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 wasn’t expecting much.  I got to the first scene, however–the one where the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, cries out to God in prayer–and I was hooked. In a marriage that isn’t working, Gilbert is an emotional train wreck waiting to happen. Since her life makes no sense to her whatsoever, she does what many of us have done when we can’t think of what else to do–she prays.

“Hello, God.  How are you? I’m Liz. It’s nice to meet you…I’m sorry to bother you so late at night…but I’m in serious trouble…I’m not an expert at praying, as you know. But can you please help me?…I don’t know what to do. Please tell me what to do.”

Who hasn’t prayed this prayer?

It’s appeal is in its familiarity. But, what hooked me most is the fact that this first prayer, or cry, to God, isn’t Gilbert’s last, as it is with many in circumstances equally as troubling. Rather, it is the first of many prayers she offers to God–prayers that evolve into an on-going conversation in a year-long journey through Italy, India, and Indonesia.  Each prayer is but the next step she takes in the search for herself and a life that matters.  As she journeys and converses, the consequence is self-discovery, self-acceptance, and an awareness of the Sacred presence.

Not a bad spiritual practice, if you ask me.

If a spiritual life is really about learning to accept yourself, learning to live compassionately, and becoming so aware of the Sacred presence within you that you converse with this Presence the way two friends would sharing a fine wine in a corner cafe, then Eat, Pray, Love could be a guide to any seeker after a sacred life.

Gilbert prays the way Jesus prayed.  The Buddha, too.

So, what kind of praying is this?

Silence. Stillness. Some call it meditation — the kind of praying Jesus instructed his followers to practice (Matt. 6:6).  It’s also the only kind of praying we ever see Jesus doing (Matt. 14:23; 26:36ff).  Yet, strangely, go into almost any church, synagogue, or temple today and you’ll hear plenty of public prayers (in spite of Jesus’ discouragement against it – Matt. 5:5); but, little or no provision for silence, stillness, or meditation. Most worship is distinguished by its chaos — loud music, continuous chatter, lots of substance but little sustenance.

With very few exceptions, religious leaders almost universally overlook this kind of prayer and it is likely because they know little about it themselves. It is this kind of praying, however–and perhaps only this kind of praying–that results in self-awareness and Divine consciousness. The Buddha said, “He who meditates attentively will attain abundant joy.”

Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is within you” (Lk.10:27). If that’s true, then to know yourself, as well as to know God, you must make it your spiritual practice to go within. The rabbis say, “God has but one tabernacle–the heart.” It is there, in the secret place (what Jesus likened to a “room” – Matt. 6:6) that you practice slowing down the mind, (that virtual stream of thought-making) and to relax and rest in the Sacred presence.  The psalmist put it like this, “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10).

“Is it easy to learn to pray this way?”

Ask Liz. If you make this your spiritual practice however, the discoveries will mirror those made by Elizabeth Gilbert and will be equally remarkable.

Then, if you ever visit Italy, India, or Indonesia, you’ll do so for different reasons.

Dr. Steve McSwain is the author of The Enoch Factor: The Sacred Art of Knowing God (2010, Smyth & Hewlys). For more information, please visit www.stevemcswain.com.

For an interview or to receive a review copy, contact Tolly Moseley at Tolly@prbythebook.com or (512) 501-4399 x708. Visit us at www.prbythebook.com or www.twitter.com/prbythebook

You’d have thought I just made off with the Mona Lisa from the Louvre.

I promised to protect it, to handle it with as much care as a paleographer would an ancient text—no bending of the edges, no underlining, circling, or writing in the margins—things I typically do with my own books.

Negotiations failed, however. “Put it back,” she ordered, “and get your own.”

So, I did. Wasn’t expecting much, either. “What could Eat, Pray, Love contain,” I asked myself, “that would cause her to guard it like it was the Holy Grail?”

I barely arrived at the first scene, however–the one where Gilbert is sleepless, sprawled across a cold bathroom floor at 2AM–and I was hooked. In a failed marriage, she cries out to God, the first of many conversations the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, has with God.  From there, she acts as a guide on a journey the two of you take through Italy, then India and Indonesia, in search of her soul, in search of a life that matters. There’s no pretense with Gilbert, which is why I like her. You’re invited to peer into her soul, and your own as well.

