Opening to the Divine

“The Divine is like the wind: It enters through whatever window we open for it and sometimes through cracks we didn’t know existed.” - Philip Goldberg

When I was serving as spiritual leader at Unity of Arlington, TX, J and I lived in a house built in 1954 which still had most of the original windows and doors that allowed for a great deal of draftiness. If you are familiar with casement, single-pane windows and louvered glass doors you know what I am talking about. When sitting inside on a windy day we could feel the breeze.

So, when Goldberg uses the analogy of the Divine as wind entering through any opening available, I have a sense of what he is talking about. However, it is important to point out that the Divine, as we know it, is never absent, so It does not need to enter. Rather it is the awareness of the Divine that is like the wind and will enter through the slightest crack.

Although, we often do not recognize it, each moment is fraught with opportunity to open to the conscious awareness of the Divine, and every aspect of our humanity is a portal to it. Every thought is a window; every sensory perception a gate; and every emotion a door. However, we often have the house of our consciousness so tightly closed off that we are unable to perceive the movement of the Divine in our daily lives.

Thoughts are not personal: they arise in the field of Infinite Mind and we have access to them all. All thoughts are recycled communal property. They are not ours unless we attach ourselves to them and begin to believe them. When we avail ourselves of the opportunity to observe a thought, rather than claim it as our own, we open the window through which the Divine enters. Allowing ourselves to become the “silent watcher” creates the opening. And, the great thing about thoughts is that they happen continuously giving us multitudes of openings each day.

Brain research has shown that our memory of past experiences greatly impacts how the brain interprets stimuli from the physical senses. When we see, taste, touch, hear or smell anything, our memory of it has a profound impact on what we perceive. For example, if one smells a rose, expecting to encounter a sweet bouquet of fragrance, the mind will conjure the memory of the scent even if there is none present.

The same is true of the ways in which we perceive the phenomenal world that we encounter every moment. Allowing ourselves to truly “stop and smell the roses” opens the gate through which the awareness of the Divine may enter. Rather than casually encountering the world around us and assuming that we know what we are seeing, touching, tasting, smelling and hearing, we can slow down enough to be present with whatever is before us in the moment and fully experience it, giving ourselves permission to touch, taste, smell, hear and see the Divine in all things, fully present, fully aware.

Just as thoughts and senses are openings, emotions also offer us doorways to the awareness of the Divine. Many of us in Unity have become accustomed to using denials to assist us in releasing the power of negative thoughts, thus affecting our emotional state in positive ways. For some, denial has taken on a psychological context not in keeping with the original intent, meaning that rather than using denials to deny the reality of negative thoughts or the permanence of so-called “negative” feelings, we use denial to deny our experience of feelings that we consider to be “negative.” 

For example, we may think that feeling angry is not “spiritual” so we deny that we feel angry. This is not the intent of the spiritual practice of denial. Attempting a “spiritual bypass” which is our effort to move quickly to peace, thereby avoiding any “negative” emotional state, only serves to keep us stuck. When we are truly willing to feel our emotions, whatever they may be, and go deeply into the experience of whatever we are feeling in the moment, we open the doorway to the experience of the Divine present in the moment. Being willing to delve into all emotions, including a “negative” emotion, is an act of Self-Love that opens the doorway to transcendence and realization.

Some philosophies teach that our humanity is just an illusion. Even if we believe that, each us of is living the experience of it for now. So, at least until we transcend our humanity, we might as well make the best use of it as possible. Let us choose to allow our humanity to be the opening through which the wind of the Divine, and our awareness of it flows freely.