Question 24
I was brought up a Catholic, and have always had the idea of God being a vast "super power" whom I could pray to. Now, I don't understand the notion of God at all and how to pray. I am told that "I am God" yet it is so hard for me to make sense of this because I have always thought of God as outside of me. How can I accept that this sense of "ME" is God when it clearly feels like it isn't? How do I pray? If I am God, then me praying to myself seems a bit silly.
Answer
Either we believe in God or we know God. If we are to know God, we will have to come fully into the present moment where God is.
God is real. God is here now. God is ever present. But we are not. Mostly we exist within the world of the thinking mind, which is a world of the remembered past and imagined future. We enter the world of the mind whenever we think. It is a world of thought, memory, imagination, concept idea, opinion and belief. When we are in the world of the mind, we are not here now and so we miss the truth of life and the truth of God, which is always of the present moment.
God cannot be known with the mind. At the level of mind, we create God in our own image and we try to personalize God, so that we will have something we can believe in. As long as we believe in God, we will never come to know God through our own direct experience.
In the truth and reality of the present moment, God is everything and everything is God. There is nothing that is not God. Even nothing is God. The present moment is the doorway to God. The present moment is God. When we are fully present, we experience God, but we cannot define God or even think about God.
In the direct experience of God, we are in total silence. We are fully immersed in the moment of NOW. All separation dissolves and only Oneness is. Only God is. Only the Eternal is. And yet there are no thoughts. Just a silent knowing that you are in God and God is in you and that you are now in Heaven on Earth.
The living Presence of God is revealed when we become so fully present that we emerge from the thinking world of the mind into God's world of NOW.
At the deepest level of Presence, there is no separation. There is no individuality. Prayer to God is meaningless. Who is there to pray? Who is there to pray to? There is only Oneness.
But you will not always exist at this level of Presence and Oneness. When you are functioning as an individual within the world of time, then you have the opportunity to experience your self and to experience God. That is a blessing. Be grateful. Express the love and the gratitude you feel. It is not that you are separate from God. You are still in Oneness but there is enough of a distinction to allow you to express your feelings of love and gratitude. This kind of prayer usually has the effect of bringing you into the Oneness and the Presence. And then the prayer stops all by itself as you enter effortlessly into silence.
If you venture too far into the world of the mind, so that you become disconnected from the present moment, and identified with the unfolding story within time, then the ego is back in control, and you will have no alternative but to believe in God, because the direct experience of God will not be available to you.
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