Sitting in a corner cafe; sipping the finest wine made of the Sangiovese grape; sharing secrets and disappointments, readers feel like they’re best friends with Gilbert. That’s because it’s easy to believe in her. When she describes her marital failings, not those of her spouse, she’s brutally transparent. When she talks about her love affair with David, even before her own divorce is final, she hides nothing. It is this honesty that makes what she says about faith, about God, just as believable.

In an era of religious dishonesty, corruption, and cover-up, where the morning news is as likely to reveal the latest religious scandal as it does the political or economic ones, it is understandable why westerners are weary of the dishonesty in much of organized religion today.

Weary enough to leave, that is. According to the American Religious Survey, thirty-four million Americans  want nothing to do with religion, a system that has repeatedly demonstrated a far greater interest in saving itself than in saving the world.

Still, there are many spiritual seekers. All they really want is an uncomplicated relationship with Transcendence. What you call God is irrelevant to them. So are the doctrines and distinctions that divide instead of unite people.

What’s most amazing is that religious leaders still don’t get it. Instead of softening their rhetoric, their endless dogmas, doctrines, and distinctions, they become more fixed, rigid, separated and exclusivist. Meanwhile, scores are leaving this insanity, perhaps to protect what little remains.  In exchange, they read Eat, Pray, Love, where insanity meets Sanity, where respect and inclusiveness are actually practiced, where they can relax, take off their shoes, enjoy themselves, others, and God.

That’s why this book, now a major motion picture, is so popular. In the end, it matters not whose religion is right, especially if it doesn’t guide you to live in this world, or with yourself, or help you to get along with others.

It is away from this kind of religious madness that seekers of the Sacred are walking.  Today, their paths are taking them toward something real, toward that which connects them to others and to God, and away from the labels and differences that have divided people for eons.  To many, Gilbert and writers like her have become unique spiritual gurus on this path toward what I think of as “the sacred art of knowing God.”

Jesus said, “The way to life is narrow…and few there will be who find it.” If that’s true, Eat, Pray, Love is the quintessential promise that seekers of the Sacred will find the narrow way–even though it’s off the beaten path.

How else would you explain the phenomenal success of Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love (soon a major motion picture), or the writings of the Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, or others like them? Just because people are fed up with organized religion doesn’t mean their appetite for spiritual things has been swallowed up, too.

I know because I was one of these millions who dropped out of active involvement in organized religion.  But, unlike the majority of the other 33,999,999 dropouts, I was a religious leader when I did.

I grew up in the church, the son of a Southern Baptist minister.  When I graduated from college, I went to seminary and, after several years of study, I began my career as a professional minister.  It wasn’t long however, before I discovered the church was more lost than the world it was trying to save.

Go into many churches today and, instead of finding an institution interested in saving the world, what you may find is an institution vastly more interested in saving itself.  For example, people go to church to find God.  Instead of finding God, however, followers are often saddled with a catalogue of “do’s” and “don’ts” as onerous as the US tax code.  They are told what to think, how to believe, as well as how they’re supposed to live.

In many places, the church is still the most segregated place in America.  Where I grew up, some forty or so years ago, many of my neighbors attended the Baptist church my father served. That is, if they were white Baptists; the black Baptists had a church of their own. Or, they attended one of the other three, mostly segregated churches that occupied one of the four-corners of Main Street.  Today, however, your neighbor is just as likely to be black as white, or Muslim as Christian.  Maybe people are leaving  the church because they’d prefer to live in the real world—the de-segregated one.

Then, there are those church leaders who seem obsessed with having the biggest church, the largest crowds and the most expensive campuses.   While 40,000,000 people died of starvation in the last decade, churches spent $10,000,000,000 (that’s ten billion) on campuses.

Perhaps some churchgoers departed because they’d rather their charity actually make a difference in the world.

If you went to church looking for relief from the stress and burdens of living, you might have found more of the same, only dressed as beliefs and dogmas, rules and expectations  Then, there’s the debating, disagreement, and division that goes on between churches, as well as between people in the same church. I call it the “We’re right! You’re Wrong!” syndrome.  Each group insisting their beliefs are right which, by implication means, everyone else’s beliefs are wrong.  “We’re in; you’re out!” “We’re the chosen ones; you’re not!”  Maybe those who came looking for some sanity in life are leaving the church to preserve what little remains.

