On Being

Context: Lee and I sat on a plane from Nairobi to South Africa. During the boredom of just sitting strapped into a metal box with lots of people, each seeking their version of distraction to while away the time from the travel monotony, I asked God to take me out of myself and to completely control my imagination in any way that pleases Him. Being the end of the year and anticipating laying down all work meant liberty inside my soul from all 'practical' agendas.

All I wanted was God, for God's sake, to operate my imagination with His creativity and reveal God as God is rather than how I make him out to be.

With all this context, the following meditation unfolded.

What is the most PRIMORDIAL single word that describes God?

Strip away all the descriptions, all the embellishments.

What is left?

The reality that God IS.

This IS-ing is BEING.

God names himself thus: "I AM".

When you scrape away all the layers of the layer cake and get to the bottom of it all, what remains is “I AM”.

What does this feel like?

What is it like to be God? How can we participate for a moment in sharing what this feels like, or is like?

Now strap on and set free your imagination for a minute. Let the Holy Spirit take over and take you there.

To start off.

You are floating freely, unburdened, untethered and unworried

Inside an enormous, endless cube of space. You are in the centre of this space.

This space is utterly empty.

Devoid of anything and all else.

You are entirely and completely alone.

Now, imagine all this space rapidly receding, draining into your belly button.

All of this endless space shrunk into itself, into you.

Until it is no more.

And now you are alone.

You are all that is.

Lone in existence.

There is nothing else.

Completely, utterly alone.

Apart from you, there is nothing.

Not a single other.

Or any otherness.

You are all that is.

The sole singularity of what is.

How can you exist?

Nothing external to you to divert you.

To amuse you.

To distract you.

To play with.

To engage with.

To talk to.

To relate to.

To mirror any meaning back to you.

To add to you.

To contextualise you.

No other to fight with, to love, or to love you.

No interaction, amazement, amusement or stimulation that can inspire wonder.

The question is this: "What KIND of being can survive such utter, total and complete solitary confinement?”

Such blankness

Such silence.

Such containment.

Would this solitariness, so devoid of any otherness, not amplify feedback loops to magnify to monstrous rage the tiniest, the smallest, the merest speck of inner imperfection?

Does imperfections, such as may be, that repeat, echo and amplify themselves until the self-destruction of one’s very being becomes the only bearable, tolerable option not ensue?

But what if your entire inner life is LOVE?

What if this deep love exudes perfect self-contentment?

Complete self acceptance.

Perfect harmony. No internal disassociations or splits. No shatter internal fractures. Just love, just acceptance. Not proud, nor conceited.

Just full of a love that feeds peace.

And this peace with yourself is wonderfully pervasive.

Penetrating all that you are.

Filling all within untill utter completeness pervades.

So that all of you repose in perfect peace.

Entirely at rest.

Happy.

What if this combination of love-contentment-peace-rest combines all together so delicately, so sublimely, prove to be so light?

Light as a feather.

Burdenless.

That this lightness glows with pure joy?

So that it can be endless, free from pressure.

See now how you are delivered from any expectation.

Complete and self-contented through and through.

Free of an audience, of expectations and demands from others. No need to step up and perform.

Without time.

Already endless for an immeasurable past eternity.

Imagine that you are totally delighted with just simply BEING.

Being you.

With the simple and uncomplicated act of Being.

Alone in Being, before the merest notion of loneliness.

Being GOOD

Because goodness alone can ever be this self-sufficient in solitude.

Utterly clean.

Unpolluted and pure - beauty before ever there was any ugliness.

Perfection. Before the age of corruption and dysfunction.

Complete. Lacking nothing, needing nothing, wanting nothing. Because the perfection is complete.

Because anything else could not survive or sustain being the only one for an eternity.

The beauty of singular simplicity.

Such simplicity as an act or expression of pure, undiluted power.

Shining and radiant inside of its own self.

Power from being One. The perfection between Three that could only ever total up to One.

The power of such entwined intimacy.

Knowing all that can be known.

Of filling all that is.

And ever was.

Of being all of existence itself.

Without beginning.

Without end.

No equal - no rival - no other - no contenders.

No needs.

No wants.

No lacks.

Just encapsulated perfection.

Embodied in ONE.

Self-sufficient.

Joyful

BEING.

Now let us move forward with this meditation and imagine further.

What if BEING all this...You break that perfect singularity.

The eternal silence.

And SING

Your song flows out of this complete BEING.

An explosion of pure energy.

Propelled outwards in absolute beauty.

From LOVE.

With Joy.

Founded in Peace.

In total Freedom.

The song that alters all it encounters.

Turning nothingness into somethingness, into otherness.

And creates.

Makes new things.

Never before things.

Not seen before till now things.

Out of exuberance.

Propelled from an eternity of pent-up abundance.

And so OTHER is born, bursting outwards and forming shapes.

Life to energy, energy to power, power to light, light to gas, gas to particles.

Amassing together.

Deep out of the ethereal and invisible.

And so it all begins.

That never really began before.

And time is born out of timelessness.

Dimensions come to be.

Space booms out in concentric waves.

Pushing out.

Until called back home.

By the extraordinary gravity of The BEING.

Thus boundaried and contained.

With perfection.

Restraint by intent.

The perfect act of making.

But expressing the liberty of the art of playfulness.

From ONE that is ever youthful in ancientness.

And all of it is GOOD.

It can be none other.

Simple in its goodness. Complex in its diversity.

Oh, so GOOD.

From One that can only be GOOD.

Because only pure goodness could emerge successfully out of that solitary ageless, timeless past. Corruption could not survive.

All aspects Perfectly in synch.

Wonderfully ONE.

Come now, let us burn in our souls together.

The PARENT of our soul is ONE.

Our intention-laden, gift enriched, purposed, and intended souls are that soil-captured breath of that song.

An original song.

Birthed as an actual work of art.

Substanced out from beauty. Fleshed Love.

And we are surrounded by this song.

Flowing in as an ever-lasting act of creation. Sustained by it. Surrounded by it.

Still continuously working good things outwards.

In generosity.

Resourced abundantly.

Riding ageless waves.

Right back to the ONE.

The One we long for.

Whose gravity caught us.

And holds us in tension.

With kind tenderness. And patience. In the mercy of One that needs not.

We are participants.

We are called.

But we are timid in our brokenness.

So let us change that.

By changing the frame of our vision. And lifting our gaze from the fabrications of broken assumptions.

And the tyranny of the anxiety that flows from lessor gods. From idolatries spawned from blindness.

And clothe ourselves with courage.

Sourced from the stream of truth.

Not out of the dry pits of self.

Not trapped in the darkness of lifeless imagination.

Not listening to the dirty corruption of creativeless lies. Stop our ears to the clamour from the mud. And its strongholds of chains.

But from blood.

That flowed.

To atone.

So that we can reconnect.

Rejoin the beat, rhythm, harmony and cadences.

Of an ancient song.

That comes from ONE.

That plays in delight and wonder.

And always has.

And can only be GOOD.

The undiluted personification of LOVE.