The Arms of God

You are unconditionally accepted, the truth is hidden in plain sight, and yet you refuse to see it

“I had much of what you say here as a realization myself years ago, but the big difference seems to be that it's not really operating in my day-to-day experience. Usually, I feel all I have are my thoughts, observing the same patterns and thinking cascades that build up since years. It seems all very mechanical and repetitive. I have moments of clarity where what you communicate seems obvious but soon after there is just fog and I'm running from or after a material goal of some sorts (that carries a certain promise.) Oftentimes I think what I really crave underneath is your boredom therapy. Just sitting in boredom. But I can't because I raise a two-year-old child and lots of responsibilities. Thanks for reading.”

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You misunderstand me, my friend…

…if you believe that I live in some state of uninterrupted awareness of presence. If you believe that the fog of illusion and delusion does not also descend upon my own consciousness. If you believe that I am not also moved and swayed by patterns of thinking that have built up over 43 years of living on this planet and experiencing the onslaught of human confusion.

This is one of the greatest misunderstandings spiritual seekers seem to have: that the mind can be dispelled. That the ego can be reformed. That our humanness replete with emotion, passion, prejudice and confusion can somehow be purified. This myth of purification has been propagated for so long that everyone simply believes it must be true.

No, this has absolutely nothing to do with your state of mind or mine. It has absolutely nothing to do with how aware or unaware you are of your own presence in comparison to me. This has to do with one thing and one thing alone: faith.

On a warm sunny day, you gaze up into the blue skies and see the sun shining. And you know that this sun sustains all life. No sun, no life. The sun is the source of everything you know and love. Now imagine, the clouds roll in and obscure your view of that sun, do you now doubt that the sun exists? And if it were to storm and rain for days on end - would you have lost your faith that the sun still shines? That it continues to sustain all life including yours? That no matter the weather, all is always well?

You have confused your awareness of the sun with the experience of a ‘sunny day’. And you are suggesting that just because your days are cloudy, that you have lost your faith that the sun still shines for you. And you imagine that my days must be sunny every day because I seem to be quite certain the sun still shines for me!

Do you see your misunderstanding?

You have conflated your momentary phenomelogical experience with the truth that is the fundamental basis of your life. You have fallen prey to the limited belief that if you cannot see it then it must not be true.

The human mind is a force of nature. It can be harnessed but not controlled. We all have layers of conditioning that run deep, the majority of which we are not, and will not, ever become conscious of. The human life, then, is the living out of that conditioning and learning about human nature in the process.

There is no escaping the mind. There is no stopping the mind. There is no purifying the mind. The mind has a mind of its own and will do what it is designed to do. Yet, just like the sun is not affected by the clouds that gather in the Earth’s atmosphere, being - the source and the truth of who you are - pays no mind to the mind. It accepts and sustains unconditionally.

You do not need to solve the weather. You do not need to clear the clouds. You do not need to clear your thoughts and emotions or sharpen your focus. Because regardless of what you are experiencing you are already and always being sustained. You are already and always unconditionally accepted.

I don’t want you to take this on blind faith but simply observe.

Close your eyes for a moment… And notice the feeling of your own presence…It may begin with a sensation of the weight of your own body… Gradually, it expands to a spacious feeling of just being here…

Once you have become aware of this presence turn your attention to the world around you - the walls, the furniture, the trees, the sky… Notice how everything else also carries this quality of presence…

Now, I want you to turn your attention to your own presence… notice it. Does the presence of ‘you’ feel separate from the presence of the world around you? Is it not all one presence? Does it not all exist in this one field of being?

You are be-ing. The furniture is be-ing. The walls are be-ing. The trees are be-ing. The sky is be-ing. There is an underlying field of beingness/presence which unconditionally allows everything that you see, including yourself, to exist - does it not?

Now, what I am pointing to is so subtle and so mundane that most people struggle to even acknowledge that it is worth acknowledging! Yet, this right here is the whole of it. It is the godhead hidden in plain sight. The source of all existence - as mundane and unremarkable as the sun shining in the sky. This underlying field of presence is the ‘divine’ we are all in search of in its various idealized forms.

But the problem is we are so conditioned to orientate towards the mind that we believe in its version of reality. Yet, the mind is incapable of light. Like patterns of clouds, it is only capable of letting in or obscuring the light that is perpetually shining forth from the being. The light that sustains all life.

My mind is nothing special. It does what all minds do. It clouds, it obscures, it casts shadows that diffuse the light and distort perception. Yet, the difference is I no longer place my faith in my mind. I no longer believe its version of the truth. I am less vulnerable to the shadows of doom it casts on the future. I am less seduced by the diffused rose-colored glow it bathes my fantasies in. Instead, I place my faith in being. In presence itself.

