Spiritual Experience
Beyond any external dogma or religious ideology, we are aware of the natural and inherent desire we have to realize spiritual truths through our own direct experience. This is the ultimate confirmation that transforms any previous faith into a certain reality.
Without this inner element and spiritual realization, life can remain incomplete. To have an intimate inner knowledge of the Source of our life energy helps us to feel spiritually secure, strengthen by a sense of having a direct relationship with our Maker.
It is through the simple practice of stillness in meditation that we provide a suitable psychological climate for these experiences. With patience we find that inner quietude develops our own psychic state free of stress and emotional confusion that becomes a perfect canvas for new experiences. To a large extent we are able to open our consciousness to the degree we can relax and surrender previous thought activity.
Our concepts of our own spirituality and of the Universal Divinity or God are not identical.
Many of us have not spent much conscious time thinking about it. It is interesting to know how some of those who have devoted their thought, perceive God.
There are those who see the Divine as the Great Creative Fire and consider ourselves as little sparks of that same element …
“As from a glowing fire, kindred sparkles come forth thousand-fold,
So from the Eternal, manifold beings are born and return also.”
Manduka Upanishad
Others conceive God as the Divine Ocean of Life and themselves as a mere droplet of that same element of water…
“The dewdrop slips into the shining sea….” Buddha
It has been most beautifully expressed in English literature by Helen Keller who, deprived of sight, hearing and speech was able to lift her soul from her lonely inner world and to later express her feelings in simple words that are inspirational…
“I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour and fragrance of a flower, the light in my darkness, the voice in my silence.” Helen Keller
Artists and poets tend to understand Nature as the ‘garment of God’ and to wish to feel a part of the universe and all manifested natural life leads them to experience that connection by achieving harmony of being amongst the outwardly manifested natural world. Many are happy to know the natural worlds as God’s raiment with no further aspiration.
Some yearn to identify themselves with the great force of Love and seek only to free themselves from the limitations of personal love to find a new identity as part of the eternal heart-beat that radiates Divine and Infinite Love. Where human loving fails, we must know that we are greatly loved and unfailingly, by our Creator.
More expansive that prayer alone, meditation offers us a simple two way communication between our lesser self and our higher self and between our personal consciousness and the great Beneficence we call God.
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