The Passage of Transformation

So where do we go next as we follow the disciples in their path of spiritual transformation? After the death of Jesus, he tells the disciples to wait until they are ready to receive the power of the holy spirit before they go forth to witness to his teachings and continue his movement. Active waiting becomes contemplative awareness of who we are with our masks, layers and shells. Then we begin separating from those things that do not serve us, that cover our True Selves, we leave our old ways and pull into a chrysalis of becoming. We are like the caterpillar who leaves its old life and succumbs to the cocoon; it no longer fights the process of transformation. It resides in that cocoon until its entire being has essentially turned into goo and then rearranges itself.

For us humans the process isn’t quite so well defined. We must choose to release parts of our old self so that we might grow into someone with deeper awareness of the divine. The transformation that occurs for us is the discovery that we aren’t quite the all-important individual we thought we were. It’s a discovery that takes us into the realm of non-dual thinking.

We have been conditioned to live our lives thinking dualistically, comparing opposites and often assigning value to one half of the opposites: good and bad, female and male, us and them, black and white, straight and gay, in and out, rich and poor.

When you think about it, most of our conflict comes from this conception of differences. When we can let them go we can move beyond elitism, hatred, fear, blame. With God all are one, all are intimately connected and interconnected.

This week I had to turn to the gnostic gospels because the more mystical traditions have always declared that God is within us and within all things, that we are one. Traditional religion often wants to put God out and up there, away from us, so that we must behave and believe the right way in order to earn God’s approval and admission to a heavenly afterlife with God.

“Jesus said to them, “When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom].” ~ Gospel of Thomas 22

Here, Jesus essentially says, you must stop creating divisions because that is a false understanding of the world and it will not help you achieve a higher consciousness. You must adjust your thinking. All are one. Only when you move beyond dualism will you enter the kingdom.

Kingdom language is confusing, but I believe what he means is that in that moment when you move beyond dualism, when you stop pitting one thing against another, when you see the connectedness of all things, that is the moment of your transformation, that is your entrance into the realm of the Sacred Divine.

And it may only be a moment, because as humans we struggle mightily with this concept. I’d be willing to bet you’ve all had a moment when you recognized that you were not as much of an individual operating alone in the universe as you thought. Maybe it was a moment of awe out in nature when you suddenly realized you weren’t just an observer, but a part of this planet. Maybe it was the first time you held a baby and your heart expanded to know all babies, all mother, all fathers everywhere. Maybe it was when you made marriage vows and you felt to your very soul the concept of two becoming one, or when you experienced a moment of ecstasy in the arms of your beloved. Maybe it was meditating, or sitting with a loved one as they died, or any number of things which may be very unremarkable in and of themselves.

Oneness is not merely a spiritual, mystical understanding of the universe, but a scientific reality as well. Quantum physics has taught us that universe is not comprised of teeny, tiny particles of matter, but of wispy, interconnected non-material energy that permeates everything. Physicist David Bohm speaks of the life of the universe as one continuous flow. It is what he calls an "Undivided Wholeness in Flowing Movement. 

From within the flow, differentiations emerge and are for a while distinct before dissolving back into the flow to eventually emerge again in distinctly new configurations. So much are we one that the elements of which we are made were present at the beginning of time. So much are we one that the sound of the beginning is the sound at the heart of the flow now.

John Philip Newell tells an interesting story of growth and transformation. On his first trip to an ashram in India he was struck by how often they went barefoot – to greet the rising sun from the banks of the river, when they prayed, studied, chanted, and even as they ate together. It was a constant reminder of their connectedness to the earth.

This was so much a part of life in the ashram that putting shoes back on when he left felt “harsh.” With the soles of his shoes now between him and the earth, he found he was easily forgetting the earth and the “deep down things” of the Spirit in matter. On his last day in Madras he was walking back to his accommodations after dark down an unlit path when he stumbled over an object. He couldn’t tell quite what it was until he looked closely and then he discovered it was a little old woman curled up for the night covered in little more than sackcloth.

He was ashamed to admit that his first thought was, “I’m glad I wasn’t barefooted.” And then he was forced to admit that “something in him didn’t want to touch the horrible wrong” of that little woman having to sleep on a path… it would lead to touching the horrible wrong of people everywhere who have to sleep in rough conditions. And then he would never be the same and he would have to change and do something about it.

As it was, he left India changed. He knew then what he hadn’t known when he’d arrived, that “we and all things are inextricably linked.” He knew that he could not be whole as long as the little old woman slept on a dirt path. He knew that God was not merely The Transcendent One – above all things – but The Immanent One – in all things and that he would not be one with the divine until he could see the divine in all things.

Mystic Wilson Van Dusen shared a story about how he had once given a talk in a church about mysticism and was approached by an elderly woman afterwards. She had waited until people had mostly cleared out and seemed very unsure of herself, but she wanted to tell him about a dream she had in which a gold sun came to her. She asked Van Dusen if it was God. Recognizing that this woman probably wasn’t too far from the end of her life, and that it was very important for her to have met God at least once, he refrained from wanting to analyze the dream and simply said, “Yes, it was God.” And they both broke into tears. The sad piece is that he said she had all the marks of a very spiritual person and yet was desperately hopeful that she at met God at least once.

Our religions have made it so difficult for us to “meet” God. People have come to believe it has to be an extraordinary, miraculous experience, but it doesn’t. Or people have been taught that we need an intermediary to connect us to God whether it be Jesus, or the saints, or a priest. But when we experience those transformative moments of oneness, we know that God has been here all along.

Tomas Merton was once walking from his monastery into Louisville, Kentucky, when he had a profoundly mystical experience:

At the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation… I have the immense joy of being a member of the human race, where the divine spark is made incarnate. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. 

There are stories upon stories of people’s experience with the Sacred Presence. I know you each have your own story, you have a moment when your very self dissolved into everything and you knew that oneness. Maybe it feels too woo-woo to talk about, or perhaps it is more real than anything else you’ve ever felt.

Cherish those moments, return to them in your mind and heart, open to the possibility on a daily basis by letting go of control and expectations and judgment and dualistic thinking. Be transformed one small moment at a time.

Love & Light!

Kaye