This is my one true home. It is the unified field from which everything that is happening in this moment arises. And it is unconditional in its acceptance by virtue of the very fact that it allows it all to exist! It is the crucible of existence. The Arms of God within which reality unfolds.

No matter the weather in my mind. No matter the mood. No matter whether I am on top of the world or down in the dumps. My whole life unfolds within the Arms of God. Then what have I to fear?

This word ‘God’ is an interesting one. I am able to see why it was invented.

A curious result of my awakening is that now, when I read all the religious texts, I can see the truth of what I am speaking about reflected in a kind of “code”. And the only purpose of that code was to translate the experience of the subtle into the language of the gross. Because if Jesus, for example, had gone on about ‘presence’ or the subtle and mundane sense of ‘being’, I doubt he’d have gained a single apostle. And so, he used the language of his time and the technique of storytelling to create parables to illustrate this fundamental dynamic.

And so, the human mind and ego became ‘the son’, presence/being became ‘the father’. And awareness, that makes conscious the dynamic between the two, became ‘the holy ghost’. The “Father, Son and Holy Ghost” then became the symbol of the dynamic between being, mind and awareness that is the living format of all of our lives.

Sin occurs when we mistake the reality of ego-mind (the son) as superseding the reality of being (the father). Original sin is that instance in everyone’s life, when in childhood, the ego is born, and we look in the mirror and confuse our real self with our reflection.

The story of the Prodigal Son, in the bible, is really the journey of homecoming we are all on. The son (the ego-mind) departs from the ‘home of the father’ (the knowledge of presence) and forever lives in a state of estrangement. His travels are the history of human civilization and all its progresses. All the material pursuits in the world, all the achievements and advances, all the knowledge and experience, all the inventions and creations, all the triumph and loss - in the end, none of it satisfies him. For he lives alienated from his own source. And he lives in a state of constant negotiation with that source.

The son continues to write his father letters, sometimes professing his love for him, sometimes begging him for things, sometimes despising him, sometimes questioning his existence altogether. All forms of human prayer and meditation are really attempts of negotiating with the source. Having externalized our own being and objectified it, we are in a state of perpetually bargaining with it to accept us back. Yet, that very bargaining further reinforces our state of alienation. Our very seeking to go back keeps us hopelessly separated. (This is why I do not advocate for prayer or meditation as forms of spiritual practice for awakening, other than for their therapeutic benefits).

While Jesus used the language of parables to illustrate this dynamic, the Buddha used a more logical and philosophical approach. The teachings of these prophets were tailored to the times, civilizations and the societies they grew up in. Unfortunately, when most people today read such teachings, they see irrational mumbo-jumbo because they miss the forest for the trees. They are so distracted by the format of these teachings and in doubting the veracity of their ‘facts’, they miss the truths that are encoded within them.

Faith is a necessary ingredient because perception is unreliable. The mind controls perception and so what we see is perpetually shifting from one moment to the next. The sun plays peekaboo with us through the cloud cover and if we base our understanding of reality on what the mind permits us to see - we remain forever lost with our heads in the clouds.

Regardless of my mood, regardless of what I am thinking, regardless of what I am feeling, regardless of what circumstances are unfolding around me - there is one thing I am certain of at all times:

I am.

And when I look around at the world, when I see my children, when I see my wife, when I see the trees, when I see the sky - I also know for certain:

This is.

And as I reflect on these two certainties, I can see clearly that there is no difference between the two. That they are both one and the same truth.

I am… This is…

The ‘amness’ and the ‘isness’ are two facets of the same presence. The beingness of the moment.

And I notice this beingness allows unconditionally. Accepts unconditionally. It accepts me as I am. And it accepts this world as it is.

And the more I observe this unconditional nature of acceptance, the more I can feel its infinite warmth. Its unconditional love. Its uncompromising light.

Just like you may easily feel the warmth of the sun on a sunny day yet may not be able to feel it on a cloudy day - this does not mean the warmth has disappeared. For if it truly had, we would be cast into a frigid oblivion. No, the warmth is still there but we are not sensitive enough to detect it on a cloudy day as easily as we would on a sunny day. That’s all.

And so, I am learning to tune my sensitivity to that warmth. With each day, my sensitivity grows. This is my only life purpose now.

Because my faith in the truth of being is firm. I no longer doubt that I live, love, suffer, play, toil, and die in the Arms of God. In the unconditional acceptance of presence.

Once a prodigal son, I now reside in my father’s home. And though I may often continue to travel from it, I return to it inevitably to rest my tired bones.