What about the seemingly endless clergy scandals? It may be several years yet, before we know the full impact of this demonic debacle.  I suspect scores of people are just plain fed up with an institution that “would condemn gays and lesbians for coming out of their closets,” as someone characterized it, “while hiding clergy pedophiles in its own.”

Some fifteen or so years ago, I, like millions of others, dropped out of active involvement in the church.  Soon thereafter, I began wondering where to go to find God.   For a few years, I went nowhere.  I just wandered around in a kind of spiritual wilderness.  Then, one Sunday afternoon, completely unexpected as well as outside the church, I had a deeply profound spiritual awakening. I even describe it in my book, The Enoch Factor.

Among the many realizations to which I awakened, was this:“You don’t have to go to church to know God.”  For reasons too obvious to mention, this isn’t the kind of message the church, or any religion, wants spread around.  But, it’s true nonetheless.  There is no religion, not even the Christian religion, holding the title deed to God.  God’s grace is not limited to a select few.  The moment any religion believes it is, you can be sure that religion knows nothing of God.

If there is anything Jesus, and the Buddha, made abundantly clear it is that the Wind blows where it wills.  You can hear it, see its effects, as well as feel its power, but you could never contain it.  In other words, the moment I stopped trying to find God, God found me.  I love the way Deepak Chopra once framed it. “God is not difficult to find; God is impossible to ignore.”

Even the title to this article–Finding God after Religion—seems to imply there’s something you must “do” to know God.  But, the real truth is this: there is nothing you need to do to know God. You know God already.  The mistake virtually all religions make, including Christianity, is to confuse beliefs for faith and, as a consequence, condition people to think there are things they must do, duties they must perform, etc., for God to be pleased and her presence to be known.

Finding God after religion? Remember the following:  In eastern thought, there’s something called “the law of least effort,” or “do less and accomplish more.”  If you will give up the “doing,” and, instead, just enjoy “being” I think you’ll make a great discovery.  The psalmist said, “Be still and know…”  In my own experience, I have found when I’m present (and that’s my spiritual practice) I’m immediately in Presence, the real and sacred sanctuary of God.

What more would you want?  What more would religion ever give you?

Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is within you.” In spite of this rather clear clue as to where to look to find God, many mistake their inner feelings of discontent, restlessness, or desire for happiness and fulfillment as an indicator they need to do something.  Our culture’s answer to this inner dilemma is to find the right career. Or, to find and fall in love with the right partner.  But even these events – as meaningful as they may be – fail to grant anything more than a temporary, impermanent peace.

Now, what happens in most religions, Christianity notwithstanding, is that people go to church looking for God, thinking she might be found there.  And, the church perpetrates, as well as perpetuates, the illusion that God can be.  How so?  By suggesting to people, “We have the answer. We alone have the answer. What we believe is right or, at the least, a little more right than anyone else believes.  So, attend our church, believe as we believe, think as we think, do as we do, live as we live and, of course, give us your money, and all will be well with your soul.”

But it isn’t so. Over time, this nonsense has created in people the expectation that, if they’ll do all these things, they’ll find God.  Instead of helping to know God, however, these expectations, rules, dogmas, doctrines, and beliefs have sucked the spiritual life right out of their souls.  The church too frequently confuses beliefs for faith and, in fundamentalist churches, the beliefs are then imposed on believing and unbelieving people alike. In fact, that would be a pretty accurate definition of religious fundamentalism – the confusion of beliefs for faith and imposing those beliefs on others.  That’s what’s happening today in both Islam and in Christianity – the difference is only the degree with which the imposition occurs.

The American Religious Survey tells us that as many as 34 million Americans today have left organized reIigion.  For the majority of these, it is the Christian religion they’re leaving or, more accurately, the church’s dysfunctional version of Christianity that they are leaving.

And, that’s the point.  People can leave the church—they have, they are, and more will, as long as the dysfunction and insanity I’m describing goes on. What people cannot leave, however, is their inner feeling of discontent, emptiness, or the longing to cultivate a deep spiritual union with the Divine.  So, in recent years, as westerners have had greater exposure to eastern religions, many have turned to other religions. What many of these seekers do not know is this:  the dysfunction they met and left in the western church is the same sort of madness they will likely find in many other religions as well.

