Sensing the divine

"Meditation is not the pursuit of pleasure and the search for happiness. Meditation, on the contrary, is a state of mind in which there is no concept or formula, and therefore total freedom. It is only to such a mind that this bliss comes unsought and uninvited. Once it is there, though you may live in the world with all its noise, pleasure, and brutality, they will not touch that mind."

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, an Indian speaker and writer on philosophical and spiritual subjects.

An honest heart and a clear conscience are the two essentials to experience the divine. We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm, and adventure. There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open. When one does live with an open eye, an open heart, and an open mind, one becomes altogether excellent or admirable: in fact, godlike and divine. Great comfort is available to us when we truly possess an ethical mind and a clean heart. Guidance, perseverance, and the willpower to follow the right path will automatically follow. Divine comfort and relief, will be ours; and we will find immediate help in removing our real and imagined shortcomings. Instead, when man lives in pride and arrogance, he loses his subconscious receptivity to the universal force of spirituality that often is naturally inclined to rest and resolve his problems.

As a result, delusion becomes his way of life. Under the satisfying and reassuring veil of delusion, man loses focus and makes up some construction that justifies what he does. Generation succeeds generation; but the illusion of delusion persists.

Thus, we live and we die, all in a state of self-justified delusion. That perhaps is why the Buddha said: "Greed is an imperfection that defiles the mind; hate is an imperfection that defiles the mind; delusion is an imperfection that defiles the mind." The remedy is; with generosity, overcome greed; with gentleness, overcome hate; with truth, overcome delusion.

Human beings are born with the power to be subconsciously receptive to spiritual dependence.

By spiritual, I do not mean that which pertains to God, the sacred, the religious, the temporal, the ecclesiastical; but that which emanates from the universal force of goodness that is marked by the highest qualities of the human mind. When man becomes educated to make intelligent moral choices, he senses the divine; and therefore considered as spiritually connected to his origins in the cosmic order of things.

Thus, he has an innate disposition to submit to, divine power and authority. However, his pride and his arrogance, often deludes him. In fact, there is a natural connection between spirituality of the kind I am referring to and the psychological well-being of man. Spiritual health and mental health are inextricably connected, and one is not possible without the other. Great comfort is available to us when we sense the divine. Guidance, perseverance, and willpower, becomes our hallmark; and that ensures that we trod the right path. Desires, cravings, appetites, defects of character, negative beliefs, intolerance, uncertainties, anxieties, all vanish when one senses the divine. However, one needs to remove delusion and make intelligent moral choices, if one is to sense the divine.

Imponderables

It is not easy to fathom the imponderables that govern our course through life. It becomes even more difficult when we lose our sense of reality and are engrossed in our own ego.

As a result, the superficial conscious part of the id, self-centeredness, conceit, takes hold; and no matter how wrong we are, we can always convince ourselves that we are right.

The result is that we are enslaved by emotions of awe, indignation, contempt, envy, fascination, revulsion, and so on and so forth that overwhelm us with conflicting feelings.

In this confusion, disempowering delusion sets in. At the end of all delusions is, the sadness of tears; and the truth about tears is that, most tears are the result of a delusion.

Thus, once caught in its web, extricating becomes next to impossible. Like most things in life, it is cyclic in nature; unless we live wisely.

This is true of an individual, as it is of the masses or a nation. Charles Mackay, a Scottish poet, journalist, author, anthologist, novelist, and songwriter; remembered mainly for his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, says about mass delusions: "In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first." This, perhaps, also explains why politicians are able to survive in spite of so many broken promises given to the people; until and unless another comes along and captivates their imagination with new promises full of folly.

Divine

However, to revert to sensing the divine, let us explore what we mean by divine because to sense the divine, we must first understand what divine is. Popular notion of divine is to have the nature of or being god like - of relating to, emanating from, or being the expression of, a deity.

Divine also has an old-fashioned and informal meaning of being very good or pleasing, and beautiful; magnificent and extremely pleasant, delightful; and occasionally: to perceive or understand something by intuition or insight.

Whilst it is well and good to be godlike, the perception of god being that of an entity possessing superhuman and supernatural qualities or powers and made an object of worship because of such attributes; are we that?

On the other hand, if Divine is God: The one supreme being, self existent and eternal; the infinite creator, sustainer, and ruler of the universe, conceived of as omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent; good and almighty; I cannot see how man could sense such being, unless he be a part of it.

Thus, divinity to me is the qualities with which human beings are born: qualities of creativity, wisdom, and love. Every man is a divinity in disguise until he becomes the god playing the fool, the counter to his true nature.

The divine light is always in man, presenting itself to the senses and to the comprehension. It can be, sensed in each of us; but man rejects it, he chooses to wipe it away with greed and ignorance.

Creativity and love is the natural order of life. When we open ourselves to these twin qualities, we open ourselves to the third: wisdom.

Wisdom is, inscribed in our reason, in our heart; and wisdom leads us on to compassion. Man is eternally on fire. He is burning with desire and craving which are limitless by nature. Thus, unable to extinguish the fire within, he becomes angry.

The Buddha called these the three poisons: greed, anger, and ignorance; and how the three poisons are making the fire within.

The way to overcome these is not by denial, but by recognising that they exist within you. Through such recognition, one eventually can replace greed with generosity; anger with compassion; ignorance with wisdom.

However, the nature of these emotions are such and they are, ingrained in modern man to such an extent that even the Buddha could only say: "I can give my teachings in brief. I can teach in detail. It is those who understand that are hard to find."

That being that, to sense the divine, one needs courage; because it is the quality that guarantees all others. Courage gives you a mind without fear. A mind without fear will lead you to love, understanding, wisdom, and compassion: universally recognised moral qualities of men and women that, elevates them to divinity.

See you this day next week. Until then, keep thinking; keep laughing. Life is mostly about these two activities.

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