“Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.” — Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Joan M. Burnham)
“All that I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The mystery of God holds you in its all-encompassing arms.” — Hildegard of Bingen
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Exercise
Today you’ll take communion with the ultimate mystery—the holy place, the “cave within the heart”—where you simultaneously experience the center of the universe and your soul. This is the mystery of Oneness: your direct, unmediated marriage with the Divine and your intuitive knowing of the transcendent, imminent Presence. Through your impassioned devotion and discipline to the 40 practices, you’ve reconnected the radiant heart of Oneness to the living mystic within you. You’ve been consummated in the love of God and immersed in its mysteries. You’re invited to step into your essential nature: a skilled practitioner in the art of establishing, embodying, and expressing a conscious connection with the mystery of Oneness.
There have been many names attributed to the Great Mystery. Mystics, saints, and sages throughout time have described it in their poetry, music, art, and writing. Reflect for a moment on the following names. Which ones resonate with your wise inner knowing? What do you call the mystery of Oneness?
• The Hidden Heaven
• The Eternal
• Radiant Darkness
• Holy Nothingness
• The Numinous
• The Tremendous Mystery
• The Unknown Unknowable
• The Cloud of Unknowing
• The Inconceivable
• The Kingdom
• The I Am Beyond I AM
• The Luminous
• The Holy
• The Veiled Face of God
• The Way
• The Cosmic Mystery
• The Great Ultimate
• The Vast All-Encompassing
• The Magnificent
• The One
• The Alpha and The Omega
Today’s practice invites you to experience your unique connection to the divinity contained in all things. This requires you to rid your mind of old images and concepts, and experience the mystery of life from a beginner’s perspective, free from limitations and past associations. This clears the way for you to have a direct encounter with “a nothing and a nowhere” that will lead directly to the unfathomable experience of God. You need to become like a child again: open, curious, innocent, and available.
• The Hidden Heaven
• The Eternal
• Radiant Darkness
• Holy Nothingness
• The Numinous
• The Tremendous Mystery
• The Unknown Unknowable
• The Cloud of Unknowing
• The Inconceivable
• The Kingdom
• The I Am Beyond I AM
• The Luminous
• The Holy
• The Veiled Face of God
• The Way
• The Cosmic Mystery
• The Great Ultimate
• The Vast All-Encompassing
• The Magnificent
• The One
• The Alpha and The Omega
Today’s practice invites you to experience your unique connection to the divinity contained in all things. This requires you to rid your mind of old images and concepts, and experience the mystery of life from a beginner’s perspective, free from limitations and past associations. This clears the way for you to have a direct encounter with “a nothing and a nowhere” that will lead directly to the unfathomable experience of God. You need to become like a child again: open, curious, innocent, and available.
Today’s practice takes you out of your day-to-day surroundings and into the natural world in order to partake in the mystery of Oneness. Nature is one of your most powerful access points to the mind-blowing, awe-inspiring mystery of God. Ponder this as you experience God’s holy creation. Observe and appreciate the unknown that’s contained and infused in all things. Allow your fixed perceptions to dissolve, and see with the eyes of love and compassion. Look upon everything with wonder and awe. Experience life as if it were brand-new. See, hear, taste, touch, and smell for the first time. Behold the vast sacredness that surrounds you, and enter the awesome mystery of the universe.
Plan your excursion into what Matthew Fox calls the “primal sacraments”: the sea, land, wind, fire, life, and the universe itself. Whether you spend 30 minutes or an entire day in nature is up to you. Create an experience that will honor your inner mystic and nourish your soul’s longing for intimate communion with Oneness. What aspect or area of nature is drawing you to it? Where will you go to enter the “cave of your heart”? It’s been said that St. Francis of Assisi often sought out caves to pray in. Where will you take refuge to pray with the mystery of Oneness?
As you spend time in nature, revel and marvel at the mystery. Be receptive to all that’s holy, and fall in love with the universe, with all of creation. Be enraptured. Allow yourself to shudder, tremble, and tremor with the awesome mystery of life. Feel, sense, be, and come alive! Breathe in the life and love around you. Feel the universe loving you as you love the universe; enter this intimate relationship with wild abandon and complete surrender. Become intensely attracted to and immensely allured by all that surrounds you. Allow the mystery to enter you. Experience God flowing into you, as captured by C. S. Lewis: “Something of God . . . flows into us from the blue of the sky, the taste of honey, the delicious embrace of water whether cold or hot, and even from sleep itself.”
Be fascinated. Perceive the luminous mystery. Allow your soul to gaze upon the mystery without any veils. As Yeshua said: “Know what is in front of your face and what is hidden from you will be disclosed. For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.” Allow the mystery of Oneness to be revealed to you.
At the end of your day, take time to reflect and write about your experience in your journal. Like the mystics who have come before you, consider expressing your direct encounter and perception of the mystery of Oneness with words, songs, symbols, movements, stories, and art.
At the end of your day, take time to reflect and write about your experience in your journal. Like the mystics who have come before you, consider expressing your direct encounter and perception of the mystery of Oneness with words, songs, symbols, movements, stories, and art.
Affirmations
I AM part of God’s vast and holy creation, one indivisible, Divine mind.
I AM the mystery of oneness unfolding.
I AM part of God’s vast and holy creation, one indivisible, Divine mind.
I AM the mystery of oneness unfolding.
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