So, it is important to understand, I did not write this book as a disgruntled former minister looking to attack either Christianity or the church. I wrote this book to tell people what took me half a lifetime to figure out.  There has only ever been one place you will go to find the deepest desires of your heart fulfilled – and that is within yourself.  That’s what Jesus meant when he said, “The kingdom is within you.”   The Buddha said this, too.  Even the Jewish rabbis have a saying that goes, “God has but one synagogue – the human heart.”  I wrote this book, The Enoch Factor to show people where to look—the human heart—to find what they’re looking for.

You were born to walk with God, so why would you walk alone?

Enoch is the human archetype of the sacred art of knowing God. History records the myths and legends of persons who lived at a level of God-consciousness never realized by the majority of their contemporaries. A few of them are

Buddha, Abraham, Lao Tzu, Moses, Confucius, Mary the mother of Jesus, Saint Paul, Muhammad, St. Francis of Assisi, and, more recently,Mohandas Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and the Dalai Lama. There are many, many others, of course. Jesus lived at this level, too. In fact, most Christians believe Jesus embodied the Divine presence in his earthly life more completely than any other person who has ever lived.

Throughout history, the people who seemed to have arrived at an advanced level of spiritual awareness were known by specific names. Jews called them tzadikim, Hindus called them avatars, and Christians called them saints.

Labels are unimportant, however. What is more important is that they were rare souls indeed. Enoch was one of these rare souls, too, although not as widely known. Of him, it was said, “Enoch walked with God” (Gen 5:22). Only one other person in the sacred record of Jewish history was said to have reached this level of Divine consciousness. That was Noah (Gen 6:9). The words “walk with God” are an anthropomorphic way of describing closeness, awareness, knowing-ness, and intimacy. Most likely, the words “walking with God” and “knowing God” mean the same thing.

So, what does walking with God, or knowing God, really mean? And, how is this possible?

To know God, or walk with her, means to live your life in the awareness of an indescribable and eternal presence that is within you and all around you, beneath you but also beyond you. It is personal and yet mysterious, real but also surreal. You can know this presence but also not know it. You can experience God, but you will never explain God. When you live your life in union with God, however, you will be at peace with yourself and with the world. You will know joy, too, as well as security and a kind of fearlessness in life. There will be an inner sense that everything is as it’s supposed to be. Anxiety, stress, discontent, and even boredom all but disappear from your life. It is truly remarkable, what the Russian novelist Romain Rolland called, “the oceanic feeling.”

How can one know God? Walk with a consciousness of the Eternal Presence?

1. First, to enjoy an extraordinary life of intimacy with God, you must know that it does not happen by accident. It takes practice to live a God-realized life. “God is not difficult to find,” said Deepak Chopra in Why is God Laughing, “God is impossible to ignore.” And, he is right. But, the more complete picture is, most people go through much of their lives missing God almost all the time. Why? They do not make it their practice to know God. This is why the Carmelite monk, Brother Lawrence, as long ago as the seventeeth century, called the spiritual life “Practicing the presence of God.”

2. Second, don’t misunderstand me. Knowing God takes practice but not practice in the same sense as one would practice improving his or her golf swing by hitting a bucket full of balls at a driving range. There is no effort associated with the kind of practice I’m describing. It’s more like an awareness. When you become aware of your desire to know God, to feel her presence, and so forth, the practice is in giving your attention to that awareness. The more you do–and that’s the meaning of “practice”–the more aware you’ll become of God’s ineffable Presence. I love the way Thomas Merton put it. He was the Trappist Monk who spent much of his adult life at the Abbey of Gethsemane, not more than a few miles from where this article is being written. He said, “As soon as a man is disposed to being alone with God, he is alone with God, no matter where he is: in the country, the monastery, in the woods, in the city…At that moment he sees that though it seems he is in the middle of his journey, he has arrived at his destination already.” Words do not get more beautiful than that.

3. Third, along these same lines, remember that there’s a chasm of difference between intimacy and interaction. With the widespread phenomenon associated with text messaging, e-mail, and cell phones, a visitor from another planet might get the idea that, since humans are always connecting and interacting with each other, they must be friendly toward one another, even intimate and caring. It would not take him long however, to realize that his first impression was an illusion.

