Increase My God Consciousness

God to be God, God has to be more than just aware of our presence. Hence those immersed in God tell us that God knows us very intimately.

This is the basic message of the Bible too, from which we learn that God knows the exact number of hair on our head: “And even the hairs of your head are all counted” (Matthew 10:30). Elsewhere in the Bible we learn God has counted every bone that has been used to knit us together (Psalm 139:13-15). In that same place we learn that God also has all our days with all the happenings in his book (Psalm 139:16). In short, according to Isaiah the prophet, God has inscribed us on his palms (Isaiah 49:16).

All this is said to make me less anxious and worrisome about my present and the future. Hence I am encouraged not to be afraid. And I am reminded that I am of “more value than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:31).

The Bible is clear about God’s knowledge of all happenings, including that which happens to an insignificant sparrow. The Contemporary English Version of the Bible poetically proclaims, “Aren’t two sparrows sold for only a penny? But your Father knows when any one of them falls to the ground (Matthew 10:29).

These are said that I may put aside all anxiety by trusting in the providence of God. As my worry decrease my trust in God will grow. I trust in God not only for receiving my physical nourishment but also for the receiving of my spiritual guidance that I may have the right perspectives to see within and around me!

Even in adverse circumstances, the Bible encourages me to trust in the providence of God. Bible does not say there will be no adverse circumstances to live through. My faith in God, I know for sure, does not remove such “thorns” and put me on the “bed of roses”. But even when I “walk through the valley of death”, now I am learning, that I need not fear, or drown in anxiety.

Hagar, Abraham’s maidservant, the Egyptian slave, or the Egyptian princess according to the Islamic sources, did walk through, the “valley of death”. In that story Hagar after walking in the desert and she had run out of water was afraid that her little son Ishmael would die of thirst. She was utterly powerless to provide for her helpless son. Hence “Hagar put her son under a bush. Then she sat down a long way off, because she could not bear to watch him die. And she cried bitterly (Genesis 21:15f)”.

That story, however, has a happy ending! God heard her cries, or heard Ishmael’s cries and provided her with a “well” from where she drew water for her son and continued the journey. Muslims believe that the well in Mecca near the sacred Mosque of Kaba is that well from which Hagar drew water for her son Ishmael and it is still known as Zam Zam well. That well, we are informed, never dries!

As the intensity of my suffering increases, I learn from the story above, God’s nearness and providence too will increase. And this happens almost always in subtle ways that I often fail to recognize the nearness and providence that saves me.

I, like many others today, look for substantial and tangible evidence for God’s nearness and providence before I could establish trust in God. There are two very tangible boxes in my home that provide for me very quickly and mould me by dictating details! Here I refer to the television and the refrigerator that largely decrease my sense of dependence on God! These two provide me with tangible and substantial providence!

But God does not do that way! God’s ways are almost always subtle. God let Hagar see the well (Genesis 21:19). To see God enabling me to see I must increase my God consciousness. Deepak Chopra, one of the best selling authors on matters regarding spirituality and wellness, makes the same point when argues that this knowledge comes only by a “serious, diligent seeking – by opening a path to God-consciousness” (The Third Jesus, 2008, p. 76). For it is only through that God consciousness I see that nearness and providence of God.

I need to take time to reflect on my journey and the events on that path to be able to capture the nearness and providence of God in my life! Without that time and inclination to think I will miss the presence of God and his angels! So I pray to God daily: Help me to increase my God-consciousness, enabling me to multiply in my self that diligent seeking of your ways in my life.

Living in the Presence of the Unseen is Life!

There are many stories, both ancient and modern, reminding me that I am created, liberated, and guided continuously towards one single end of “living in the presence of the unseen”, enjoying the splendour of the unseen light and life. These lessons are an affirmation that all around me, and deep within me is a living and an exuberant presence that some conveniently call, God. In these poems I run into a strange “absence of death” in a world of decay.

Many men and women have told me that in Jesus of Nazareth they have found “the life” that cannot be bound by the chains of “death and darkness”. And that life, Jesus, cannot be found among the “dead”, or in “empty spaces”, but rather ought to be discovered among the “living people”.

Angels too announce, repeatedly, that Jesus should not be sought in empty tombs. But Jesus goes, continuously, ahead of me “to Galilee” (Matthew 28:7). Galilee in that ancient text is a symbol of “busy human life”. Matthew, that old tax collector, is very explicit in recording this. Matthew’s point is, if the women and men want to see the “life that cannot be bound by the chains of death and darkness” then they must go to Galilee, the cosmopolitan city, and a place of bubbling human activity (Matthew 28:7).

From Matthew I learn, to encounter the “Living Christ, the Ultimate, the Beyond”, I must go to villages, towns, and cities where men, women, and children are struggling in pain. It is there I will find that life and that life in abundance. Then, my business now, is to remind myself to go out there without seeking an ivory tower!

In Matthew’s story of a new and an authentic abundant life he reveals, brilliantly, both what I possess and what I lack! In that, miles and miles away from that scene Matthew depicts, in a province of black gold, an affluent North American county, I share a similar mental state with those two Palestinian women, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (Matthew 28:1) of different colour, class, and creed!

So, what did these two women have, and failed to have? They had plenty of anxiety. “Who will roll away the stone for us”. These two women were also fretting and sweating the small stuff. They “bought spices, so that they might anoint him” (Mark 16:1) – the dead Jesus. They had plenty of fear. And what did these two women lack? They lacked hope!

They lacked hope because they were ignorant! They were ignorant because they failed to hear “when the word was spoken”! They failed to hear because they did not listen! These two women did not listen, on the first instance, when they were told “the life that gives life, or the light that enlightens every heart” must “undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31) before it gives “life that cannot be bound by the chains of death and darkness”! The same was repeated several times. Mark records this in 9:31 and 10:33 also.

Men and women, then, didn’t listen! People – both the writer and the readers today too – don’t listen! Or, to be very precise, people listen very selectively. Luke, Mark’s colleague, actually reveals the selective listening of these women when he says: “Remember how he told you he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again” (Luke 24:6f).

People, including my self, do not see, and do not hear. Or, if they hear, or see, they see and hear selectively, and certainly not “the events and activities” of the Unseen; seeing the unseen! That is the fundamental cause for my “anxiety and fear”!

However, I am not in a hopeless situation! Neither were those women. There is always an angel, sometimes a spiritual director, to bring, once again, that reminder. This was in the case of those two women, very early at the tomb looking for the living among the dead! It is not different to me. I too have another, and another, and yet another opportunity while I keep looking for the “living” among the dead “rituals of religions and deteriorating structures of the ecclesia”! But, if I keep rejecting the reminders it will be only to my own peril.

Seeing the unseen is a skill that I must, then, cultivate. Culturing that in my mind is what I call spirituality that is spontaneous like a great rain that rains to wash all muck away. But the unseen always manifests in what I, in pain, see in pain and struggling of the very ordinary men and women. And when my heart puts great effort to be in solidarity with those in pain then, I am spiritual, and I see the unseen, the purpose of my being here and now.