I find I use previous experiences as a starting point into his presence, but I see that it can be no more than the calling for "Encore!" and therefore a mere memory. This is why the continued study of scripture draws me close to God and ushers me into his presence for a time.
However, I can also become obsessed with the ecstasy of discovery in my studies and meditations. Although, God lies before me as an undiscovered country, I dare not equate his presence to the joy of discovery either.
Here we have a basso ostinato. His presence is an underlying movement (obstinate or stubborn) that remains within my life. Sometimes I can focus on him directly, hearing his majestic consistency upholding the quips and tweets of my life. Other times, I notice him more through the harmony he produces with other part of my life. The harmony is the sense of working with him. My focus is my work, rest, or play, but upholding it all is the glorious bass of God's pleasure in me, love for me, and guidance in the midst of my life.
It's like my kids who enjoy many things by doing them with me, but also enjoy doing many things because of me. I supply resources, safety, approval, guidance, etc. I find intense pleasure in playing and working with my kids, but also in seeing them able to play because of my presence.
With God's presence at the base of all religious living, Kelly concludes:
He is the center and the source of action, not the end-point of thought. He is the locus of commitment, not a problem for debate. Practice comes first in religion, not theory or dogma. And Christian practice is not exhausted in outward deeds. These are the fruits, not the roots.
Since God's presence is the base, my reciprocal presence is the appropriate answer. Whatever reflection or study I may do on the presence of God is chaff if it does not invite me to be with God. Great thoughts about God or great discussions about God lead inevitably to death and dryness if they do not raise me up to God himself.
Similarly, outward deeds will not take me to God. When practiced rightly, they are what comes from being with him. At a distance, smoke and dust look similar, but upon closer inspection, smoke comes from fire while dust comes from wind and hurry. Outward deeds look similar at a distance, but some come from the fire of God's presence consuming a life, while others come merely from the empty breezes and hurried feet of people trying to say or do something important. When I begin any activity, I need to ask, "Where's the fire?"
How do I stay with the Light Within? There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once.
The awareness of God's presence does not erase all other forms of thought, but works above them. Perhaps in Hebrew thought, this is life "in the shadow of your wings." God's presence is meant to overshadow all that I do. I act and think with the assumption that the Lord is over me and under me, beside me and within me. When this knowledge becomes intimate, all thought and all life changes.
The contrast to this awareness is the secular mind, which Kelly describes well.
The secular world of today. . . scorns, or smiles in tolerant amusement, at the cultivation of the second level - a luxury enterprise, a vestige of superstition, an occupation for special temperaments. . . . The secular mind is an abbreviated, fragmentary mind, building only upon a part of man's nature and neglecting a part - the most glorious part - of man's nature, powers, and resources.
The scorn thinly veils anger toward God's presence. It is contempt. It is defensive. The secular mind cannot, indeed, it must not accept this presence or it will lead to its self-destruction and the admission that the most important thing in life and the most important knowledge for living life has been left out. Dallas Willard says that believing the world is flat is paltry compared to this blunder. It is simply absurd.
The contempt is a defensive mechanism. The blockade results in a mind that is immature and incomplete. The mind not set on the Spirit is like a flickering light. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. It cannot venture far. It always makes the work slow and sloppy. Nothing can be sustained for long with this condition. The secular mind must often say, "Good enough" to its many projects.
The secular mind is a room I enter in my own mind. This is where I forget and lapse. I love the confession Kelly gives for those times: This is what I am except Thou aid me. I do not want to stay there, but neither do I want to pretend that I never go there.
The basic growth into the awareness of God's presence comes in this way:
The processes of inward prayer do not grow more complex, but more simple. In the early weeks, we begin with simple, whispered words. . . . For the conscious cooperation of the surface level is needed at first, before prayer sinks into the second level as habitual divine orientation.
If you find, after a time, that these attitudes [of worship, humility, surrender, etc.] become diffused and vague, no longer firm-textured, then return to verbalizations and thus restore solidity.
Longer discipline in this inward prayer will establish more enduring upreachings of praise and submission and relaxed listening in the depths, unworded but habitual orientation of all one's self about Him who is the Focus.
[In "infused prayer"] the autonomy of the inner life becomes complete and we are joyfully prayed through, by a Seeking Life that flows through us into the world of men.
Basically Worded Prayer shrinks in size as I enter God's presence more, until words are not necessary. I like his warning of how such unworded prayer can become "mushy" and needs solid thought to sustain it. Otherwise I believe it can lead to sentimentalism or nostalgia.
Words fade as God's presence becomes more infused within me. At first it is an "orientation" in which a orbit God's presence. As I go I then become united with God, not losing myself, but finding myself in him. He then works not just with me, but through me, and I am no longer fragmentary and abbreviated, but completed by his presence. Without his abiding presence, my life is incomplete, not as it should be. I was made a vessel, to hold and exude his presence.
How does the Light Within guide me? Guidance of life. . . begins first of all in a mass revision of our total reaction to the world. . . . This total instruction proceeds in two opposing directions at once. We are torn loose from earthly attachments and ambitions - contemptus mudi. And we are quickened to a divine but painful concern for the world - armor mundi.
This is the being "in the world, but not of it" paradox. I am used to hearing this when talking about evangelism, not guidance. When I am confused, then, I have failed on one side of the paradox, either falling into an inordinate love of the world and its pleasures, or falling into a disdain for the world and its people. Guidance comes first from this tension of keeping my mind and heart on heavenly things, but also loving the world as God does.
The result: But instructed in one point of view of the paradox, we bestride the mountains or the valleys of earthly importance with a holy indifference, contempt, and detachment. Placed in coveted surroundings, recipients of honors, we count them as refuse, as nothing, utterly nothing. Placed in the shadows, we are happy to pick up a straw for the love of God. No task is so small as to distress us, no honor so great as to turn our heads.
Guidance is short-circuited by the wrong attitude toward the world. I live in this world. God lives with me and guides me in and through this world. If I do not have the right attitude toward this world, then guidance will be heard, but misunderstood. God's word will come, but when he guides me, I will say, "God forbid that such a thing should happen!" because I will have some attachment or some anger that prevents me from hearing and doing rightly.
Lord, sustain me with your presence. Let my fleshly mind be ignored and my fleshly life abhorred. Let this world be a side-attraction I can leave behind and also the main event of my life when I seek to love and sympathize with those lost in madness around me. I want to hear you rightly, so that your words will not be a source of confusion, but piece that brings the puzzle together. Amen.
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