A Ramble about Meditating

My Bishop recently asked me an insightful question, "do you meditate in the presence of God, or do you meditate to be in the presence of God. The first is of the heart, the second is of the self." This has been on my mind ever since reading it.

The truth is that when I began my attempts at meditation, it was to experience the presence of God for myself in a controlled setting. Something I could replicate again and again. Without thinking about it, I was basically conducting experiments on God like a lab rat. There really isn't any wonder as to why it became harder and harder after a while, and why He seemed so distant.

God surrounds and fills me. He is the foundation of all existance, and there isn't anywhere I can go where He isn't present. I know that in my head. But it was my perception of this or lack thereof which was driving my "experimentation." God surrounds me and I experience Him all the time without recognizing Him for who He is. This is a problem of my own perception, not a lack of His presence. It is a lack of my own awareness and mindfulness (or watchfulness as in the Orthodox tradition). It is therefore possible to experience His presence both in the prayer room and driving our van. Both when saying Mass and when doing the dishes. There are some actions which help one to focus on His presence, but they do not control His presence.

I know that He is in everything. The hard part isn't the knowing, it's the realizing.

A Ramble about Dreams

Lately, I've been having dreams that are really hard to come out of. I suppose it's normal for everyone to experience this at one point in time or another. The dream remains the reality for a short period of time after "waking up".

During this period of time, I can remember almost everything which happened in the dream as though it had happened in reality yesterday, but as the waking moment goes on, it gets lost as reality takes over my senses.

One observation I've made is that the "I" which I experience in the dream, is never the same "I" which I experience in reality. His memories are different, his experiences are different, and who he is as a person is often different. His reality is made up of pieces of the same experiences which make up mine, but arranged in a completely different way. I do things in my dreams which I would never do in my waking state. Things which disturb and at times horrify me. But it is "me" doing them. It is not the "me" I and others are most familiar with, it is a different combination of "me", but it is "me" nonetheless. These disturbing things are a different combination of the elements which combine to form "I". In another reality, maybe in another time and place, the "I" I am most familiar with would be the one in a particular dream, and the "I" I am now would be the discrepancy.

This makes me think about the truth that the "I" which I know and the "I" which I dream are only composites of my experiences arranged in different ways. Somehow, I am self-aware in both states, and I am capable of decision making in both states even though the factors I use to make those decisions are composited differently. Even though the other "I" may be a stranger as far as experiences yet I know that I am one and the same with him.

This leads me to the conclusion that whether or not I maintain the same experiences and decisions there is some kind of a "mind" which maintains my self-awareness as distinct from all others independent of the experiences and memories, or the pieces thereof, which composite the person who "I" am that I am most familiar with. In reality, I recognize that I am married and have children, and I know who that person is to whom I am married. When I am dreaming, I do not always remember this fact, or if I do, the person to whom I am married can change, yet I perceive no discrepancy, or error in the change. When I wake, I often feel guilty about this, even though there was nothing abnormal perceived in the dream.

I have spoken before of the "I and Thou" distinction between God and myself (or any other created being for that matter) and how eventually this is what we will face without the memories and experiences and possessions with which we identify ourselves. In the dream, this distinction is preserved, even if the "I" is totally different. It is therefore this "mind" which must be converted to the acceptance and recognition of God, apart from everything else with which I identify myself.

I will explore the ramifications of this truth at a later time...

A Ramble about the Humility of God

As I have struggled through meditation, I had found it harder and harder to reach the point of awareness of His presence. I fought through, but each time it became harder, and then for several weeks, it seemed completely fruitless. I struggled, I cried out internally, and nothing.

I felt lost and confused. Why had He slipped through my fingers when I reached out to grasp Him? Didn't He want me coming closer to Him? Where was He? I knew He surrounded me, I knew that He was in everything and everywhere and that there was nowhere I could go where He was not. So why did I feel so cut off?

He told me.

I sought control of Him. I sought the awareness of His presence in order to change myself into something "better". I sought union with Him to advance my own twisted reason and to propitiate my fear of being less than by "being better than" spiritually. He refused to be a part of my self-seeking and self-advancement. It was as simple as that.

I have a deep seated fear that everyone else is better than I am in some way, and my psyche seems to react by trying to, consciously or unconsciously, be better than everyone else. I seek to control and manipulate everything around me to achieve the acquisition of my own desires or illusions. Whether it be the desire for a certain object such as a DVD or book, or the illusion of seeing myself as a good or spiritual person. I sought to run from what I am, and to become something I am not. Instead of accepting myself as myself, warts and all, I was rejecting myself in favor of a pleasant delusion. Instead of embracing the cross, I was running from it yelling "I embrace you!"

When I realized this, I sat in silence. And then I became aware of His presence. It was not imposing. He was not overwhelming. He was quiet. He was soft, and gentle. He was concerned, and it felt as when a friend of mine was giving me a hug from behind. As I dwelt on this I became aware of the stark contrast between Him and myself and the disdain which this controlling part of myself felt for His "softness". This part of me was hard, proud, dominating, and the total antithesis of Him. It honestly didn't know what to do with Him. God in this manner did not force Himself on me, but waited for me to sit still. He did not strike me as awe-inspiring, but "lowly".

