Me, too. But, for much of my adult life, knowing God, knowing mind, or feeling connected to something grander than myself escaped me, eluded, even evaded me. Then, one day, something happened to me and I made a remarkable discovery. Meister Eckhart was right: “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me.”

So, I write this blog today assuming two things: 1) That God is; and 2) she is knowable. I call God, God but, you might prefer something else as in Being, Transcendence, the Eternal, the Mind, whatever…I have long suspicioned she has many names and aliases.

I’m hardly looking for widespread agreement on these suppositions. Some of you will agree and that’s fine. Others of you won’t and…well…that’s fine, too. If you don’t share these assumptions, you’ll not likely read anything else in this post you agree with either.

What follows in bold text are a few of those things I’ve learned about knowing God or living a Divine life, or being enlightened, or awakened, or, as the Christians love to say, “being saved.”To know God is simply the deep, inner feeling of inexplicable oneness with what is, a kind of wholeness and connectedness with life itself…with God.  I love the way Eckhart Tolle puts it:  ”The word ‘enlightenment’ conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment…it is really just your natural state of felt oneness with Being.”

Here’s what I’ve learned:

Knowing God is the purpose of human existence. It’s why you showed up. It took me half a lifetime of searching before I got this.  I had always thought, and had been taught, there was some “grand purpose” for which I appeared on planet earth…some job nobody else could do…would do…that I was supposed to do. So, I wasted a big chunk of my life looking for what it was.  Perhaps you’ve lived with similar expectations.  When I awakened from this illusion however, I realized there was nothing I was supposed to “do.”  The Divine had done it all. I had shown up to simply enjoy it–that is, to just be.

When you get this, you’re at peace.  The search is over.  The expectations are lifted. Life begins to be genuinely celebrated.  Then, you go on to “do” whatever you wish while enjoying who you are in the process. It is only after you stop looking for what it is that will define who you are…that one big moment or task or recognition that the ego in you craves and so deludes you into believing awaits you just around the “next” corner that you begin to live.

We show up for one reason and one reason only–to walk with God, as did Enoch of old (Gen. 5:24). This is an anthropomorphic way of describing what is the natural experience of deep connectedness with God.  If you read all of Genesis 5, you realize the writer is making the point that Enoch’s contemporaries were born, lived, begat, and died…but, they never got it.  That is, they never quite figured out the simplest, yet the most profound truth about life. It’s all about knowing the Divine, being one with oneself and with what is.

There is something else.  Knowing God takes no effort whatsoever. Effort is the stuff of religion.  Virtually all of them, too. While most religions seem to start out right – that is, with the purpose of helping people know and feel oneness with themselves…with life itself…with the Divine – it isn’t long before they turn this grant from God into some kind of loan that must be repaid with obligations, offerings, obedience, and so forth.

So, with those who’ve left religion for reasons associated with abuse (and those may number in the millions), the real reason most people have left organized religion (but have not left their spiritual longings), is because they’re frankly tired of trying to know a God their religion says requires still more sacrifices…still more duties…still more doctrines to debate over…still more rules to keep…lifestyles to conform to…and so on.

My advice is: don’t make knowing God into a problem…into a performance…into some kind of duty or ritual.  Know that you know God already.  Knowing God is nothing more than the progressive realization of Presence itself, which is why Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Lk 17:21). You could not get any closer to God than you are now. So, know that every thought of God, every impulse is grace itself…IS God.

Give your attention to the inclination you feel to know God. I love what Thomas Merton said, “As soon as people are disposed to being alone with God, they are…no matter where they are:  in the monastery, in the city, in the country…in the woods. At the moment it seems they are somewhere in the middle of their journey, they have actually arrived at the destination already.”

Give your attention to the questions you have about God, too…even the doubts. See where that takes you. Your religion might tell you that you should accept the things you’ve doubted or questioned on the basis of faith alone. But, that’s nonsense.  God does not ask you to ignore your questions or disregard your doubts. Faith does not preclude doubt.  Real faith is learning to live in ambiguity…with paradox…with questions for which there may be no answer.

Your questions might frighten the faithful. But, I assure you that your questions are welcomed by God.  She created you with a mind.  Use it.  As I say in The Enoch Factor, “Doubt is no more disbelief than questions are compromise.” The most faithful followers of any faith have been those whose minds doubted, questioned, and so contemplated the inexplicable mysteries of life.

