Q: In meditation, I feel myself OF God; in church, in the sacraments, I feel a “surrender” to God. Both are beautiful and in my mind, they are compatible energies, one feeding the other. But, I would welcome your thoughts on this matter in the event I am missing something or perhaps “confusing” energies.
Your experiences of meditation and sacramental worship are exactly true. (I do not say “correct” because they are not intellectual formulas but much deeper perceptions in consciousness.)
God is both within and without us in our present relative state. The oldest Upanishad, the Isha Upanishad begins: “All this, whatever moves in this moving world, is enveloped by God.” So when we look outward we experience God, and when we look inward we experience God. But the experiences are different.
The inward look is to ourselves and our union with God. The outward look is to the wonder and glory of God in his relation to us as we are in the world. One produces a non-dual wonder, and the other a dual wonder. Our inmost consciousness recognizes God as our Self. Our outer, illumined consciousness embraces God in love and joy. This is the experience of all yogis.
The theological word-worshippers may not agree, but what do they know? They only have words and the ego those words inflate.
I am so happy for you that you are fulfilling and experiencing the essence of the Bhagavad Gita: “Be a yogi!” (6:46).
Further Reading:
- The Yoga of the Sacraments
- 3 Types of Supernatural Contact and the People Who Engage in Them
- The Light Within from the Upanishads for Awakening