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Eventually, you are led by grace into the non-dual state (“not totally one, but not two either!”). I do not know anyone that is in conscious Stage Eight a full twenty-four hours a day. To describe this stage, I use Jesus’ words: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). This is unitive consciousness, where you live in conscious, loving communion and trust with God and everyone else. God is no longer out there or over there or separate from you. Henceforward, as Teresa of Avila says, “You find God in yourself, and you find yourself in God.” This is largely an inner experience, an inner knowing. It is truly following Christ, who is a mixture of humanity and divinity. You know that you are the Body of Christ and that your source is Divine, while you are still quite ordinary and human.
Every other aspect of your persona—your roles, your titles, your functions, even your bodily self—is seen as a passing form, a passing ego possession. At this point, you know your body is not fully you. You have found your soul, your True Self, who you are “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3), who you are before you did anything right or anything wrong. Frankly, you have discovered your soul, which is that part of you that already knows, already loves, is already in union with and can quite naturally say “yes” to God.
When you learn how to trust this Divine Indwelling (and that’s what it is—it’s God in you doing the God-thing through you), when you learn how to draw from that place, you can find happiness any hour of any day, and anywhere. You can “pray always.” You also realize this is what you were created for. Heaven is not later. Heaven and salvation are whenever you live in conscious union with God, which means conscious loving union with everything else, too.
Adapted from
The Art of Letting Go: Living the Wisdom of St. Francis,
disc 5 (CD)
and
Where You Are is Where I'll Meet You: A Guide for Spiritual Directors,
disc 2
(CD, MP3 Download)
Gateway to Silence:
Open me to wholeness
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