Although virtually everyone is endlessly talking and texting, the irony is that we may be the most disconnected, discontented, and dysfunctional generation on record. There is division in almost every family-yours, mine, and the families we know-as well as conflict in relationships both at school and at work. Furthermore, there is division between races, religions, cultures, and nations. People are more divided than perhaps at any other time in the history of the human race.

Conversation is no more communication than sex is intimacy. Communication and intimacy require attention–your attention. In other words, just to boast of praying much doesn’t mean you’re enjoying intimacy with God.  A genuine connectedness to Source goes much deeper than words.  In its purest sense, the Law of Attraction teaches–that to which you give your attention will expand. In other words, if you’ll simply give more of your attention to your spiritual life, your spiritual connectedness to the Presence of God will expand. And, it will so naturally. That is to say, with no effort on your part. That’s all it takes.

A. Your intention to be in union and intimacy with God.

B. And, your attention to those moments when you are aware of God or just have a thought about God.

Make this your spiritual practice and see what happens. This is how “Enoch walked with God.” It’s how we walk with God, too.  So, enjoy the journey.

If you’d like to explore how to walk with God and a host of other questions related to the spiritual life, I’d like to invite you to read the book, The Enoch Factor: The Sacred Art of Knowing God. In it, I share many of the things I’ve learned about this and other important matters pertaining to spirituality. In fact, I’d be happy to send you a complimentary chapter of the book in pdf format, for free. Just send me an email and I’ll shoot you a chapter from The Enoch Factor. Email: steve@stevemcswain.com.

It is this kind of erroneous conditioning that leads virtually everyone to spend an inordinate amount of time looking for the “right” job, or career, or calling. While most people will eventually choose a career that rewards them with some measure of satisfaction, the fact is, no one ever finds a job or a calling that meets their deepest longing for fulfillment, joy, and happiness.

Why? It is because your deepest desires for happiness could only ever be the consequence of something altogether different.

So, what is that “something that is altogether different?” What will reward me with the deepest satisfaction, happiness, fulfillment, and joy in life?

In the book, The Enoch Factor: The Sacred Art of Knowing God, I ask a question that both opens and closes the book. In that one question is the answer to this question regarding our deepest desires. “You were born to walk with God, so why would you walk alone?” In between this question are 250-plus pages of a cornucopia of sacred insights into the mysteries of life’s purpose or meaning. Although I am a Christian by faith, I make no apology when I draw on the spiritual teachings from a variety of religious traditions, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and so forth. In all of these religions, you find the central, overriding truth that your primary purpose in life–that is, the real meaning of human existence–is to both know and to enjoy intimacy with the Creator, no matter how you may understand or conceptualize this Transcendence. As it was with Enoch, the mythic mystic out of Jewish folklore, “You are born to walk with God; so why would you walk alone?”

“All religions,” said the Hindu yogi, Parmahansa Yogananda, “serve the purpose of reuniting the soul with God.” Saint Augustine shared something of the same essential truth: “Our hearts are restless until they find rest in God.” What most religious people forget, especially Christians in the western world, and what our culture does not know and so fails to teach, is that there could only ever be one real purpose to human existence–one real meaning for your presence on planet earth–and that is to “know thyself,” as Socrates put it. When you know yourself, you’ve met your Source, which is why the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart said, “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me.”

How is this so? Since you were created in the imago dei, the image of God, you are part of God. That means, the Source out of which you emerge is the same Source to which you will return. What made Jesus, and other spiritual avatars like him so unusual–people like the Buddha, Muhammad, Enoch, Mary, the mother of Jesus, and so on, is not that they were more divine than anyone else but that they lived at a level of God-realization few people ever experience. And yet, all of these enlightened souls invite their followers to live as they lived. Why would they invite people live as they lived if it was not possible to do so? That’s precisely the point. They would not have. However, because they lived so remarkably in touch with self and Source, so may we.

