Epiphany - 2013

It seems that my "spiritual path" has been laced with small
"epiphanies" and "divine flashes" of awareness, and "mini
awakenings" over the years.  I had one of those moments
back in 2013 when standing in my backyard.  I had stepped
outside to be in nature for a while, connecting with the stillness
and silence - taking it all in - noticing and feeling the connection.
I was in the process of taking some pictures of the shadows 
that the late afternoon sun in November was making on the fence,
when suddenly the words: "There is nothing but 'God'" ran
unbidden and unexpectedly through the silence of my being.
Say what!  There was an immediate sense of profound peace,
contentment, and joy in my heart.  I even started to giggle to
myself.  But I was also completely shocked by the word - 
"God" - and my very tangible felt experience of it.

I had not used the "God" language in years, after leaving the
religion of my childhood some 26 years before this, as it holds
imagery of my Christian upbringing of a person in the clouds
with white beard, meting out judgment.  It has so many old
paradigms, somewhat fundamentalist "religious" connotations
from my past, which made it all the more surprising that this
was the word that floated through.  If the inner "voice" had said:
 "All there is, is "Awareness," or "Consciousness, " or "Pure Being,"
 I would have gone, of course! - as those are the words that I often

use, abstract as they are. I also have used words like Buddha Nature,
The Divine,The Self, Brahman, The Ineffable, The Eternal, or
The Infinite. But I was jolted awake by the clear use of the word
"God." As this phrase ran through me I had the image of a deep
golden light, like a sunset, that ran across the screen of my mind,
as if to show me the depth and vastness of the word.  As it wasn't
 the persona "God" image of my childhood.  No, it was an
 incomprehensible sense of vast, expansive, all-inclusive, infinite,
 ubiquitous, Alive Presence, with which I felt an immediate sense of
  inherent communion - not one which needed to be sought after,
 but that was already actively happening...  And with that
realization came profound sense of Grace...

It was also realized that it doesn't matter if there is a sense of
a "me" or "no-me"; if one "concentrates" or not, or meditates,
or not.  It is inconsequential.  It was just realized that all there is,
is Infinite Existence that just IS - no matter what name or
qualities we give It...  or how we discover it for ourselves.

_/\_

Mystic Meandering
2013

~

Art: Mystic Meandering
Ethereal Vortex
Done with fingers and Craypas oils
2010