The Sacred One: Living in Oneness 7

Inner Frontier
Fourth Way Spiritual Practice

Inner Work

For the weeks of August 20 & 27, 2018

The Sacred One

"No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us .." 1 John 4:12

It is easy and common to take that first sentence as indicative of an insurmountable gulf between us and God. Then comes the second sentence, which seems either trite or not meant literally. However, another way to understand the meaning of the passage is that we do not and cannot see God directly from the outside, with our eyes. Instead, our highest possibility consists of opening to God from within us, so that God can shine through us, as us. In this, we are not separate, not face to face, as if there were two faces, ours and God's, as if we were not part of God, as if we, all things, and the Sacred were not one.

What does loving one another mean? Certainly, it must include the simple caring for each other and treating all people with respect and consideration. Again, though, the deeper reality of this does not come from the outside. Practicing love, respect, and consideration will only take us part of the way; it bumps up against our egoism, selfishness, greed, and so on. Real love comes with and from oneness, or as John puts in 4:8 "God is love."

When we are open to the unity, the sameness, the common humanity that we share with everyone, then love arises as a natural expression. Love is that opening. On that level, the barriers, opposing forces, and resistance to love do not exist. Yes, there remains the common sense necessity on the level of our separate body to love and care for ourselves. But we find our way to love both ourselves and those around us, to live in love, to live on the highest level we can.

This love comes from our innermost identity, our identity with the Sacred, as the Sacred. For God to dwell in us, there can be only God, not us and God. And where is this? In our core, behind all awareness, beyond space and time, we are the one who directs our attention, the one who is our attention, the one who chooses what we choose and sees what we see. This is not something separate from us, something distant from us, something not us. It is us, the very real us whom we have always been.

We come into our Self when we let that one who we are flow through us from the spiritual depths, instead of allowing a limited and superficial version of ourselves to claim our identity by default and root us in separateness. We open more deeply. We become a vessel for the Sacred that originates beyond us. This we can practice directly in meditation, in contemplative prayer, and at quiet moments throughout the day. We delve beneath, behind our emotions, behind our thoughts, behind our sensations, behind our awareness itself, and most importantly behind our ordinary inner self. And there we open a gap, through which the Sacred can flow into us, as us.

For this week, please remember your highest possibilities and open to that repeatedly throughout these precious days.

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