like most of the time, I have to consciously force myself to refresh the presence of God in my mind every few seconds or so (it has become more natural and gradually more "semi-automatic" along the way, though far from perfect). Much like refreshing the page of a website every few seconds, because in my experience, after a few seconds of consciously thinking of God, he's gone! But this time, it was different! It seemed effortless! I didn't have to (at least in a very strenuous way) really "refresh" it every few seconds, and it seems as if God, for a moment just took over and rested in my conscious awareness with hardly any effort to maintain it on my part! I knew this had to be from God because this experience was so off the charts of what I was normally capable of that it couldn't have been from my own efforts. It was that of another league.
And, as I am understanding now, Jesus cannot live, act, or experience anything without the other two members of the Trinity experiencing it as well. I am learning that to be in the presence of Jesus is also to be in the presence of the other members of the Trinity as well. So with this in mind, I felt as if Jesus was sort of "showing me" how to experience life with a "behind the scenes inner interaction with God the Father and the Holy Spirit" while encountering the trials, difficulties, unexpected curveballs of everyday life. This latter part is very hard to explain, but I felt it occur. I will try to sum up what I felt experientially.
1. Jesus does everything, and that means EVERYTHING, as an act of obedience to what he sees the Father do and command (John 5:19). This involves every moment knowing what to do, and being empowered to do it.
2. Jesus is empowered to both know the will of God through divine guidance by the Holy Spirit, as well as carry out the will of God through the divine power of the Holy Spirit.
3. This is to be done through the different faculties of my thoughts, feelings, will, physical body, and social life, because Jesus loved God through all these various fundamental dimensions of his being. (The Great Commandment loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, strength, and other stuff about other dimensions of our being recorded in other parts of the Bible)
4. Since I am to imitate Jesus and to be conformed completely into his image and likeness, I am to learn #1, #2, and #3.
How Jesus showed me how to do this experientially in my first-person consciousness. Once again, it is extremely hard to explain, but I felt myself going through a wordless "spiritual tutorial" in my mind as of how to carry this out.
Wow. What a divine moment.
I recall what St. Teresa of Avila said when she said experiencing the divine assistance of God's grace through the first level of a result of a combination of our grace-and-effort pursuit to "train ourselves to be godly" (1 Timothy 4:7), and then a second level, where eventually it just gets completely taken over by God's providence and grace where the product is a result of an abundance of grace just completely overshadows any result of human training and effort.
The difference is illustrated through an analogy she gave. The first level is illustrated through a bucket being filled through lots of aqueducts being built and supported to pour and direct water into the bucket. The aqueducts represent God-honouring self-discipline. This is the first level. Then the second level is to have a source of abundant water just flowing and gushing out of the bottom of the bucket itself, completely independent of any outside/external sources directing water into it. This is the second level of experiencing God's active/abundant grace.
I think last night, in the realm of practicing God's presence and experiencing the depths of Jesus, God, in his completely undeserved grace, allowed me to experience the second level.
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