Meditate more often than you medicate.  It is so unfortunate in our western world but, as Christiane Northup has said, “The only acceptable form of western meditation is hospitalization.” I suppose it is conceivable that life would give you whatever you need–even a hospital bed–to help you look within–which is, of course, the only place where you could ever really find yourself or experience the Divine presence. The rabbis say, “God has but one synagogue…the human heart.”

Although I am a devoted follower of Christ, I regularly practice eastern meditative disciplines.  There is much Christians could learn from the spiritual traditions of the east. Ignore those Christian leaders who warn you against meditative practices or yoga or whatever. They’re only admitting they live more from a place of fear and suspicion than they live by faith. For me, and many other practitioners of the Christian tradition, I have the highest regard for those spiritual traditions that, while different from mine in many ways, have enriched my journey nonetheless.  In fact, the more I learn from other traditions the more devoted I am to my own and the more I realize the similarities in all of them.

While Benedictine monks in the Christian tradition know this, most other Christians do not. But, Jesus himself regularly practiced meditation just as his eastern counterparts. What do you think he was doing for forty days and nights as he wandered in the wilderness? (Lk 4:1-13).  On a hunting expedition?  His temptations grew out of his inner impulses.  And, to deal with them, he had to go within in order to find his way out.

You will have to do the same.  Learn to meditate.  To meditate will mediate God’s presence faster than anything I know. Lao Tzu said, “Where there is silence, one finds the anchor to the universe.”

Know that every experience carries within it an expression of the Divine presence.  I am not suggesting that everything you might encounter in life is sent by God.  But, I am saying that everything that happens in life can be the occasion for connecting deeply with the Divine. When I experienced a profound shift in my spiritual life a few years ago, I did so with the realization that life has a way of unfolding as a series of synchronous events that, seemingly coincidental or even random, are actually conspiring together to bring you into union with the Divine. This understanding has been transforming my reaction to and interaction with every experience of life–the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Make it your daily spiritual practice to bring your awareness into the present moment.  When you are here (and not somewhere else in the mind), you will be at peace…in presence. If you haven’t discovered this already, you will likely learn that one of the greatest challenges to living with a felt sense of oneness to God is disciplining the mind and so training it to the “here and now.”

To be in union with God may take no effort but to know that union and so enjoy its blissful benefits…well…that will likely take a lifetime.  Which is why it’s important to get started now and why the sixteenth century Carmelite monk, Brother Lawrence, called this “practicing the presence of God.” Think of this in the way Ernest Hemingway said to think of yourself: “As an apprentice in a craft where you could never become a master.”

Again, don’t make a problem of this.  Just know that knowing God unfolds naturally as you train yourself to give attention to every thought, impulse, or inclination you feel to know God. Recognize the thoughts.  Acknowledge the inclinations, however faint they may be.  It is here you will find peace, enter presence, and so know God.

The ancient sages said that Enoch walked with God (Gen. 5:24).

If he did, so may you.

I grew up in a very conservative Christian environment. But, if you regularly read my articles, you know I have moved beyond many of those early beliefs, most of which can work as long as you live in a very small, narrow, exclusive, and illusory world.  Which, of course, I did. But, no longer. Given my exposure to other cultures and religious traditions, and at a very young age, I can remember wondering how Christians alone could be right and everyone else wrong. But, I tried for some decades to ignore those inner questions. And, so, I went the way of most Christians. I tried to conform to everyone’s way of thinking and believing, graduated college, went off to seminary, earned a doctorate in theology and pastored for nearly twenty years among Baptist people.  All the while, wondering in my heart, do I really believe all this narrow-minded nonsense I’m expected to preach every Sunday?

You don’t ignore such questions or live an inauthentic life for long. Life will give you whatever you need, or so Eckhart Tolle reminds us, to bring you to a place of awakening.  And, of course, that’s exactly what happened to me. It took the unexpected death of my father and my world crumbled beneath me.  I left the ministry and divorced. And…well…the rest is history, as they say. I wandered and wondered for many years.

Then, one day, I quit struggling, looking, searching and then it happened. I woke up. Might be why I like the Buddha so much. His name means, as you perhaps know, “the awakened one.” In a little way, I think I know what his name means.