God felt no need to prove or show His dominance to me. Almighty God was as soft and gentle as, well... a small animal. I don't know why, but that is the term which comes to mind. I wanted the awareness of the presence of God, and instead of awe-inspiring power, I got soft and gentle like someone's toothless old great-grandfather.

As I said above, this hard controlling part of me didn't know what to do with it. It felt, well... pathetic actually, and totally uncontrolling, even though I knew He had full control of everything. And then my thoughts drifted onto His humility. It's not an aspect of God which we often think about or preach on.

He surrounds us constantly, yet most of the time makes no visible effort to remind us of that fact. We often ignore Him far more than anyone else and talk about Him as if He weren't in the room with us. Even we who profess not only belief and faith in Him, but also love, often go whole days not even noticing Him or acting as if He were present. He doesn't respond in anger. He doesn't seek to prove how much better than we are He is. He lets us go, and takes no offense. He who has ultimate control chooses not to wield it in that way. And here I who have no real control over anything am seeking to control Him for my own selfish means.

I suppose that the real first step in a relationship is to really notice the other person, instead of going throughout the day pretending that they don't exist except for your own selfish goals. It's to really see them for who they are, and not for what you can get out of them.

Unlike myself, God is totally devoid of pride and selfish ambition. When I became aware of His presence in this way, I realized how truly ridiculous my own hardness was, and how maligning it was especially to Him.

A Ramble about Self-Acceptance

I'm not who I want to be. I'm not who I think I should be. I'm not who I think others want me to be. I'm not who I think others think I should be. As I was meditating today, and saying a Private Mass which is my daily practice, I struggled and searched for why I felt, and have been feeling so cut off lately. Why haven't I been able to experience the Being of God, His love and joy, when He surrounds and fills me and is never apart from me?

I have a real issue with needing the approval or recognition of others. It's funny, because I never really thought I cared about what others thought, but the truth is that what I perceive as others' perceptions about me colors how I perceive myself. As a result, I also have an issue with vanity. Unconsciously I think "Oh look at me, see now who I am and what I can do. Don't you approve of me now?" And try as I might against it consciously, I seek higher or more prestigious positions; I stress out about how much money I make and how I am presented to others. In other words, I struggle because I identify myself with my perception of others' perceptions, whether or not my perception is accurate.

As I meditate, a lot of extraneous thoughts come into my mind. My first thought is to reject them. For instance, as I attempted to let go, a scene from the recent Star Trek movie flashed through my mind. It was innocent, and totally benign, but I immediately condemned myself for it happening. I think my unconscious thought was something like, "no, I must reject all of this waste and condemn it."

Now here's the issue, what constitutes all of my identity is effectively that waste. Not that I only and totally identify myself with Star Trek, but that it is a part of a larger whole of memories and experiences, preferences, dislikes, hopes, fears, etc, all of which in themselves are quite transient and will eventually be destroyed when this physical being dies, but in themselves for the moment are a mixture of moral, immoral, and amoral. Now my rejection of what I see as immoral or waste within me is based on the erroneous idea that the good will be preserved and the bad will be destroyed when in fact it will all be destroyed upon physical death, and the only thing remaining will be the distinction between I and God, and His all-consuming love.

Now here's the answer to my question, "why do I feel so cut off from God when He surrounds me?" Because I am projecting my perception of myself onto what I perceive He thinks of me. It seems like this happens on a subconscious level, because with my conscious mind I acknowledge that God loves me, and I Him and I seek that love, but I allow the darkness which comes from judging myself to obscure my perception of Him.

With God, I have been joined to Jesus Christ in His death and resurrection. This is a fact. All the "waste" has already died, and the wages of sin, being death, are in fact satisfied. The only thing remaining to go is the physical body. He therefore passes no judgment on it because it has already been judged on the cross. That which has died has been freed from sin. He neither indulges it, nor condemns it, but accepts it and lets it die peacefully.

This is why I have felt so cut off. I have not accepted my self without judgment, nor have I let it die peacefully, and I have allowed this lack of acceptance, this non-zero attitude (I don't know why but the idea comes into my head that +1 is indulgence and -1 is condemnation), to be projected onto God, onto others, and to erupt into attempts to "prove" how worthy I am, or how spiritual, or how good, or even how I might be better than the other person being secretly fearful that I am worse.

Perhaps this is why sin leads to hell, always. And hell doesn't have to be after we die, it is a fact of the living as well as the dead. Sin is a non-zero attitude towards ourselves and it projects our perceptions of ourselves onto everyone else, including and especially God, and this perception is fear whether we know it or not. All the while, God surrounds us with His Being of love. Our ability to recognize that is dependent on our ability to let go of that fear, and stop projecting our perceptions onto Him.

St. Paul said in Romans 8:1 - "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit." I think, quite possibly that this is part of what he meant. Not that God condemns the person in actuality but that we project our own subconscious self-condemnation onto Him, whereas the person who lets the self die peacefully with Christ, neither indulging nor condemning, realizes the ever-present and all-consuming love of God and his perception isn't clouded by the darkness of self-judgment.