Yes, And...: A Different Kind of Knowing

Today, I sat with the first daily meditation in the book “Yes, And…” by Richard Rohr. The opening line spoke to recent experiences I’m having in times of quiet, rest, and contemplation.

”The essential religious experience is that you are being known through, more than knowing anything in particular about yourself.”

Recently, I’ve experienced God as me having an experience through me. This feels so loving, exciting, and sweet when I am aware of it. It doesn’t feel like emotion or thought. There is no burden carried in this experience to understand it, only to recognize and enjoy it. There is a sense of deep power, but not fear. Just aliveness, and a natural, loving sense of oneness with God and, through God, all that is. All time, all space, all things.

In my body, this recognition begins in my gut, my core. It’s not an emotional physical experience that I can sense in my heart, like fear or love. It’s not an experience of mind or holy imagination where I may see images or sense certain words, or even memories, or hopes, or longings. It feels like an expansion of my very center. It’s part of me, but also not me, but not other than me either. It’s my true self.

My core feels like a vast, deep well. But whenever I stop, breathe, and settle into an awareness of God in me, as me, through me, I always sense movement deep within this seemingly dark void. Movement creates heat, it creates energy. This moving presence is always under the surface of my inner well, simmering. It’s the Divine Dance. It’s the flow of love between Father, Son, Holy Spirit in which we all have our being. It’s relationship.

From time to time, an explosion erupts up through my earth, my very body, like a geyser bursts through rock and baked soil with intensity and force, embracing the expanse above, showing up, being seen. And like a geyser, I experience this occasionally, not continually. But it can happen at any time.

Christ taught and prayed that we would be one with Him, and one with God, and one with each other. Christ abides in us. Everything that is, all reality, is being continually, actively sustained in the creative, loving power of Christ. This is true of all people, all matter, all emptiness, and darkness too. God actively pours it all forth, and experiences creation as us, in us, and through us.

This is God’s unending diversity incarnating in all of us. I think God enjoys the experience of knowing as us as much as we enjoy the experience of God knowing as us. That’s why these moments are so full of joy.

If you’ve never been able to sense something like this, in whatever ways God plays in you, I would encourage you to be open to God revealing Godself in you. You are hidden in Christ, already one with God. Sometimes we just don’t know it. But if you remember the moments of your life where you sensed there was more, there was love, there was life or something that was beyond you, those memories can be a place to begin.

God may feel completely different to you than to me. And that’s as it should be. But I believe we all are created to consciously experience our true self, and the experience is available to all. Trust in God’s love, and just see what may happen. There is no wrong way to do this. As we say here in the American South, “Ya’ll settle down now.” Settle. Down. Now.

Remember (Your Baptism)
- Heather Celoria © 2016
Down, down, down we go
Down
Where no one knows
Down
In a great hollow
You lead
We follow

Take us higher we say
But you
Know a better way
Down where the river flows
You lead
We follow

In the name
We come
In the name
Undone
In the name
We are going
Down

Down, down, down we go
Down
To the ancient and low
Down
Where life can grow
You lead
We follow

In the name
We come
In the name
Undone
In the name
We are going
Down