I grew up being taught by well-meaning, but misguided parents and other Christian people, that there was a “calling” I was to both discern and then pursue in life and, if I did, I would be rewarded with a happy, fulfilling life. In the end, however, that promise never materialized. What I now know is that there is no special vocation you’re supposed to find and pursue, as in a career or calling; but, instead, your real vocation is simply, to know God. When you do, there is joy unspeakable and there is inexplicable satisfaction throughout life.

The philosopher Teilhard de Chardin once said that we are spiritual beings having a temporary human experience. If that is true, when you reconnect with your spiritual self (or, Source), you make the remarkable discovery that what you do professionally is secondary to who you are. Your real identity could never be what you do but only ever who you are. And, therein lies the difference. Whether you wash windows, drive a cab, work on a farmer, serve tables in a restaurant, or act as the President and CEO of a Fortune 500 company, in the final analysis, none of these professions are either all that important or significant. They’re just roles we temporarily fill and are distinguished by their similar transitory nature. None of them, no what significance our culture may give to them, could ever reward you with what you either want or need in life, except in some relative, temporary sense.

So then, your real purpose is to walk with God. And, because this is so, then the second part of that question becomes all the more significant. Since our purpose is to walk with God, “Why would anyone walk alone?”

Well, the fact is, no one chooses to walk alone, yet most people do. They do precisely because they don’t know how to walk with God. But, that’ll have to be the subject of another blog.

Clever poem, but what is he talking about? The ego, of course. It is the chief culprit in all human unhappiness. Yet, most people live and die with this little inner character running their lives. They neither know him nor recognize his presence. If they did, they would take the necessary steps to bring an end to it.

What is ego? It is your “social self,” as Martha Beck has labeled it. It is what the philosopher Immanuel Kant described as your “precious little self.” It is the illusory image of yourself, the karmic collection of all your life experiences. It is really not you, of course. No more so than the image of you that you see in a mirror is really you either; but it is the image of yourself that you wish to project upon the world.  It is, therefore, what Deepak Chopra calls, “your make-believe self,” or your “social mask.”

Ego is distinguished by the fact that it is self-centered, self-obsessed, and self-absorbed.  Ego has one aim, as Wayne Dyer has eloquently put it, and that is to “Edge God Out.”  It is, therefore, the human condition, the one reality all humans share in common.  The Biblical equivalent to the ego is described throughout the Old and New Testaments as “sin.”  It is that part of you that you may think of as you but it really isn’t you at all.  It is instead the “little shadow” of you, as Stephenson described it, or the “dog,” within you, as the Nietzsche is purported to have once called it.

Since the ego is this little monster inside everyone and is the cause, not only for personal unhappiness, but virtually all the interpersonal and social problems in the world, what can we do to overcome it?

Here’s how:

1.  First, know that most of the talk that goes on inside your head is the voice of your ego. I talk a great deal about this in my book, The Enoch Factor: The Sacred Art of Knowing God. For our purposes here, however, just learn to watch what’s being said.  Believe virtually none of it; but question it, at the least.  This part of you who does the watching is closer to who you really are anyway.

2. Second, don’t fight the ego.  You’ll lose almost every time.  After thousands of years of human history, the ego has become quite clever.  It is best just to recognize within yourself, not only the virtually incessant conversations the self has with its-self, but the times you feel offended, when you catch yourself judging yourself, someone else, or some situation.  Know that this is the ego in you.  No need to fight it.  No need to judge yourself or condemn yourself when you catch the ego behaving in its customarily self-centered fashions.  Just recognize it.  The recognition alone is enough to diminish the ego’s control over you.  Notice, too, that in Stephenson’s poem, he writes, “And I see him jump before me when I jump into my bed.”  That’s the kind of “watcher,” as Eckhart Tolle calls it, you must become.  As the watcher, you can train yourself to recognize the antics of the “little me” inside of you.  If you will make this your spiritual practice, you will overcome the ego.

3. Finally, know that  the way to greater happiness is the way of ego-death.  Ego, the self-centered you, will die as you become more and more aware of its presence in you.  Awareness, observation, recognition of the ego is as a death-nail to it.  That is to say, the more you become aware of it, the less control it has over you.  You’ll discover yourself freer of self-judgment (itself the cause of much unhappiness); you’ll discover you are much less judgmental of others and situations (another cause of much inner suffering).  Whenever you judge someone, for example, whether yourself or someone else, you are in a mental state of resistance.  “What you resist, persists” said one spiritual teacher.  That is to say, if you don’t like something someone is doing but sit in continual judgment upon them (most of which, coincidentally, takes place in the head – YOUR head), you should not be surprised to see their unwanted behavior proliferate and your inner suffering to escalate.  Why not recognize this resistance within yourself, instead?  After all, it is none other than the ego, and you can be free of it.

