Kirkepiscatoid

Today's readings center around "The Quest for Enlightenment" and how this is a feature of almost every major religion.

Journal Reflection Questions:

1. Meditate on whether you feel called to deeper self-realization. What does enlightenment mean to you?

Ok, my knee-jerk flip answer is, "DUH! I wouldn't be doin' this if I didn't!

But now for the serious answer...

Yeah, I do...I think that is why I am taking the time to do this for 40 days, because I want to understand it better. "Enlightenment" is a difficult phrase for me because it sounds so "la la". In fact a lot of today's reflection has to do for me with getting past my visceral reactions to some of the words being used in the conversation.

But I would say that to me, enlightenment has an element of expansiveness to it. It is an opening up of the heart and mind and soul all at once. It creates a bond between God and me that feels unbreakable and permanent, even though the feeling itself is very fleeting. The other interesting thing about it is that when I feel true enlightenment, I feel a connection between me and other people that is beyond physical or emotional, although at times it may have little blips of similarity to both. I have described this moment, when it occurs with those close to me, as "that moment when we look at each other for the extra nanosecond or two." In those couple of nanoseconds something happens that seems beyond the boundaries of time, an openness, a connection, a bond that transcends temporal as well as the other boundaries. It is just this expansive feeling of "Wow, we are sooooo connected at this here moment!"

2. In what way does your own desire for union with God take you beyond "seeking gratification of the self"?

Again, I am having a bit of a word problem. I really dislike the phrase "union with God" because it sound so..well.. sexual. It sounds like we are lovers and that sounds sort of incestuous to me! Also, I think as long as we are in human form, we never really have "union" with God. We never become fully miscible because we are made of different stuff. I think of it more like a "bond" where two different substances can stick together. But I don't think we become miscible with God until we die. So me being a practical person, I don't really have a "desire for union with God" because I tend not to want what I can't have!

Now, with that said, I do have a desire to feel bonded with God, to feel the bonding power of the "glue" that holds us together and feel what's on the other side of the glue. I like to think in that exact spot of the "bond", God and I have both "altered our chemistry a little" to create a little spot where we both are different simply in order to stick to one another. (Ok, you can't tell my minor was in Chemistry, can you?) That is exciting, the notion that God would alter himself just to stick to me. It's easy to believe I would change myself just to stick to God!

The roots of that "change" exist in the business of seeking gratification beyond ourselves. To want to bond with God, we have to change ourselves a tiny bit. Perhaps some of that is to devote our energies beyond ourselves, to focus on gratifying God and gratifying one another. I find that when I focus on someone else's needs or someone else's hurts, my own need for selfish things dissipates to some degree.

3. Meditate on your reason to exist. How is your reason to exist reflected in your personal and professional relationships?

This is a hard question, because I do not think I'm indispensible. But I think about how those dear to us, we are linked at the heart, and their absence creates a hole in our hearts. I recognize that if I died tomorrow, there would be a lot of people running around with varying sized holes in their heart. So part of all of our reasons to exist is to keep those holes plugged in each other. I think that is best reflected in my life (on my best days) as the way my friend C. likes to put it. He says that one of my best attributes is that "When you are with people one-on-one, you act like they're the most important person in your world at that moment." I don't always do it right, and I can fall victim to my own bad moods, but mostly I want people to be treated like they matter, so I work hard at that.