Guided Meditation: Your Being Is God's Being

i'd like to start this weekend with an invocation praise be to god naked being who wears this universe as its body and whose name is i praise be to god the amnest of all selves although there are no selves the is-ness of all things although there are no things praise be to god who conceals himself in existence and reveals himself as being praise be to god who shrouds herself in time and proclaims herself in eternity praise be to god whose movement is our longing and whose rest is peace itself praise be to god for whom

the world is its song and silence its prayer in order to understand what prayer really is it is necessary to understand what god is and in order to understand what god is it is first necessary to know what one's self is our understanding of god and thus of the practice of prayer depends upon our understanding of ourself if we believe and feel that we are a person a finite self living in the body sharing the limits and destiny of the body we will consider ourselves to be a tiny fragment in a vast world and as

this tiny part of the world it is natural for us to look out at the world and to wonder where all this came from what existed prior to the world and out of what was the world created and as a result of this we project the idea of god beyond the world at an infinite distance from ourself as a person and then as this person we enter into a devotional relationship with god god is considered to be the the ultimate object of our experience it could be said that the highest state of the individual is

to enter into a relationship of devotion to this creator god and this devotional relationship with god is enshrined in much of the great religious literature it places the individual in the right relationship with god and i would like to share with you one such hymn by george herbert who was written in the 16th century which beautifully expresses the devotional relationship to god of one who considers themselves to be a person it is in some sense the most refined attitude of the person or separate self it's sometimes referred to as the elixir teach me my god

and king in all things thee to see and what i do in anything to do it as for thee a man that looks on glass on it may stay his eye or if he pleaseth through it pass and then may heaven a spy all may of thee partake nothing can be so mean which with this tincture for thy sake will not grow black bright and clean a servant with this claws makes drudgery divine who sweeps a room as for thy laws makes that and the action fine this is the famous stone that turneth all to

gold for that which god touch and own cannot for less be told this traditional path of devotion and surrender to god attenuates the separate self and purifies it and gradually any of us who have walked this devotional path knows that in this purification process our understanding of god becomes increasingly refined god loses its objective qualities and attributes and in the in the absence of any distinction between the one who prays the one who is prayed to the devotee and the beloved come closer and closer until at some point there is this great recognition that the

being that we are is god's being the distinction between the the lover and the beloved the one who longs and that which is longed for either suddenly or in most cases gradually dissolves and there is this recognition that god's being is our being in other words our being is not something that belongs to us as a person the person belongs to being being doesn't belong to the person we do not own our being there is no we or separate i who might own or not own being there has never been any other being than god's

being and when i say god's being i do not mean to imply that being isn't it is an attribute of god god simply is being the god who we longed for or prayed to can never be an object of our longing it is the source of our longing let any impulse in you to move away from your being come to rest in this understanding notice any impulse in you to move away from simply being towards some object of experience to move away from being towards an object of experiences a residue of the old habit of

seeking god outside of ourselves but in order to seek god outside of ourself we must first set ourselves up as a self apart from god's self and in doing so we strengthen that feeling of separation god lies at the source of our longing it can never be an object of our longing our longing for god is in fact god's love for us it is the gravitational pull of our being inviting us to return from the adventure of the experience to the sanctuary of the heart our longing never finds what it is looking for it comes

to rest in what it is looking for prayer is not a movement from our self towards god it is a divesting of ourself of all the qualities or limitations that we seem to have acquired from experience and the subsequent revelation of our being as infinite being god's being the only being there is infinite being is not something that can be known it is what remains when nothing is known could be called divine ignorance in the bhagavad-gita it says what is known by the mind is unknown by god what is known by god is unknown to

the mind so prayer is simply to abide in the empty sanctuary of the heart to know nothing to be nothing to seek nothing do not allow your being to become personalized by experience being is utterly intimate closer than close at the same time impersonal and infinite that let yourself be as impersonal as god and let god be as intimate as yourself being infinite being is that from which everyone and everything derives its apparently independent existence thought divides it into names perception divides it into forms as such the activities of thought and perception fragment god's infinite

being making it appear as a multiplicity and diversity of objects and cells none of those objects or cells are really objects or selves they are simply movements of that which is modulations of the ever-present reality god's infinite being as the sufi mystic said and i paraphrase god never creates anything here simply every day in a different configuration nothing is created nothing has its own independent being or seeming things borrow their apparent existence from the only being that truly is the being that shines in our experience of our self as the amnest of being the selfness

of our self and that shines in all seeming things as the is-ness of things when my first teacher dr rose first met the shankaracharya he said it was like seeing a man carrying a candle in the wind do not let the knowing of your being be extinguished by experience when our attention lets go of its object it gradually in most cases sinks back into the source of pure awareness from which it has risen likewise when our longing or our devotion lets go of the object of its longing let's go of the image of the beloved

it gradually sinks back into the objectless love from which it arose just as the awareness that is the source of attention is not itself a thought and cannot be thought about so the love that is the source of our longing is not a feeling and cannot be felt it is the natural condition of being of infinite being being the sole reality of all that is infinite being knows nothing of separation or union separation and union only exists for the one who believes themselves to be separate and finite it is only from that illusory perspective that

there is separation from god and union with god for being there is neither separation nor union as malayani said otherness for him is him without otherness that is love love is not a relationship it is the absence of relationship the collapse of the belief and the feeling that there are two beings to be united in other words love is the nature of reality god clothes himself in name and form and appears as the universe when god undresses she reveals herself as being clothing itself in name and form is the activity of creation undressing is prayer

be sensitive to any impulse in you to leave this cloud of unknowing in favor of the known the sanctuary of the heart is dark nothing can be seen there nothing can be known there nothing can be sought there let the residues of becoming dissolve in being carl jung said of ramana mahashi that he was like a white spot on a white page there was no being in him other than god's infinite being no self in name other than god's self that's why ramana maharshi said when the i the letter i when the eye is divested

of the eye only i remains when our being is divested of all the limited qualities that it acquires from experience it stands revealed as infinite being as such forgetfulness of self is remembrance of god this self forgetting is the essence of prayer we could equally say that remembrance of self if myself we understand intimate infinite impersonal being is the ultimate prayer emptiness of self is the fullness of god to know something other than god one has to set oneself up as a separate subject of experience one has to set oneself up as a self apart

from god's self a being apart from god's being it is in this sense that knowledge of things is said to veil god's presence but for one who knows their being as god's being the world loses its concealing power and becomes a revealing power it shines with its reality shines with god's presence with your with your mind know ten thousand things but with your heart feel only one reality once we have understood that our being is god's being the only being there is we can return to the traditional devotional literature that is contained in the great

religious and spiritual traditions and [Music] understand that in spite of the fact that it is written in conventional dualistic language it really shines with this same understanding and so i would like to leave you this evening with a prayer that i recite to myself every night before falling asleep o my lord my whole being is yourself and this mind which has been given to me is your consort the life force breath and energy which you have given me are your attendance my body is the temple in which i worship you whatever i eat or wear

or do is all part of the worship which i keep on performing at this temple even when this body goes to sleep at night i feel i am in union with you whenever i walk i feel i am going on pilgrimage to you whatever i speak is all in praise of you so whatever i do in this world in any way is all aimed at you in fact there is no duality in this life of union with yourself you