What Does "Divine" Mean?
Orienting Question: What have your own inquiries into “Divine” brought?
Anything like or unlike described here?
Since our name is “Amplifying Divine Light in All” Church, it would be good to explain something about what "Divine" means to us.
We recognize and honor that for other religions, the word means something quite different. We also recognize and honor that even within our church, individuals have differing meanings.
So I’m offering my meaning, as Head Minister of the Church. Others within our church feel an alignment and resonance with this, as I do with their meanings.
There is no permanent answer
Also, the meaning is not fixed. As we live in the inquiry “What is Divine” our understandings, our revelations, our experiences, change over time.
By “inquiry,” I mean something as simple as uttering or thinking the word “Divine” and then being quiet for a minute or two, just alert to notice whatever pops into my experience or awareness, if anything, and just enjoying whatever does arise. Perhaps writing it down. But just letting it sink in, without analyzing or meaning-making til later. We do this practice multiple times a day, or whenever it occurs to us to do.
The question: What does "Divine" mean? points to the same thing as these other questions listed just below. Exploring these other questions, as we do often, is a means of “living in the inquiry.”
- What do I sense/regard/feel as the most important thing to pay attention to?
- What do I regard as Ultimate?
- What most fills me with awe and reverence, and a desire to worship in some way?
- What has most drawn my attention as I contemplate life most deeply?
- What has the most significance, when I think about Life, about Existence?
- What is most fundamental about Life, about Existence?
Exploring these questions is a more complex form of inquiry called “contemplation,” and can involve revisiting the question and then writing down all that comes in while being quiet.
What is "worship"?
In one sense, the meaning of “Divine” for us is “most important, most fundamental, Ultimate, of most significance, most awe-generating, most moving us to reverence and worship.”
And for me, when I say “awe” I don’t mean a mental experience or even an emotion or feeling. I mean a mind-blowing, heart-stopping, breath-taking sense of Being awe, reverence, and worship that drops me to my knees because I cannot stand up—yet not feeling one iota of separateness of me from the “object” of my awe. Paradoxical experience of Being.
I also don't mean it's just one thing and that's "it." There can be many moments of awe in a day, if one is open to that experience.
What gives you that kind of experience?
We draw our answers from several religious traditions and sages, enriched by our own revelations and experiences.
Two of the possible ultimates
I’ve discovered that for me, while the vastness and complexity of what I understand to exist inspires awe, my heart detects something beyond that which evokes in my heart an even greater, overwhelming sense of awe, reverence, and worship: whatever power or force CREATES all that exists, ongoingly in each moment.
I know that for many people “All That Is” is their Ultimate, their God. My Ultimate, my God, is whatever is creating all that is. That’s a rational conclusion, because logically the Creator, or the Power or Force of Creating, is prior to the Created.
It’s also a beyond-rational conclusion of my deepest religious/spiritual sensing about what is precisely the object of my religious awe, what I most profoundly feel a sense of worship about, what is truly my “God.”
And some religions don’t even distinguish: God is the Creator, the Creating, and the Created. That is true for me, yet my sense of awe prioritizes the Creative Power of the Creator--whatever that IS.
I have some speculations about what it is. If quantum physics is correct that the Universe blinks in and out of “existence” (whatever the heck that means) zillions of times every nanosecond, then Creating is being done, from scratch so to speak, that often, and is thus ongoing.
Where does everything go when it blinks out? And why does it come back different every time, like the series of still cartoon pictures, each slightly different so when we flip through we create the illusion of a moving picture? And what power brings it back and where is that power located? What is the non-existence like?
Those are interesting
questions which I spend a lot of my religious inquiry time contemplating—not
just mentally, but experientially, through my heart and body and soul. Part of the answer probably lies in the common notion of a "Field of Infinite Potential."
What makes the inquiry into the meaning of “Divine” important?
The meaning each of us holds at any time has implications for our sense of who we ultimately are, and what our relationship is to the Divine. Those in turn have implications for our values, for how we live our lives and relate to others.
For example, if the Power of Creation is Divine, then so is every Created, which means every person, every living thing, anything which I can be aware of!
Thus each Created
fundamentally deserves and receives my reverence, my honor, my respect, in
their fundamental nature AS a Divine Creation. On the manifest level of multiplicity, given I am a Created with a particular nature that has preferences, I might choose to avoid or seek to eliminate some other Created, and that is what I am being created to do.
This blog and this post are part of our church’s ministry. We seek to amplify the Divine Light in you, by prompting you to inquire and contemplate further into what Divine means to you. The more you sense, know, experience, and understand of that meaning, the more of that Divine Light is amplified in you, through you, as you. So be it!
This inquiry is part of a four-part series. The others are: What Do "Sacred" and "Divine" Mean?, What is Religion?, and What is Theology?
Questions and comments welcome below!
No comments:
Post a Comment