Mystical Presnece

Each time I ever had to speak in my ministerial training Communications class I suffered as if I were going before a firing squad. Public speaking was my No.1 Fear. Like many others, I'd had a bad experience.

In high school I was mortified the time I stood on the stage in front of a full assembly as the editor of the school paper. We had just performed the annual promotional skit and I was to introduce the actors who were members of the staff. The skit was awful and I wanted to hide. Instead, someone stuck a microphone in my hand.

At that moment my mind went completely blank. I looked first at the audience -- twelve hundred teenagers stared back at me. I had no idea what to say to them. A loud whisper from offstage prompted me to tell the cast members' names. I saw them all lined up to my left, but while I recognized all of them, their names got stuck in the sludge of my stage-frightened mind and I could remember none of them.

Not one word escaped from my mouth that morning. I stood there, utterly humiliated, until someone took pity on me and removed the mike from my hand and ushered me away. And until I thought about being a minister, it never occurred to me to try to speak in public again.

However, having finally decided that answering my call to be a minister was a good thing to do, I now had to face the fears induced by my high school trauma on a weekly basis.

Typically I wouldn't sleep well the night before I was due to speak. I would write and re-write my note cards in my mind. I'd rehearse the talk again and again, fretting when I'd forget what my point was supposed to be. By the time I was to give the talk, I was a wreck.

One day I had a Meditation class before Communications that began to change my whole approach to speaking. The instructor, instead of presenting different meditation techniques, offered us the possibility of spending our class time doing whatever we wanted to do to commune with God. As it was a bright and sunny morning, I leapt at the chance to be outside. And with an excuse to be alone for an hour, it was even better.

I headed directly for a small meditation hut that I'd discovered on the grounds of Unity school a few weeks before. Covered in vines, the small stone structure had two benches that faced an obelisk that stood in the center. The hut had been built by Unity's co-founder, Charles Fillmore. I wondered if some of his consciousness would rub off on me if I sat in the hut to meditate.

As I ducked beneath the vines and into the hut, I was caught up short by the presence of an older, dark-skinned woman. She wore a name tag so I knew she was here on retreat. I hoped she wouldn't start chattering away about how wonderful it was at Unity Village and how wonderful it must be to be a ministerial student, the way a lot of retreatants had done in the past. I really just wanted to be quiet for a time even if I couldn't be alone.

She seemed to sense this, for she just smiled warmly and didn't speak. I noticed her name was Marietta, and I thought of the town I'd grown up in, now so far away. Marietta was from Toronto, her name tag said.

I took a seat on the bench that was at right angles to where Marietta was sitting, and almost as soon as I did, I was flooded with a sense of overwhelming realness. That's the only way I know to describe what I was experiencing. My consciousness altered and I felt so absolutely there, located in exactly the time and place that I was, completely present. I didn't do anything. This sense of heightened awareness just came upon me like a wave washing up from the depths of a vast ocean, washing up and over me, only instead of drowning I was riding the wave from the inside out. This presence was alive and real and yet deeply still.

Marietta got up and, blessing me with another generous smile and silence, she left. Then as if from the eye of a silent vortex, these words flowed into my awareness:

"BLESSED be the silence. Blessed be the word that issues forth from the silence."

Without knowing how, I knew I would be asked to lead the opening prayer before the Communications class, and that these were the words to use. Gradually the feeling of extraordinary presence subsided, but I remained silent and savored the feeling of my experience as I walked to class bathed in the morning sunshine. When we were ready to begin, just as I sensed it earlier, as if it had been scripted, the teacher said, "Ellie, would you like to lead us in prayer this morning?" And I opened my mouth and the words I had heard earlier were now spoken aloud. No hesitation. No anxiety. No big deal really.

A mystical event. That's what my mentor at the time called it. A nice thing to happen, to enjoy, but don't go putting on airs about it, he cautioned. Of course, I did think I was special, maybe a bit like the saints I admired when I was younger. It took me awhile to understand what he meant.

When I was diagnosed with cancer a few months later, and went through the spiritual healing of that, it seemed a miracle. A miracle there were no more cancer cells where they were going to do extensive surgery, a miracle that through the hole they made in my mouth where the tumor was, I was able to speak in public, without notes, and no longer paralyzed by fear. But it wasn't really miraculous, at least not in a "God waved a magic wand" sort of way. I was simply meeting life deliberately and consciously.