Today, I am a devoted follower of Christ.  His way of knowing God is the path I follow. However, I also know that Jesus said, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold…”(John 10:16) meaning, as the Sufi poet said, “There are many gates into the garden; and you need pass through only one.”

So, I prefer to refer to my beliefs today as “perspectives,” as that leaves room for growth and change.  That openness has enabled me to embrace what’s wholesome and good about the diversity one finds even within the Christian community.  In fact, I can say today, “I am Christian, first, as well as a Baptist, a Roman Catholic, a Methodist, a Lutheran, a Presbyterian, an Independent, and so forth.  It also enables me to affirm and embrace the spiritual truth I find in other traditions.  This is what Gandhi meant when he said, “I consider myself a Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Jew…and, so forth.”

If this resonates with your spirit, permit me to make a few recommendations that might help you continue growing in the same direction.

1. Stay open to everything and attached to nothing.  It’s our attachments, in this case to a particular belief system or way of thinking, that creates much of our mental suffering. You can have firm convictions, provided the platform upon which you build your life is made of wood, not cement.

2. In the Christian tradition, St. Paul said, “Work out your own salvation.”  Most Christians misread his meaning. What he’s not saying is that one’s experience of transcendence is manufactured by you or me. Grace is grace because it’s surprising. It shows up the moment you stop struggling to know God, as I try to make clear in my book, The Enoch Factor.

What Paul does mean is that your spiritual growth, in whatever tradition seems right for you, does depend on the attention you give it.  This is the real meaning of the Law of Attraction. There’s so much nonsense written about this fundamental spiritual law. Most of it from very greedy little egos looking for some magical way to make their dreams come true.  The real meaning is that the universe will work with you–it can’t do otherwise–in helping you advance in self-realization and God-realization but…and this is a big but (pardon the pun),–when you make it your intention to awaken and so give your attention to your spiritual awakening.

3. Then, I would suggest you meditate this day, and a little every day, on the rich diversity of spiritual truth experienced and expressed through countless spiritual traditions–not just your own. Sure, affirm your own perspectives and spiritual convictions. But, ask God, or, if you prefer, the universe, to give you an open heart, an open mind, and open hands to embrace all whose perspectives and experiences might be different.

Just a little wisdom today from the myriad of rich and wonderful spiritual traditions – and this from a former Baptist minister.  How’s that for openness?

The following are a few of my perspectives. I make no claim that they’re absolute, so I have no interest in debating them. Further, I do not write this as a polemic or treatise in order to convince you of anything. Saint Paul said, “Work out your own salvation” (Phil.2:12). What follows is my work and works for me. You’ll have to do your own, if you so elect, as the spiritual path is one journey no one can take for you. In Jackson Browne’s song “For a Dancer,” there’s a stanza, the lyrics of which go like this: “Just do the steps that you’ve been shown, by everyone you’ve ever known; Until the dance becomes your very own … In the end, there is one dance you’ll do alone.”

I’m often asked, “Do you still believe in God?” Yes. But, my perspective is this: I can no more prove God exists than anyone else can prove God doesn’t. When people debate God’s existence I get the feeling it’s little egos in either direction — as believers or disbelievers — needlessly engaging in an exercise in futility. You cannot prove or disprove the existence of God. Those who argue for God’s existence do so because they’re secretly afraid he doesn’t. Those who debate against God’s existence do so because they’re secretly afraid she does. So, in the end, what really is the point? Raised as I was to believe in God, I could no more not believe than I could stop the sun from shining or the earth from spinning on its axis.

I’ve tried, too. I finally concluded, however, I suspect I’m hotwired to believe. Written into my DNA perhaps. Who knows? This much I do know: When I contemplate, and then try to articulate, what happened to me one Sunday afternoon — what I’ve called “the Enoch factor” in the elibook by that name — I’m at a loss to explain what happened in me. For all practical purposes, it changed virtually everything in my life: how I feel about myself, others — and particularly those I would have once labeled enemies — and this world. What Romaine Rolland called “the oceanic feeling” descriptively expresses my experience. So, I think it’s safe to say I’m addicted to God.

I call God, God. But I suspect he has as many names as she does aliases. Even among monotheistic religions — Islam, Judaism and Christianity — there are countless names for God, even more among eastern religions. So the question is: Who’s right? My perspective is, they all are. For me, however, the name “God” works just fine.

