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Last week I offered an exercise for us to try. We were to take a brief walk and then stop somewhere and focus our attention on something very small. Did you do it? I hope that during this exercise you were able to move slightly out of your thinking brain and access that part of your self that wonders. Did any aspect of awe come into this moment? If you gave yourself to this process, you probably became aware of another world that was much smaller than yours. I hope you didn’t dismiss it as insignificant. To do so would miss a vital component here.
This exercise was one that pops the cap off of deep spirituality. That tiny little world, as my new book Oblivious will illuminate, is actually the event horizon for the greatest thing in the universe. It’s the precipice of the deep world, the Source or fountain of everything. Even though I don’t expect you to see all of that yet, I am trusting you will. The kind of wonder or awe-thinking that keeps you in that small world is also required for you to enter the deep world, which is really as you’ll discover, an infinite dimension of this world. It requires a different kind of consciousness. It’s not unlike the thinking we had as children. Perhaps that is why Jesus tells us that the kingdom belonged to just such a type (Matt 19:14).
Spirituality is a world where what we think is far less important than how we think. All religions have a name for it: enlightenment, nirvana, even heaven. Science knows it as the quantum universe. Jesus calls it the kingdom of God and he told us it is among us, here and now and it takes a special set of eyes to see (Luke 17:20-21). It’s a place where the regular rules don’t apply. It’s under different management so to speak. This is the place where mathematics, logic, meaning, love and every aspect of non-empirically based reality collide with our material world. Empiricism is too small for this deep world. We can’t measure the circumference of the number three any more than we can create a theology big enough for God. This is the source of paradox. We must go down in order to go up. We give in order to be filled. Duality and binary systems give way to singular understandings. Beginnings and endings all converge in a single Alpha-Omega moment.
The big news is that we don’t have to die to possess it. We don’t need an earth evacuation strategy. It’s here. Within each of us.
In this deep world you will also discover that certain aspects of what you call your self can’t go either. Our surface self is poorly equipped for the deep world because ego dissolves within this kind of proximity and must be denied (Luke 9:23). We are told parts of us must die or the water of this deep world will not backfill certain space. What you will find in there is that aspect of your self that has preexisted within the mind and perfect wisdom of God. This is the part of you that existed before all creation and the part of you that can never die. The True Self. This is the one Jesus tells us to preserve (Luke 9:25). This is the realm where every loved one has been perfected and whose unique energy is refracting off of every particle. For those who think I sound New Age, consider the Hebrew scriptures before you dismiss me.
“Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, the as yet there was none of them.” (Psalm 139),
“The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his/her work… When he/she established the heavens, I was there…” (Proverbs 8:22-27),
I told you this place was big. It’s infinite actually. I hope you can see that the deep world is not out there. It’s not off somewhere in a distant future. It isn’t a threat to employ behavior modification. It’s simply the eternal moment that is always pressing in on us if we will simply fall into it. Effort, skill, and technique are worthless here, humble acceptance is the only key. This present moment is not so easy to hang onto though. Our surface self prefers to live in the past or the future. It will take some letting go and some serious love to learn how to abide here (1 John 3:14). This deeper world is not really a place as much as it is an experience. It’s an inner experience that we can take with us into every outward experience in life.
Now I know some of you have a bullshit detector that is pinging in the red zone. You wonder; “How did he get all of that from looking at a tiny little something?” I will address this wave of doubt in the next episode, so stay tuned.
In next weeks addition I will revisit your deepest desires and show you how all of them are found in this single Source. Once you tap into this Source, your life will be an abundant, overflowing, brimming over experience. Once you see it, you won’t be able to unsee it and your life will never be the same. Everyone who enters will be disappointed initially because this place has no “otherness” which means we were at best only partially right and thus it is not what we expected. I’m so glad I was so wrong. You will be too.
Thrive in Exile 