Moving from Communion to Union
Part Ten
You’re Never Alone — Meeting Your Spirit Guides
Communion
“Surf’s up” is an idiom meaning it’s time to feel the exhilaration of surfing because the waves are high enough to start. Mystics have reminded us that we are like waves on the ocean. We are one with the ocean (God), and yet we are each a unique wave in that ocean. Last week I wrote about the ocean waves mingling with one another in my life through my spirit guides — what Christians call communion. This is the wondrous, deep connecting with our spirit teachers and guides as well as one another, all as the Intimate Face of God-Beside-Us. Nothing can replace this fellowship of love and light.
Union
Along with the communion, God has also provided the union of love which Jesus called by the mystical naming of “being one.” We are each an ocean wave while also immersed in and as the ocean that is God. This is the Inner Face of God-Being-Us. Jesus invited us not only to commune with him in a loving person-to-person relationship, along with our other teachers, but to recognize that we are also united with him (and Abba, everyone, and everything) in the wonder of Oneness. Jesus spoke of this kind of oneness or union in the Gospel of John.
“May they all see that they are one, Abba, just as you are me and I am you. I as them and you as me—so that they may know they exist in Oneness.”
[My paraphrase of John 17:21 with Jesus speaking as the universal personality. “In” here is used with a “mystical” sense as in Kittel, Vol. II, p. 543. The mystical sense of “in” goes beyond a spatial location sense of being inside of something and moves to complete identification.]
The Wisdom of Wilber
Twenty years ago, I eagerly devoured Wilber’s description of oneness in The Eye of the Spirit. It endlessly captivated me. (You can access the entire 2016 free excerpt from Ken’s 2001 book here. Wilber sees the Oneness Witness Union as the highest or ultimate spiritual reality. As I understand the Christian path, the Relational Love Communion function is an equal reality. Wilber contrasts the temporariness of mystical experience with the permanence of union. However, in the Christian path, this is a false comparison. God is eternally both One -nonduality, and Love – the duality of mutual lover and loved.)
What I call Oneness, Wilber calls the ever-present awareness or the Witness. For those not familiar with Wilber, I offer these parts of that excerpt:
When I rest in simple, clear, ever-present awareness, every object is its own subject. Every event “sees itself,” as it were, because I am now that event seeing itself. I am not looking at the rainbow; I am the rainbow, which sees itself. I am not staring at the tree; I am the tree, which sees itself. The entire manifest world continues to arise, just as it is, except that all subjects and all objects have disappeared. The mountain is still the mountain, but it is not an object being looked at, and I am not a separate subject staring at it. Both I and the mountain arise in simple, ever-present awareness, and we are both set free in that clearing, we are both liberated in that nondual space, we are both enlightened in the opening that is ever-present awareness. That opening is free of the set-apart violence called subject and object, in here versus out there, self against other, me against the world. I have utterly lost face, and discovered God, in simple ever-present awareness.
This realization undoes the Great Search that is the heart of the separate-self sense. The separate-self is, at bottom, simply a sensation of seeking. The Great Search for Spirit is simply that impulse, the final impulse, which prevents the present realization of Spirit, and it does so for a simple reason: the Great Search presumes the loss of God. The Great Search reinforces the mistaken belief that God is not present, and thus totally obscures the reality of God’s ever-present Presence.
Eckhart said that “God is closer to me than I am to myself” because both God and I are one in the ever-present Witness, which is the nature of intrinsic Spirit itself, which is exactly what I am in the state of my I AMness. I am not this, I am not that; I rest as pure open Spirit. When I am not an object, I am God. (And every I in the entire Kosmos can say that truthfully.)
And so, when I rest as the Witness, all things arise in me, so much so that I am all things. There is no subject and object because I do not see the clouds, I am the clouds. There is no subject and object because I do not feel the cool breeze, I am the cool breeze. There is no subject and object because I do not hear the thunder clapping, I am the thunder clapping.
I am no longer on this side of my face looking at the world out there; I simply am the world. I am not in here. I have lost face—and discovered my Original Face, the Kosmos itself. The bird sings, and I am that. The sun rises, and I am that. The moon shines, and I am that, in simple, ever-present awareness.
When I rest in simple, clear, ever-present awareness, I am resting in intrinsic Spirit; I am in fact nothing other than witnessing Spirit itself. I do not become Spirit; I simply recognize the Spirit that I always already am. When I rest in simple, clear, ever-present awareness, I am the Witness of the World. I am the eye of Spirit. I see the world as God sees it. I see the world as the Goddess sees it.