Beyond this, however, I hesitate to say much more. In fact, anything more I do say, only diminishes this ineffable reality. How do you name what really cannot be named, as Lao Tzu put it? How could anymore presume to explain what’s really inexplicable? I think one of the biggest problems in much of Christianity today is this unfortunate notion that Christians alone know or understand God. I used to think this, but my perspective today is slightly different. My suspicion is, those who think they know God most likely do not.

“What do you believe about Jesus?” is perhaps the second most common question I’m asked. To me, Jesus was a human being, as much flesh and blood, mind and emotions as I am. What distinguished him is that he lived, as did Buddha before him and Muhammad after him, at the highest level of self-realization, which really means God-realization or you might say Divine consciousness. But bear in mind, even these are just words, limiting and inadequate in conveying a dimension of living that no word, explanation or concept could ever capture.

A self-actualized life is a mystery. It is so precisely because it is so rare. To be fully human, as well as fully divine, which means the self is completely free of its-self, is a lifelong, spiritual endeavor. In my estimation, this is why Jesus said, “Follow me.” He gave us a simple invitation to be sure. But as any serious follower knows, it takes the discipline of a lifelong pursuit to actualize.

Jesus lived so connected to himself — with Mystery itself — it wasn’t long before people regarded him as Divine, as God-Incarnate. In that way, they revered or worshipped him, even if they did not always follow him. I still regard Jesus as Divine. But, I do not in the same way I did before. For example, there was a time when I viewed Jesus, and only Jesus, as capable of being divine, or living free of self-interest or self-obsession, and in oneness and unity with Source itself. Today, however, I feel I have the capacity to live a divine life, too, just like everyone else. A divine life is one lived in oneness with all. What else could it be?

When you live at this level of consciousness, there is no separation between you and another — or between you and God. This is why Jesus said, “The things you have seen me accomplish, greater things you will do” (John 14:12). His own prayer was that the oneness he knew with God would be a reality shared by his followers as well. He prayed, “…that they may be one as we are one” (John 17:11). I love the way Meister Eckhart, the Catholic mystic, described this unity: “The eye through which I see God (or anyone else) is the same eye through which God sees me.” To live in this way could only ever result in a very different world. How could it not?

For years, I thought, because I was taught, that when Saint John said, “…God gave his only begotten Son…” (John 3:16), he meant Jesus was God’s one-and-only son. Text critics of scripture will tell you that this might be the meaning John wished to convey. If they are honest critics, however, they will also tell you it is equally possible Saint John was merely noting the “uniqueness” of Jesus. I think this is what he meant. There is no question that Jesus lived a unique life — it’s how he treated others, how he willingly laid down his life in sacrificial love for others and how he survived death. But that does not necessarily mean he was God’s only son, or daughter, with the capacity to live a selfless, self-giving life. Otherwise, why would Jesus have invited people to follow him?

Somewhere in this conversation, I usually hear a sigh of disgust from my very conservative Christian friends (a sigh that I would have shared in unison a few years ago myself). They will press, “But don’t you believe Jesus is the only way to God?” This is the deal-breaker for many Christians. Even for those who regard themselves as tolerant of other beliefs, even other religions, still regard Jesus as the only way to God. In fact, they will vehemently argue that Jesus himself claimed that he was: “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6).

For most of my adult life, I tried to accept this — that “believing in Jesus” was not only the only way to God, but the only way to go to heaven when you die. Today, however, I have a different perspective. It revolves around the word “believe.” Though this is a somewhat small word, its misuse has caused great misunderstanding among Christians.

What does it mean to believe in Jesus? When Jesus invited people to follow him or to “believe in him,” he was inviting people to trust that what he said, as well as how he lived, would result when emulated in a divine life — one connected as deeply with the Father as he was. The one condition was this: you had to believe in him enough to be willing to follow him. But isn’t it a whole lot easier to believe in Jesus than it is to actually follow him? Indeed! This explains how the church can be full of believers in Jesus, but perhaps only a few real followers of Jesus. And, not surprisingly, Jesus predicted this is the way it would be: “The way is broad that leads to destruction and many will go that way. The way is narrow that leads to life and few there will be that find it” (Matt.7:21). Maybe it’s just me, but a “few” does not sound like “many.”