"Spirituality," Chögyam Trungpa said, "is completely ordinary. Though we might think of it as extraordinary, it is the most ordinary thing of all….If we open our minds, if we open our hearts, we will find that this world is a magical place. It is magical not because it tricks us or changes unexpectedly into something else, but because it can be so vividly and brilliantly."

With that kind of openness meeting life under any circumstance is a kind of miracle. A leaf is a Leaf. A smile is a Smile. Surrendered to the presence of any ordinary moment, life thrills with the aliveness of a mystical event or a powerful healing. And while this presence is not supernatural, it is transcendent. For as we are freed from consideration of past hurts and released from any attachment to future outcomes, we no longer identify with fear-filled states of mind. We realize who we are is an embrace of what is happening now - all of it - even the potentially stressful stuff. In Walt Whitman's words, we come to know, "I am larger, better than I thought. I did not know I held such goodness." Such is the mystical presence in everyday life.*

Islands in the Stream

THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD
by Brother Lawrence

"Do not always scrupulously confine yourself to certain rules or particular forms of devotion, but act with a general confidence in God, with love and humility."

Brother Lawrence was a humble man, a Lay brother of the Carmelite Order who, in medieval times, followed the direct path to communion with God. For him there was no distinction between a time of business and a time of worship. He felt the presence of God whether he was working in his kitchen or worshipping in his church. This little record of the mind and heart of a man who saw God in all things is meant to serve as an inspiration and guide for all those who seek true and constant communication with their Creator. His prayer:

Lord of all pots and pans and things
Make me a saint by getting meals
And washing up the plates!

ONE MINUTE WISDOM
by Anthony de Mello, S.J.

PRESENCE

"Where shall I look for Enlightenment?"
"Here."
"When will it happen?"
"It is happening right now."
"Then why don't I experience it?"
"Because you do not look."
"What should I look for?"
"Nothing. Just look."
"At what?"
"Anything your eyes light upon."
"Must I look in a special kind of way?"
"No. The ordinary way will do."
"But don't always look the ordinary way?"
"No."
"Whyever not?"
"Because to look you must be here. You're mostly somewhere else."

It will take only a minute to read each of the anecdotes in One Minute Wisdom. "You will probably find the Master's language baffling, exasperating, even downright meaningless. This, alas, is not an easy book! It was written not to instruct but to Awaken. Concealed within its pages (not in the printed words, not even in the tales, but in its spirit, its mood, its atmosphere) is a Wisdom which cannot be conveyed in human speech. As you read the printed page and struggle with the Master's cryptic language, it is possible that you will unwittingly chance upon the Silent Teaching that lurks within the book, and be Awakened - and transformed."

FREEDOM FROM THE KNOWN
by J. Krishnamurti

"At the actual moment as I am sitting here I am not afraid; I am not afraid in the present, nothing is happening to me, nobody is threatening me or taking anything away from me. But beyond the actual moment there is a deeper layer in the mind which is consciously or unconsciously thinking of what might happen in the future or worrying that something from the past may overtake me. So I am afraid of the past and the future….Is fear the result of thought? If it is, thought, being always old, fear is always old…When you are confronted with something immediately there is no fear. It is only when thought comes in that there is fear."

This thin volume represents the clear observations of this great teacher on the nature of thought. He shows how our thoughts are responsible for our fears, and how seeing the way in which thought distorts reality can liberate us from bondage to our past and future, allowing us to live fully the unknown of the present moment. A mind that is free of fear, Krishnamurti asserts, is one capable of great love. And through love, we can change and with us, society can change.

A PLACE ON EARTH
by Wendell Berry

"The difference between people is what has got to be taken notice of. There's the preacher who has what I reckon you would call a knack for the Hereafter. He's not much mixed up with this world. As far as he's concerned, there is no difference, or not much, between Tom Coulter and Virgil Feltner. Their names fit into the riddle he thinks he knows the answer to. I wouldn't try to say that he ain't right. I do say that some people's knack is for the Here. Anyhow, that's the talent I'm stuck with."

Wendell Berry, poet, essayist and novelist, sets his novels in the fictional town of Port Williams, Kentucky. He populates the area with ordinary folk who live close to the land and nature, and the wisdom of both of these. A Place on Earth calls us to mind what we lose as we absent ourselves from a relationship with the land. It's simple, rich, deep and moving story invites us to become present once more to the organic whole of life of which we are a part. A satisfying read.

Copyrighted, NCM Press, 2002