You are on a Spiritual Journey, Part 2

The physical and spiritual worlds are intertwined, in fact, they are not two worlds, but one large reality on a continuum.

As a small child I imagined God as kind, but transactional. If I behaved well, God would smile upon me. If I behaved poorly, God would be unhappy with me. Just as my parents might reward or punish me based on my external behavior, so it was with God. If I had to describe my spiritual journey at that point in my life, it was “be good.” Many of us begin our journey in that place. It becomes a challenge, however, when we never grow beyond it.

All human beings are on a journey towards unity with God and each other in the Kingdom of God, also known as the Realm of God. As I outlined last week, this is an internal journey. The reason I focus on mystical and transcendent experiences is because they are BIG NEON MARKERS to help us wake up to the fact that we are even on a spiritual journey. They are a great entry point into the internal and transcendent for those of us who need a kick-start to open our eyes. Then, even years after we have them, we can look back and continue to mine these experiences for wisdom, insight, and strength along the way.

Photo by the author.

What mysticism and transcendence teach us is that this Realm is not a physical place, or a place you go only when you die, but a change in consciousness that begins in this physical life. This consciousness means to live in love, to see only love, to share only love, to be love. At the same time, this internal change of consciousness has external physical repercussions, so that the material world too begins to align with the Realm of God.

The way we reach the Realm of God is not by being brow-beaten into obedience to narrow church laws, like the conservative churches, or by being led to manually force the physical world to be just and loving according to our definition, like the liberal churches. These are external behaviors. They are not much better than telling us to “be good.” Rather, we must work on the internal and the external will follow.

“But seek first the [Reign] of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” – Matthew 6:33

We reach the Realm of God not by “being good,” but by waking up to who we really are, and living fully as both physical and spiritual beings, in their largest sense. Churches are at their best when we help people wake up by offering spiritual practices and support, encouraging experiences, and facilitating a shift in consciousness. This change in people will affect a change in the rest of reality. We are both physical and spiritual beings. Jesus comes to teach and model for us how to live that balance between the two. He shows us how to invite God’s grace into our lives, so that we too can live in the Realm of God on this side of the veil. Throughout our lives on earth we wobble in and out of this balance, giving us hints of the Realm, as of glimpses of ocean twinkling in sunlight through the trees.

The physical and spiritual worlds are intertwined, in fact, they are not two worlds, but one large reality on a continuum. Our spiritual dimension is much, much larger than is traditionally envisioned and we, both as people and as religious institutions, often miss the messages and truth of this. In fact, we have the capacity to interact with and influence the spiritual realm, and use it to impact our life here on earth. In addition, our physical dimension is more spiritual and holy than we give it credit for, and we generally operate only on its surface. As a whole, human beings live in both realms in a pinched, parsimonious way. In doing so, we miss the Realm of God.

“Salvation” is another way of speaking of this change of consciousness. We are saved when we recognize the true nature of our physical and spiritual selves and can live fully in love, both in this life and all dimensions of existence, thus inhabiting the Realm of God.

Paradoxically, we are all already inhabiting the Realm of God right now. Mostly, the journey is about waking up and opening our eyes.

All Scripture quotes are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition