What does it Mean to Practice my Faith?
It occurred to me some years ago that my Christian practice had gone flat. I seemed to be just like everyone else...nowhere near the transformation that Jesus talked about when he said that I needed to fall into the ground like a seed and die before new life would come to me. Now don't get me wrong, I did quiet time and contemplation...but that was always about what I already knew. How could God say anything new and different to me if I already felt I knew who God IS. Oh, I did my bible studies faithfully and ended up with a lot of knowledge and some minor changes in my life...but the kind of transformation that Jesus talked about, that kind of living on the edge and taking risks for the greater whole...not even close. I felt stuck in thinking that I really knew and understood God...but all the time wondering, how could that be? I needed to find a new way of being. I needed salvation from ordinariness.
I began to search for a practice and the practice I found was meditation. In meditation I answer the call to..."Be Still and Know that I AM God". In meditation I leave the busy world of BECOMING and enter into the stillness of BEING. Ahhh....sweet relief! BEINGNESS is wonderful. BEINGNESS is always the same, still and quiet. BEINGNESS is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.
To meditate in BEINGNESS is to let go of all angst about becoming..."BE anxious for nothing". I enter into a designated time of 'not knowing'. I become the watcher of my thoughts and feelings without attachment to them. I sit in the present, presence and make space for the new. As I practice this meditation in BEINGNESS every day, I find that when I emerge from the practice and go about my day...BEING continues to reside with me. Why?...because I have given myself to the practice and the practice rewards me by imparting to me...ITSELF. I move into my day with an embodied sense of BEING. "I find that I move and have my being in God and God in me...I AM one with I AM.
Great post Karen. Thank you for sharing. I love teh insight that "to meditate in beingness is to let go of all angst about becoming..." When I meditate, I experience an opening -- space (and acceptance) to hold whatever I am experiencing in the moment and "be held" in the midst of challenging emotions. This reminds me I am not alone -- I am in the midst of I AM.
ReplyDeleteI am that, I am. Is the answer that Mosses gave to the Pharaoh when asked " who is this god" Is there anything we can point to,feel, see or not see, that isn't "That". The word itself encompasses all things. What a concept, God is all things, including me. And yet we were taught that God is seperate from us. It's a great thing to know that we are not abandoned by our creator but surrounded by our creator. "I Am" resides in me along with all things. I am that, I am.
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