Union With The Divine

I realize I use this term a lot, “union with the Divine”, and also realize that I have overlooked the fact that many people will not know what I am referring to in this regard. My own views differ greatly from many people and using such terms as “union with the Divine/Divinity/God” could be taken as that which Christians talk about. It’s not even confined to just Christianity. We find this in Judaism, Hinduism, and so many traditions, but being who I am, my approach is slightly different,although if you dig deep enough, you will probably find this in the older traditions.

To start with, let’s have a look at what you may have thought I meant. This is bringing about our connection with the Divine, what we may call God, and in many traditions that is opposed to the suffering that we experience within this lifetime and our physical world. It is one of the reasons we do spiritual practices to release ourselves from this pain and torture, from samsara.

Another way this may happen is when God comes to humanity through an avatar. This could be viewed as Jesus embodying the aspect of God, or as seen in Hinduism as the avatar of Vishnu as Krishna, and many, many more.

In both instances we are trying to move one body, Person, to another body, God. We are therefore trying to reach “enlightenment” and move out of this physical world into a spiritual and Divine world, or bring the spiritual world into this physical in such a manner that it overshadows the physical, allowing us to temporarily forget about our pain and suffering.

If we have a look at a simple symbol, the hexagram. This is two triangles that overlap, and is considered to be the union of Man and God. However this is also the uniting of opposing forces, so we can see it as the bringing together of fire and water, masculine and feminine, bring the binary into a non-binary state. This is something else I often say, “bring the opposites into union, harmony, balance.”

Now, let’s have a look at this from a different persepctive. First we need to understand what this thing we call the Divine actually is. This will of course be different for everyone, but I need to explain my point of view in order to explain my use of the phrase “union with the Divine”. Here goes.

The Divine, or God, the Architect, the Source, the Force, the ALL, the Mind, whatever we wish to call it, is the Everything and the No-Thing. This is a force or power that extends into all things that we can comprehend, think of, examine, interpret, define, touch, taste, smell, hear and see. It is everything conceivable. When we say conceivable, this is all things that we can imagine, seen and unseen. However, this Divine power is also the No-Thing, therefore, everything beyond that which is conceivable. Everything that we cannot understand, examine, perceive, define, even imagine. It is the space between things, the void, the abyss, the nothingness, but even these things are words that will excite the imagination and create visual stimuli, so the No-Thing is everything that you cannot imagine, cannot visualize.

Now, if the Divine is that which I outlined above, we cannot move from one thing to another. We cannot ascend, or even descend. We cannot move away from, run away from, or toward. We cannot go to, and therefore, it is not a case of moving one body, the Person, to another body, God. This Divine aspect is everywhere, whether we can see it or not, whether we can imagine it or not, and that means it is in your own body, in the screen you are reading this on or hearing my voice from. It is in the clothes you wear, the bed you slept in, the food you ate. It is your neighbour, the dog that is barking down the road, the car that went by. The Divine is all things.

This Divine is also all things beyond these physical aspects. It is the emotions you feel, the pain, the sorrow, the guilt, the happiness, the joy, the love. It is the spiritual path you follow, the beings you may work with or worship, the Daemons, the Angels, the Gods and Goddesses.

This Divine is also all things beyond that. It is beyond the Cosmos and all the celestial bodies. It is beyond the light and the dark. It is beyond the good and the evil that we like to define to make ourselves feel better about our own existence. Is what I did good? Am I a good person? Was what he did bad? I’m better than that person because they are evil.

This Divine power is here, right now, we cannot move toward it. We can however become aware of it. Yet this is still not becoming aware of two bodies, yourself and God, it is becoming aware of Everything and No-Thing.

This idea of union with the Divine is about union with everything. It is uniting with the Divine element in the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Union with the Divine element within the seen and the unseen world. Union with the Divine beyond that which is Everything.

In order to do this we can start with ourselves. Recognize and become aware of the Divine, within yourself. You are Divinity because Divinity is everything. Recognize the God or Goddess that is you. Once you can connect with that Divinity and bring your own separated consciousness into union with your own Divinity, then you can start to expand your awareness beyond yourself. Extend it to the room you are in and recognize everything in it as being Divinity. The desk, the chairs, the potplants, the annoying fly, the trail of ants, everything is the Divine.

Become aware of that and extend further, to the trees and the animals outside. The birds in the sky, the fish in the pond. The buildings in the street, the power station, the bus stop, everything. Recognize everything as Divinity. What you may start to find is that you realize how precious everything is, and how connected we are to everything. Some people treat others, animals and the earth as their own stomping ground, bringing abuse and trash, spoiling it, turning buildings into dump, destroying land. When you realize the union you have with Divinity, you realize how much that hurts you, directly. Every time someone hits a dog, you feel it. Every time someone throws another bag of garbage on a pile that is polluting a stream, it suffocates you.

Now extend beyond that to the entire world, all of the people, animals and plants. Continue, extend beyond our planet and stretch out into the Universe, and beyond that, taking in the entire Cosmos. From the quantum to the most immense, from that which is 0 to the 1, it is all the Divine.

So when I say “union with the Divine”, this is what I mean. Some would not be able to handle this, and that is fine, it is a process to learn how to deal with that pain and move beyond it, to recognize it as all part of that Divinity. It also means that you take everything under your wing and you care for it all, just as you would care for yourself. It is a challenge because you will need to take action and do something about it. Like I said, its not for everyone.