Oneness with Jesus
When I read that, I knew this was a description of what I intuitively knew that I wanted to begin the realization of my oneness with Jesus. If I couldn’t be one with Jesus, I surely couldn’t be one with the clouds! I wanted to experience not only looking at Jesus but recognizing that I am Jesus and Jesus is me. I am not only looking at Abba. I am Abba and Abba is me. As the German theologian, philosopher and mystic, Meister Eckhart (c. 1260 – c. 1328) said, “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”
“My eye and God’s eye are one eye.”
My Journey
One day I asked Jesus what I needed to do to have this oneness with him. He said, “Nothing! You are already one with me.” I said, “Let me rephrase it, “How can I recognize that oneness in a deeper way.” He said, “Ah, now that’s an important distinction and an avenue for you to travel. You believe that you are already one. And you want to experience what you already are more profoundly. So, let’s go on a journey together.”
I had been experimenting with my feet center by not just seeing roots grow out of my feet but by seeing myself as a tree. I would remember feeling how powerful it was when I would jog in the park and stop to hug a tree. That in itself took some courage to do in public. “Oh, look at the tree hugger.” But I wanted that sense of oneness with the earth more than I wanted to preserve my assumed clerical dignity. So, I regularly hugged my favorite tree – at least for as long as I could stand it as the other joggers would run by. It was always invigorating. Now, at age 84, my park jogging days are replaced by my trusty Nordictrack treadmill sitting in front of the TV in our apartment.
However, in meditative prayer, I go back to hugging that same tree and still feel the same energy flow up and down my body. Increasingly, now, in Wilber style, I see myself as that tree. My branches reach up to the heavens and my roots down into the beauty and earthiness of God’s body, nature itself.
Then I borrowed a practice common in creative visualization, shamanism, and hypnosis. While I was the tree, I also climbed inside of it through an opening in its side. Remember, when journeying in the enchanted, mystical (magic) structure of consciousness, there are no spatial limitations. I traveled down the roots to the safe place in my gut where I would go in my years of therapy. This was a beautiful forest glade where I felt enveloped in the magnificent glory of God’s divine Presence as nature. Jesus visibly came over to meet me. This time, instead of the Living Jesus of history, he was glowing in a blue aura with gleaming stars and bits of cosmic stardust swirling in and around him. This was the Universal Personality, the Cosmic Christ! He said, “Come on in.” So, I walked right into him, enveloped by the infinite cosmos and embraced by his personal warmth. Then he said, “You now recognize that you are in me. You are me. Now breath me in so you can recognize me in and as you.” So I breathed in Jesus, stardust and all, and Jesus became me. And I became Jesus. Jesus, as the Cosmic Christ, and I were one, and from this oneness, I could witness all others as one with Jesus, me, and one another. (See my writing “Call Me by Your Name”)
Looking out from Oneness opened me to see what I could not recognize before in my own mystical journey of union with God. Fifteen years ago, in meditative prayer, I began seeing a swirling, deeper pool of blacker darkness open up in the darkness of my visual field from the center of my forehead, what some would call my “third eye.” This happened and continues to happen with my eyes closed or being in a darkened room with my eyes open. It appears to me that I am seeing this right in front of me at eye level. I used to call it my “visual fireworks.” There would often be rolling clouds of color. They would swirl around, replacing one color with another for some time until the display would end, or I would run out of energy to hold the visual field.
Often this would be followed by a dazzling view of hundreds of people, places, and things from around the world rapidly passing before my eyes. These were not impressions, but they appeared before my open eyes in visionary form like the colors. I could not tell whether I was traveling to where the people, places, and things were – or whether the people, places, and things were traveling to me and passing in front of me where I was sitting. When this global panorama would end, I would sit, bewildered in amazement. What was this I had just observed? What did it mean?
I recognized the colors, people, places, and things. What I did not notice or recognize back then was that I was “witnessing,” as Wilber describes it. I was seeing Oneness. I saw a person. I was that person. I heard the traffic in Hong Kong. I was the traffic in Hong Kong. I saw the Himalayas. I was the Himalayas. I saw a tribe dancing in Africa. I was the tribe dancing.
I want to surf in this cosmic oneness more and more since I usually experience it only in meditative prayer.
In this series I, and others, have shared our experience with guides and how that has looked in our lives, but it’s a little different for everyone. There are a lot of waves on this great ocean of mystical experience in communion and union. What has yours looked like? What might be next for you?
I invite you to join in this union in any way and at any time in your journey that fits for you. Surfs up!
Coming up this weekend!
Don’t miss out on the chance to learn more personally and directly with Paul Smith on how to open your mind and experience to discovery and deeper engagement with spirit guides in your life.