Face To Face with God

I Rise
Originally uploaded by Tomasito.! (Sorry, Soo Busy // No Need to Comment)

In my teacher Jason's passage today, he speaks about the fact that we were created in order to come to God, that he is not separate from us in any way. Each of us is God coming to God.

He ends the passage as follows: You search for God because God is your origin and your destination. That's what life and death are about: remembering this.

That's some deep shit.

Even just a few years ago, I would've never been able to wrap one brain cell around an idea like that.

Jason also uses a concept called: "Our original face" . I am understanding in this moment that this is "the look" I have seen in others, in my own self in the mirror, in the speaker at my AA meeting tonight ... when there is no mistake that the one who is looking back at us is God. It is a moment when the ego fades into the shadows, there is no transference or judgment or bias; there is just pureness and realness and wholeness. Even blemishes and wrinkles and crooked teeth become holy.

So, I pose this question to myself in reflection: have my fears of abandonment all these years ( with the narrative that it was because I was "rejected" by my biological mother when I was given up for adoption) really been about my separation from my true home ? That perhaps I needed to find a tangible "thing" to attach these feelings of terror in order for them to make sense on the physical plane ?

Over the past couple of years, I have brought myself into full relationship with what I have labeled "aloneness". I would re-phrase that today as "my separation from God". My return to AA and 12 Step recovery coupled with my non-dual healing work has enabled me to look intimately and deeply at and within myself. Which translates to being face to face with God. The 12 Steps are about developing a relationship with a Higher Power, with a God of my understanding. Non dual healing work is about coming home to ourselves, becoming more of who we are, whole. Both of these paths converge: the God of my understanding is my origin and my destination; if I am coming home to myself, then I am returning to God.

Sitting deeply in prayer, engaged in non-dual practice, listening intently to others share at an AA meeting, communing with the trees and birds and sky, fully embracing an interaction with someone I love ... I am home. I am face to face with God. All of these things remind me that the God I have yearned for, have missed, have been longing to see ... is right here -- in me, in others, in nature. Has never left, ever. It is when I am sleepy and forget that I believe God is somewhere far, far away.

In the Baptist religion, a funeral is not a time of sorrow. They, in fact, call it a "Coming Home Day". Jason speaks of life AND death being about remembering that God is our origin AND our destination.
Holding onto this would actually make the prospect of death that much more inviting and celebratory and not the terrifying event that we are conditioned to think it is. The fear, I realize, is when the idea of separating enters the picture. Coming home to God in this way brings up the pain of leaving those who we love on the earth plane behind. But are we really separating ? It feels like we are merely changing form, rather than disconnecting.

My exhausted brain needs a break. I could ponder this subject to infinity and back. This God bids THE God and all other Gods in human form a sweet goodnight.