God Isn’t to be Remembered. He’s to be Experienced.
I think we err when we assume that a connection to God should be rare or a one-time event.
If you've spent any time in spiritual communities, you've probably met people who a) have had one or more intense spiritual experiences sometime in the distant past but b) haven't had a deep spiritual experience recently. They'll talk about their past experiences with reverence and awe and joy. They'll remember them with delight and gratitude. As well they should; the experiences that they've had are real and ought to be treasured.
At the same time, though, I don't think that God (or Spirit, Source, a soul-deep connection to the Universe, our highest self, etc) is simply to be remembered. I think it is to be experienced in the present day. Over and over and over again.
I think Jesus shows this clearly in how he describes himself and his relationship with God. He offers "living water" to those who believe in him (John 4:13-15, John 7:37-39). When his disciples encourage him to eat physical food, he rejoins that "I have food to eat that you know nothing about" (John 4:32). Most commentators who I've seen suggest that this food is his communion with God, which sustains him. Jesus paints a picture here of connection with God as offering vital nourishment, similar to food and drink.
(Note: while I advocate for path-agnostic spiritual growth, in this piece I'm going to be primarily quoting from Christian sources. If you're not Christian and don't wish to become Christian, than I invite you to fill in the faith leaders and spiritual teachers of your choice who discuss these concepts).
I think one key element of Jesus' speech here is that food and water cannot only be consumed once. You cannot eat a single meal and then not be hungry for the rest of your life. Instead, we need daily nourishment. That is: I think one thing that Jesus is pointing to is that our connection to God should not be a one-off, or restricted to a few spiritual experiences here and there. He is inviting us into a daily relationship.
So why don't we experience God every day? Why are our spiritual experiences too often limited to a few highlights of our lives in the distant past, rather than something that we can look forward to on every day ending with 'y'?
I think one reason is that following God (or Spirit, Source, the call of Infinite Love or the Universe, etc) will lead us into unknown vistas. We will be invited to do things we didn't know we could do, and that our egos will not like. We will be invited to forgive our enemies and tell them (with utmost sincerity) that we love them. We will be invited to radically change how we work and how we spend money. We will be invited to let go of our fear and our anger, our guilt and our shame…and to step into a new and better life.
All of this, in my experience, is deeply joyful. It can also be terrifying. Just speaking for myself: my ego likes comfort. It likes the familiar, the known. It likes orderly, logical plans that it can predict; and it likes to walk along a path only if it can be assured ahead of time that the path will carry no unwelcome surprises for it. But following God promises the opposite. Because of this, a lot of times my ego will try to dissuade me from following God if it can.
This dissuading seems to happen mostly below the level of conscious awareness. My ego is compelling. My fear of following God into the radical unknown has dressed up in all kinds of sweet-sounding arguments. But when I can realize that that's what my ego is doing, when I can bring it to the surface of my conscious awareness…then I have a choice. Faced with the question in stark terms, with no egoic dressing up or dissembling, I can answer honestly: do I want to lean into the fundamental weirdness of a life with God, or do I want to let my ego retain control?
This choice is one I seem to have to make again and again. Each time I make it, the muscle for following God and denying the comfort of my ego gets stronger. But to date that has not made the decision-making process go away.
I think another reason that some of us who have had profound spiritual experiences in the past can struggle to connect to God more regularly is that the experiences were so amazing that we can try to recreate them. Unfortunately, I think this is a trap. I think this because I've fallen into it myself, many times. In 2021 I experienced a night of profound bliss, almost like floating, with no thoughts in my head hour after hour. I was simply floating in what I felt to be my deep connection to the Universe. Every night afterwards for a week, I tried to get back to that experience of floating. But no dice. It eluded me.
I suspect in my case that there were two things going on.
One is that we cannot recreate the past; and when we try, we usually close ourselves off to amazing new experiences in the present. I think that goes double for spiritual experiences. As Aslan says in Prince Caspian, "Things never happen the same way twice."
Second, I think we often try to have another spiritual experience. I've done this more times than I can count. But I don't think it works this way. I've never yet found God by striving, by gritting my teeth, by trying to muscle my way into a certain state of mind. While the spiritual knowledge that I currently lack could fill volumes, the only path I've yet found to God is through surrender.
This is another lesson that came to me from Narnia. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Lucy gets into Narnia by accident. When she tells her siblings about Narnia, they think she's lying; but out of respect for her, they decide to go into the wardrobe and try to get into Narnia themselves. But they can't. It's only when first Edmund and Lucy, and then all four of them, stop trying that they can access this magical world.
In my experience, connecting with God is often like that. One of my friends says that God is always speaking to us, and all we have to do is learn to listen. I've personally found that opening myself up and being receptive is a better way to find God than striving.
The last reason that I think spiritual experiences can be rarer than we would sometimes like is that we allow ourselves to think that they should be rare. In The Divine Conspiracy, Christian theologian Dallas Willard says that a lot of us think of Heaven as far far above us. But, he says, that's a mistranslation. The word "Heavens" more accurately means "air." That means that God isn't way the heck up there, remote and distant from us. He's as close to us as our hand. As Willard writes:
"The Old Testament experience of God is one of the direct presence of God’s person, knowledge, and power to those who trust and serve him. Nothing—no human being or institution, no time, no space, no spiritual being, no event—stands between God and those who trust him. The 'heavens' are always there with you no matter what, and the 'first heaven,' in biblical terms, is precisely the atmosphere or air that surrounds your body."
I've sometimes thought of moments of connection with God as deep, life-changing…and rare. But on reflection, I think only two of those adjectives are accurate.
So how can we cultivate a day-in-day-out connection with God (or Spirit, Source, our highest self, etc)? This is a topic worthy of a book by experienced spiritual teachers, and for reasons of both space and lack of expertise I won't attempt to tackle it here. Instead, I will recommend some resources that I have found helpful on my own journey.
For Christian readers:
Life Without Lack by Dallas Willard
The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard
With by Skye Jethani
For non-Christian readers:
Hear Yourself by Prem Rawat
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
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