Experiencing the Holy

How was your practice of contemplation?  The key word in that question is practice, contemplation is not something you will attain perfectly on your first attempt.  It is a practice and if you stick with it you will learn how to do it, and be blessed in the process.  Remember the goal here is to lead from a God-Centered place.  By engaging in contemplation, unceasing prayer and turning our attention you are looking for God in your life.  By doing this you are abandoning the old way of living that relies on your plans and thoughts and replacing that lifestyle with one that relies on God.  One of the things you may experience by undertaking this intentional turning to God are moments when the Holy invades.  You become aware of something other and wonderful, unnameable and glorious, the Divine.   This happened in your life prior to your awareness of it, but now you see it and feel it and may wonder what to do with it.  I have found that humility and thanksgiving is the best course of action in those moment when my soul is flooded and my body tingles with an awareness of God.  It is as if light as invaded my world.  Gregory of Nyssa experienced this light and chose a path of humility as well  “The light teaches us what we must do to stand within the rays of the true light: Sandaled feet cannot ascend that height where the light of truth is seen" (Ferguson and Malherbe).  While it might not be practical to remove one's shoes in the middle of the day at work, it is wise consider the blessing you have just received by being able to see or feel the light of God entering your world.  "Blessed are your eyes because they see and your ears because they hear" Matthew 13:16 (NIV).  Not everyone sees the hand of God in their lives and experiences these moments of wonder.  Consider them to be a gift.

Through humbling ourselves whether by removing our shoes or kneeling or murmuring a prayer of thanksgiving we open up the possibility that “the knowledge of the truth will result and manifest itself.  The full knowledge of being comes about by purifying our opinion concerning nonbeing.  In my view the definition of truth is this: not to have a mistaken impression of Being” (Ferguson and Malherbe), wise words from Gregory of Nyssa.   There are those that hold so tightly to the impression or conclusions they have made about who and what God is that God's ability to move in their lives is unrecognized by them because of their limiting perspective. When life behaves in a discordant way with this individual’s beliefs about who God is their world is rocked even more so than necessary.  It is important when living from a God-Centered Place that we not make an idol out of God.  We must be able to submit in humility to God, while not deciding in our own feeble mindedness who God is.   This begins the challenge of learning to hold things loosely.

Picture this.  You have something of value in your hands, a sapphire ring or keys to Porsche or plane tickets to Italy.  How are you holding onto this item?  You probably would be wrapping your hands tightly around the object to make certain you don't drop it and that it cannot be knocked out of your hands.  Now picture your ideas about who God is and how he acts in your life.   Are these beliefs about God something you are clenching tightly in your hands or are your palms open allowing God the freedom to act as he sees fit?  When you decide that you know who God is, even if you believe that you're basing that knowledge on scripture and wisdom, you run the risk of boxing God in, limiting what you perceive to be God's allowable acts in your life.  To live from a God-Centered place it would behoove you to submit yourself to allowing God to introduce himself to you, not strictly through your interpretation of the scriptures, but through a personal revelation.

Spend some time considering God in a contemplative state.  Journal about who you have decided God is.  Then return to prayer and submit your ideas about God to him asking for him to further your understanding of himself.