What you might not realize is that to “believe in Jesus” is to have confidence enough in what he said and taught to make it your own spiritual practice — daily. It is much easier to worship Jesus than it is to walk after him. This too, explains, for example, how the church can be full of people who for all practical purposes ignore the teachings of Jesus such as this one, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). It seems to me that the church is full of people who are far more interested in receiving than in giving. Ask any church treasurer.

But this is only one example. There are many, and in part three of this series, I’ll address several of the sayings attributed to Jesus and how the church almost universally ignores these teachings. Yet, the church claims to follow Jesus. But isn’t there a canyon of difference between “believing in Jesus” and in following him? Doesn’t the former result in dogmas, doctrines and debates about Jesus, as well as division around who he was? Of course, it does. And anyone with even a cursory sense of history will know that the story of the Christian church has been, and continues to be, one of conflict, confusion, even corruption.

The latter, however — “following Jesus” — could only ever result in a selfless, self-giving and transformational life, one lived after the example of Jesus himself, whose divine life positively impacted this world for good.

Since we have no verb in English for the Greek word translated as “faith,” the translators of scripture used the word “believe.” Over time, its use or, more accurately, its misuse has resulted in the misguided notion that believing in Jesus means believing certain beliefs about Jesus. So what we have today are more than 20,000 different Christian groups and denominations, each with a catalogue of “beliefs” about Jesus, the Bible and a host of other religious doctrines and dogmas. Ask any one of these groups and you’ll quickly discover that each believes its beliefs are a little more “right” than the beliefs of 19,999 others. The inevitable consequence of this kind of madness is division, which leads to more division and then more division still.

So when Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of the Father…” (Matt. 7:21), I suspect he was driving home the point that it is infinitely more important how you live than what you believe. Beliefs change no one. Believing in Jesus, however, enough to stake your life on his teachings, on how he thought and the way he lived, well, that willradically change you. And it will change your world.

In Zen Buddhism, there is this statement: “The finger that points to the moon is not the moon.” You can spend your life, if you so choose, clinging to the finger of your beliefs — debating, defending and developing an endless array of doctrines around the identity of Jesus. As for me, it is my desire to reach the moon of my spiritual potential. I wish to think like Jesus might have thought — the Buddha, too, as well as Lao Tzu and other spiritual masters — and to practice the way Jesus treated himself and those around him. In short, I wish to answer his invitation: “Follow Me.”

Isn’t that all he really asks of me and of anyone who wishes to believe in him?

I realize how absurd this must sound, like something out of the Twilight Zone. And, I suppose, for that very reason, I said nothing about it for years.  But, the presence was so unmistakable that I care no longer what others may think of me when they hear me talk about it.  I must tell this story.  Maya Angelou has this saying, “There’s no greater agony that bearing an untold story inside of you.”  Well, I bore mine for many years.  But, the day finally came when I decided I had to share it.

I first heard of Enoch – this ancient spiritual teacher out of Jewish folklore and mythology – when I was in seminary doing graduate work. I describe all of this in the book so it isn’t necessary to go into the details here.  But, one of my professors, a Jewish scholar himself, spent an entire class period introducing us to Enoch.

Jewish historians remember Enoch in much the same way Easterners remember their spiritual avatars – as one of those rare human souls who attained a spiritual consciousness, or awareness, that seems to escape virtually everyone else.  For example, Enoch is said to have “walked with God.”  Although I cannot be certain of this, I suspect that must mean the same thing as “enlightenment” in Buddhism, what New Agers might describe as the “God-realized life,” or Christians would describe as a person who had experienced an “epiphany.”

I was fascinated by Enoch but, as life does to all of us, I soon laid aside my interest in him and moved on to more pressing matters.  That is, until the day my father died.  Not only did the story of Enoch come back to me, but I felt his presence in the ICU room with me. During that undeniable sensation, all of the pain and sadness I was feeling about my father dying of a stroke lifted.  There, in the presence of death, was this beautiful feeling of stillness…a kind of OK-ness…of peace both in me and around me.

I knew right then and there that one day I would write about this experience.  I did not know when that would be, or what I would say, or even why I would say it.  I only knew I would someday tell the story.  Ten years or so later, I did.  I began writing and, within a span of twenty months, I had given birth to The Enoch Factor: The Sacred Art of Knowing God.