At Home With God.

"It is a secret, both in nature and state, that it is safer to change many things than one." - Francis Bacon.

From whence comes motion?

Inaction, for example from depression, begets more inaction in a vicious circle. Unless, that is, the inaction provides respite from overexertion and thereby rest one to stir again.

Action, like that from mania, begets more action in a virtuous circle, until it wears out and produces rest.

But what about the initial shove?

Encouragement and criticism are self-fulfilling prophecies facilitating action or inaction ... Or else they react against each other.

But encouragement and criticism are not the origin of motions.

Everything in our minds and bodies, it seems, either reinforces itself or gives rise to its opposite. The complexities resulting from the interplay of these pushing or resisting forces become so convoluted that no human mind could ever decipher them.

But again: From whence comes the original push or pull.

Shawn Anderson has said that motivation is manufactured.

Yes, indeed, our free wills produce our motive power. Our volition gives the initial push ... to us.

We cannot accurately describe or explain this will as a theory. We experience it as a fact. We do know, however, from whence it comes: It comes from us.

But from whence comes the motion driving the world around us?

Scientists "explain" the source of the push as different forms of energy in action. But this just puts a label and a description on the source of motion.

From whence COMES motion?

Sparks don't grow on trees. They, like motivation, are manufactured. So far as anyone knows, motion originates in some Beyond. Some higher power or powers. A first mover of some kind.

So here we have God. Another empty label and description, apparently.

Or can the Source be experienced directly, like our own wills? Can a Higher Power, God, be known as a fact?

Yes. But we cannot experience God by arguing over theories about Him the way philosophers argue the visceral reality out of concepts like free will and determinism. If it is possible to feel God, it will only be by feeling Him with our souls, the same way we feel ourselves and our magic wills.

For we too are part of the external world. The universe made us of itself. In other words, God made us in His own image. We can sense Him through the Him that is in us.

But How?

What I call sensing God directly as a fact and submitting to His will is logically extrapolating beyond what scientists call discovering and obeying natural laws.

Science always begins with observation of the world. Divine science is no different.

Much can be learned of God's - nature's - will by active experimenting and reasoning with our minds. We also learn of nature's ways by following our feelings and intuitions. But these methods narrow our learning to our own interests.

Divine science cannot observe from within our conditioned preconceptions about logic and truth, no matter how reasonable they may seem. If we stick to investigating according to traditional scientific methods, we limit our God, our conception of the universe. We then only have our E.G.O.s: Edging God Out, as an addiction recovery saying I heard from Patty Sneed goes.

Whatever else nature is, it encompasses some kind of Big Picture. Perhaps not a Divine Plan. But at least a larger scale of operating principles than those of the individual human or other creature.

To access these large scale, basic truths, we still need active awareness. But it must be an entirely watching awareness. It is that part of us that notices we are thinking and feeling. It gets to the root of the observational basis of science.

A watching awareness is soft and accepting. It does not penetrate nature, it is penetrated by nature.

This watching soul is a listener which sees our thoughts and feelings and sensations and urges float by like clouds. This us is self aware.

A watcher is the real us. The us that just is. Not forcefully willing, just tenderly noticing.

What the watching us can notice - very quietly, in stillness - is not just our own machinations. We become not just self-aware, but also gradually sense a subtle backdrop to ourselves and to the noises and sights of the world. A spiritual realm. A sort of Kingdom of Heaven beyond words or other bounded identifiers.

We do not tune out the busy material world. We tune into it, but without attaching our minds to any little part of it. Ours becomes a mirroring mind. A lake aware of the ripples on its surface and the winds and dancing fish causing these agitations.

Yet as watchers, we are also bodies of refreshing water that see our own depths. And more importantly, we see the solid soil and intangible air and space surrounding our souls.

We have now, to paraphrase the old Zen joke, asked God the hot dog vendor to make us one with everything. And Jehovah has faithfully answered the unselfish prayer of His beloved children.

Yes, but I still don't know how!!!

We start by sitting or laying comfortably with eyes closed and keep our attention on our breath. We do not force our attention to stay on our breath; when it wanders, we very gently direct it back. This gives our chattering mind something to do so it doesn't carry us off into Disneyland.

If we experience discomfort somewhere in our bodies, we gently adjust ourselves to remove it. It is unwise for a beginner to use uncomfortable yoga postures. These distract. We want to be able to sit still and just watch and listen and feel. But if we have the urge to scratch our nose, it can sometimes be best just to scratch it for a second than to let the annoyance narrow our attention down and attach us to the nose.

As we make this a habit, we begin to notice more and more.

With practice, we can later revert to original us-noticers of both details and backdrop in a relaxed, but aware, standing position. We can open our eyes, but we must focus on nothing in particular. We see everything at once.

This kind of looking is a symbol of the whole process of meditating: Focus on nothing and everything.

Next, we can graduate to peacefully, but with intentional awareness, watching all and nothing as we do simple repetitive tasks like walking on a quiet road.

Then we progress to full awareness of ourselves and our physical and spiritual settings while doing something more complex, but still routine, like washing the dishes.

Eventually - this can take years - the larger and not just particular world informs all our actions and thoughts, even in the midst of involved, baffling struggles.

We maintain self-direction. We are not mere dust in the wind. Only we are directing ourselves very gently. And we are never contradicting experience. We remain in harmony with facts.

We are now officially going with the flow. Doing our own thing, but doing it together with the ever-changing present that is the only genuine reality.

Without losing our free wills and autonomy, we are blissfully submitting to God.

We are residents of the Kingdom of Heaven.

We are home, sweet home.