Take about 30 to 45 minutes to consider your innate divine nature and don’t worry if your grasp of it is still limited. Simply consider it and either settle into the quietness and peacefulness that this perspective is, or just think on the idea as fully as your knowledge and experience allows.
Then light a candle that will symbolize the light of your own divinity during the ceremony.
Spend a few moments gazing at the flame, not as an object ‘out there’ but recognize that it is a pale reflection of the inner divine light that you are. Allow your attention to alternate between the outer light and the inner light, staying more and more with the inner light, the inner flame that reveals the living presence and intensity of the divine within you. Perhaps keep your eyes open when you look at the flame, and then close them to “see” or envision the flame inside of you and feel it expand until it envelops you. Remember, we are not seeking the silence of transcendence today, but a dynamism alive within you that is the source of your life, creativity, and your loving essence. Keep this candle lit as long as you safely can through the day and through the other exercises, but don’t create an unsafe condition!
From the quietness generated by this exercise, we will move directly to the next. In the ‘experience’ of God, I have seen that the first subtle extension of consciousness as it moves out of eternity, is experienced as identity (I AM consciousness) and love. They are actually one extension of consciousness but when described by the human mind which thinks in fragments of meaning, we tend to divide this oneness into two expressions. So, we will work with them as two but you may well find them fusing in your own awareness. Allow that.
So, after you feel the vibrancy of the inner light and the flame of divine consciousness, turn your focus on your own identity, typically experienced as the “I”, or more traditionally, the “I AM”. Simply direct your attention to your sense of identity, whether you experience it as the ‘I’ of the ego or the subtler sense of self within the inner silence. Either way focus on the identity and notice that it is an active quality, though subtle, in your awareness. We are not looking for silence here but for the active qualities of identity. If you are distracted from that quality of awareness, simply return to it without the further distraction of feeling badly that you lost it! Spend at least 15 to 30 minutes in this experience to make it more palpable and return to it regularly through the day until it becomes a permanent part of your awareness. How much time you spend on this, or any other experience you have in these exercises, is up to you. You can stay with one exercise for longer or shorter time as it fits your needs and unfolding experiences.
Once you feel complete with that (for now!), turn your focus to Love. I am not talking of human love but divine love, rooted in Oneness of Spirit. Experience it however you do, there is no right or wrong way, we are simply learning and unfolding! You might experience it first as a love for your identity, which is where the two begin to fuse into oneness, or feel your heart opening in the love for humanity, those who suffer, etc., or feel it for the earth or God. The point isn’t about the object of love but for the love itself. You might find that the more deeply you go into your loving nature you notice that there is a very subtle vibration that seems consistent in all experiences of loving. As you notice that, centralize your focus on that subtle vibration and feel your heart quicken into deeper and more profound layers of love. Remember, we are not looking for silence but for the active frequency of love.
What I have described above is really three exercises in one. You can do them as a single flow or do them separately and take a short break between them so you can bring fresh and relaxed focus to each. Also, you might find you move through them quickly so you might want to come back to them several times throughout the day, or you might want to incorporate them into your life and spiritual routine for months to cultivate a more permanent awareness of this very subtle realm of your consciousness.
Again, this is an all-day ceremony but it can be fit into an active life by breaking each exercise into smaller chunks, more quickly done, and do them throughout the day to meet the time available. No judgment; simply flow with the rhythm of the ceremony with your life! And you aren’t constrained by the order of the exercises as I define them. Do them as you feel to, as they feel “right” to you.
God is a great mystery and there is no figuring it out, but we can begin to discern the qualities of God and work with that. One quality of God we will work with is Life itself. Life saturates everything and the more we surrender to the presence of life and of the other qualities of divinity the more we awaken to their presence in our lives. Always remember the spiritual law that states “as you believe in your heart, so shall you experience”. This means that whatever you experience in the world, is actually being experienced inwardly; when you see love “outside” you are feeling it inside you, it is part of you.
So, for this next exercise, we will go outside (preferably, it certainly can be done inside). Pause as you step outside and look around you and notice your environment. As you continue to look, shift your focus to the Life within everything you see. Perhaps you see Life in one thing at a time or perhaps many things at once. Just focus on the Life around you! Why are we focusing on Life? Because that is another word for God, a synonym if you will. As you see the Life around you, you are seeing God and as you see and appreciate the Life around you, you are recognizing it within you as well.
