God - Paragraph 1
In our last blog Roberts talked about religion and revelation. This time she moves on to the idea of God stating:
“God
Since God is not revealed as a concept, thought, idea or image, neither can God be grasped or defined as such. In experience, God is not our ideas and thoughts of God; indeed, thought and experience are two totally different dimensions, two different modes of human knowing. It is because we cannot pass along an experience of God, however, that we have no choice but to convey God in the objective form of words, concepts, descriptions, images, and so forth. This is unfortunate because God in experience is neither how the mind knows or thinks of God. It is only in the absence of experience that the mind tends to rely on words and concepts for its truth. This is why, in the effort to convey a revelation, the language must be honed to as accurate an objective statement as possible, otherwise the revelation can be overwhelmed with subjective intrusions. So, although experience and intellect both refer to “how” we know, each implies a different means of knowing. For our present purpose, we are using the term “God” in its more experiential sense, not its secondary or intellectual sense.”
I simply love this paragraph. It is so succinct in conveying a number of ideas such as God is “not our ideas and thoughts” and that we can know in a couple different ways. The other thing I really like is Robert’s bold decision to define God as she chooses to use the word for this essay.
So how do I understand or experience this difficult point that God is not revealed “as a concept, thought, idea or image.” In a few words, it’s been a journey. I don’t mean to diminish thinking, it is a normal and needed activity. The problem creeps in when my thinking becomes concretized, as if the thinking itself makes something real. As I see it now, the problem with concretizing everything limits the possibility for change, both for me and the other. I did not really believe the extent to which I participated in this type of thinking until I began working with the idea of meeting things freshly with each encounter.
Check it out for yourself. The next time you meet someone, see if you are meeting them as if you have never met them before. Implied in this experiment is that if you are meeting someone freshly you will be curious and open to who they are today. If you watch your inner landscape closely you will sense your approach to someone. Have you already decided how the conversation will go? Are expectations already present as to who you think this person is? Are you already wondering how the exchange will end? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions (I know I did) then concretizing is taking place.
So what are we to do? How do we work with this facet of ourselves? Well, this leads us to Robert’s second point, that there are different modes of knowing. The concretized way of knowing differs from the experienced way of knowing. She states simply that she can not pass on her experience of God. If we lean into this statement, we come to find that it is impossible to pass on any experience we have. For instance, you and I may both be eating from the same pan of lasagna, but your experience of the lasagna and mine will be different. Again, you can try this out for yourself to verify that your experiences are yours alone. They belong entirely to you and are unique to you and may differ from my experience of the same thing.
What are Robert's words inviting me into? The first thing is to keep a watch on what I am thinking. The second thing is to keep a watch on what I am experiencing. I am so glad that I just wrote those two sentences because in that moment I clearly saw how often my thinking and experiencing do not match up, there is incongruence. Incongruence works something like this, I meet someone and greet them cheerily and engage in what seems to be a pleasant exchange, that is what I’m thinking. All the while my experience is of a different nature. On the inside I’m distracted, wishing I did not have to stop and talk, I may feel cornered or unkind.
If I extrapolate what Robert’s is talking about here she is asking me to pay more attention to my experience of the situation than what I am thinking about the situation. It is only in that clear looking at the actual experience will I learn what I am up to in those moments. I will see clearly the stories I run in my head, those that concretize the world, instead of meeting each moment the way it is and then responding to what is actually going on. And therein lies the rub, this way of closely watching while moving though the world is a journey. It takes time, patience, and practice to 1) want to move through the world this way and 2) to gain some skill in doing so.
Taking this whole inner experience thing and appling it to the concept of God, that Roberts intends, we find that another dimension appears. In this dimension I am not only watching my own inner landscape but also meeting the external world with a keen eye towards experiencing the Divine as it may wish to show itself. Often this is very subtle, invitational, and I will miss it if the world I believe I’m operating in is a concrete, preset, already planned world. This experience of God that Roberts writes about entails a steep learning curve because my mind believes it knows … everything, even God. This way of experience requires a journey of unlearning everything I thought I knew, about myself, others and God. It is a kind of walking blindly in the dark.
It can feel very dark, very alone, very awkward. The image that comes to mind is when someone speaks to you in a foreign language and you have no idea what they are saying. You feel a little lost because you can’t converse with them, yet, if you're paying attention you know if they are happy or sad, agitated or excited, all through experience. So even in this position of not knowing there is a kind of knowing. This is the journey, learning to know in the not knowing. At this point in the blog I begin asking myself how are Robert’s words impacting me? How is this journey going? In a word, slow. Although maybe that is the way, a walk that is dark, slow, and intentional allowing the darkness to embrace. I’m finding myself more at home in the darkness even trusting the darkness more than the concreteness; after all, I’m finding that all the concrete has to offer these days is stubbed toes.