The way to happiness is ego death.  Recognition is the key.  As the ego in you dies, you live.  Until it dies, you don’t.

1. Start from the assumption that you know God already.  The fact is, you do.  You came from Intelligence, you will return to the same.  Don’t make knowing God into a problem.  For most of us raised in some kind of religious tradition, so much over the years has been layered over this basic, innate and inner knowledge we have of the Divine, that we are programmed to think there’s something we must do, say, know and so forth, in order to know God.  Not so. You know God already.  Start here.

2.  Let your religious beliefs enrich your knowledge.  But, guard against the beliefs becoming more important than that toward which they point.  Beliefs are signs that point beyond themselves.  They’re like a finger that points to the moon.  Don’t confuse the finger for the moon.  And, by all means, don’t worship the finger.

3.  Go within.  Christians call it prayer.  Easterners call it meditation.  Call it whatever you wish but the objective is the same. Go within and there you’ll find God.  Jesus called it the Kingdom of God.  The Kingdom of God isn’t the church. It isn’t some future place we go once this journey ends.  The Kingdom is Now and it is, as Jesus said, “within you.” (Luke 17:20).

4. “How do I go within?” you ask.  There are scores of great books on meditation.  Go into any Barnes & Nobel, Borders, Books-a-Million and find the section on “Religions and Spirituality.”  Any of the books written by Lama Surya Das or Pema Chodron could be helpful.  But, more importantly, just start where you are.  For me, I use my recliner.  I don’t go all the way back in it because I’m likely to fall asleep.  But, I relax, close my eyes, and begin to focus on my breath or breathing.  Thoughts come, of course.  So, I work on (but I do not struggle against) the incessant invasion of thoughts.  I do so by acknowledging them when they appear and then letting them go.  I return my attention to breathing and almost certainly to the rhythms and beats of my heart.  It takes discipline but the objective is to reach of state of complete calm – thoughtlessness.  Some days are more successful than others.  But, every day, as I practice this technique for about twenty to thirty minutes, I emerge feeling completely at peace and in touch with myself, with God.

5.  It will work for you, too.  Don’t concern yourself so much with what religion is right.  Instead, recognize the  spritual truth inherent in all of them.  I, for one, grew up in a Christian home and became myself a Christian minister.  For years, I believed you could not know God apart from believing in the tenets of the Christian faith. I no longer believe this way and in my book, The Enoch Factor, I describe in detail the life experiences that brought me to this conclusion.  If you’d like a copy of this book, send me an email: steve@stevemcswain.com.  I’ll put  you on a waiting list and notify you when the book is scheduled to hit the bookshelves and stores.  If you’d like a free PDF chapter now, I’d be happy to send that now.  Again, just email me and I’ll take it from there.

6.  Remember, there is no “way” to know God.  God IS the way.  Just accept this.  Again, don’t make a problem out of it or bring a set of expectations with you as to what “knowing God” is supposed to feel like, be like, and so forth.  Just accept your Divine acceptance.  Good feelings will follow – eventually.  But, don’t confuse the feeling with God.  God feels good, to be sure, but God is always more than a feeling.  So, don’t succumb to the temptation of boxing God into a certain feeling.

7.  Finally, do not be the proverbial fish who swims in the ocean in search of the sea.  Know that you know God already. Accept this. This is what the Bible means by grace.  While you may have grown up in religious tradition that leave you always feeling as if you’re not quite there yet, that there’s something still missing from your life, know that the real truth is, nothing is missing and there’s nothing to do.  Just be.  It is by being that you find yourself merged into Being itself.  In other words, there is nothing you need to do in order to know God.  You know God already.  This is a cause for celebration.

So, what are you waiting for?

Don’t forget. Write me.  Follow me on Twitter.  I want to hear from you.  Send an email to steve@stevemcswain.com.

Blessed Knowing.