From time to time, shift your focus from the outer to an inward look to see and feel the presence of Life within. Notice that Life simply IS and it doesn’t need or contain any judgment or qualifiers, and notice that it is everywhere without attachment or need to change. Know that you are seeing God in the life around and within you and cultivate that seeing and knowing. You are changing your perspective of life from a physical one to a spiritual one. Continue this exercise until you feel within you the dramatic vitality of pure Life without conditions and until you feel that it is a somewhat stable part of your awareness. Whether you do this for a short time or longer, you can repeat it throughout the day, or throughout your life. And remember, you are not looking for stillness but dynamism!
As an extension to this exercise, as you wander outdoors look at the landscape through the lens of Love. First focus on a single tree and feel appreciation for it and allow that to grow into a wonderful love for that tree, then focus on a corpse of trees and allow your eye to swing more and more broadly always looking with appreciation and allowing your feeling to grow into a loving presence. And remember, we are not looking for the human emotion that we call love but the spiritual frequency of love, and one way we can recognize it is that it is quickened into a liveliness that is supercharged with peace and satisfaction. Once you have secured these experiences, shift your focus again to the love that flows between the trees, the earth, and all things that are within your sight. Take your time with this and allow it to expand into fullness. Then, the final step here is to feel the love of these entities on the landscape for you! And as that develops, feel yourself immersed in a vast ocean of love; held, valued, and cherished.
You see, each of the spiritual qualities are eternal because they are extensions of divine consciousness which is eternal. So, whenever you explore one of them, you are exploring your connection with God. And it isn’t a big stretch to include both Life and Love with the spiritual qualities. Also, remember the law, “as you believe in your heart, so shall you experience” and that “you are made in the image and likeness of God”. So realize you are really exploring your own Real Self and your relationship with God as you go through these exercises! You are truly a being without boundaries because you share the beingness of God and so acquire God’s extensions.
So, the journey, as I have mapped it here, should only take a couple of hours each time through, and I encourage you to take your time with it. We are cultivating a new perspective, one that is True and Vast to replace the smallness and the lies of our ego, and that takes time. But now we are using the right tools, the tools based on the Truth of the Eternal and of God. Once you complete one pass through the exercises you can either take a break for a short while, or cycle through again, perhaps focusing on those exercises that seem to offer you the most benefit.
Or, once you complete a single pass through the series, you can choose to continue and select each exercise as it fits the rhythm of your day and use them to regularly refocus your attention on this “living presence of God”. We are rooting ourselves in Truth and learning to live from that perspective as we go through the day. So, take your time. We are enjoying a walk through eternity, learning to see through that lens: embrace it, learn from it, surrender to it!
And feel free to jump around through the exercises, the order isn’t sacred; whatever helps you experience the dynamism of God through each exercise is what is important. Once you are complete with these exercises and need or want to move on, go through the rest of your day holding to the perspective you have begun to cultivate. Feel the distinct presence of your identity and know that it is made in the ‘image and likeness of God’, regularly refocus on the spiritual qualities of Love and Life to keep them lively in your heart, and never allow the lies of the ego, that you are a physical being, to take root again in your mind or heart. Begin to live the Truth, live your true identity, and not let the ego abilities serve this higher self.
There is a huge number of other exercises I could have chosen for this ceremony but I chose these as they form the core of our relationship with God and of our true nature. In the future ceremonies we will approach this living presence from different angles and bring many other exercises to bear to help us continue to shift to this perspective.
So, I encourage you to not confine this ceremony to one day, or a part of one day, but to integrate these exercises into your life over the next several months until the next ceremony. This will set you up powerfully for what is to come. With each new ceremony we will dive more deeply into the Truth of who we are and what life is and learn to switch much more quickly and completely to the experience of the living presence of God. So join us!
A final reminder: we are looking to resonate with the frequency of the ‘living presence of God’ and know it as vital and dynamic. We are not now seeking transcendence, silence, and stillness. Of course, aspects of those qualities will attend our focus on the exercises of this ceremony but treat them as secondary. We seek the “living presence” now.
