I see my soul, my essence, as grounded in oneness with one thing bigger than myself. I most frequently name that “one thing better” God or the Divine. But there’s an entire vary of different phrases that match too—like Supply, Oneness, God, Allah, Nice Spirit, the Infinite Area, love or Love, common vitality, a better energy, the quantum subject. The huge vary of non secular and religious traditions the world over all have completely different names for this one thing better, and every identify speaks to a specific understanding of it. (If you happen to discover discord with this final thought, lookup the time period non secular pluralism, one other eye-opening idea I realized about in graduate theology college.) Every of those phrases could be correct, however every can be restricted. It displays only one perspective, one side, or one sort of expertise of the better one thing. The extra I stroll with people who find themselves exploring their religion, that means, and objective and eager to really feel extra totally alive, the extra I feel our phrases can solely start to the touch on what that one thing better is like. The entire of it’s finally unnamable.
If you happen to’re simply getting used to the thought of being a part of one thing bigger or better than your self, don’t fret about what to name it. Do not get hung up on what others name it both. Language is limiting.
What’s necessary is to be open to the sensation of it. The place, when, and the way have you ever felt a way of being linked to one thing better, a way of being interconnected with others, a way that you simply’re not alone even once you appear to be? If you happen to can, recall a time you felt this fashion. Perhaps you had been on a night stroll, watching the sundown over the water. Or maybe you had been strolling on a lakeside path, and also you had been greeted by a household of small birds scurrying towards the water. Or perhaps you had been exterior and felt a heat breeze carrying a aromatic lilac scent and noticed small flowers floating within the air.
As you image that scene, are you able to open once more to the sensation tone in your physique, to a resonance with one thing extra? What does it really feel like? A way of vitality? A deep figuring out? A glimmer of one thing past? A way that there is a presence with you?
Once more, don’t fret concerning the language. Simply really feel it.
Perhaps you expertise a deep pulling of ah. Perhaps you are feeling a way of one thing larger, and perhaps an expanded, fuller breath is available in. Perhaps you breathe within the preciousness of simply this second. Perhaps you are feeling such as you’re settling right into a deeper, fuller area inside your self.
Maybe any held worry drops away, and also you simply know that on this second all is OK. A wonderment comes by means of you, or a pulsing aliveness strikes by means of your physique. You are feeling an interconnectedness with all. A sense of oneness and heat fills your physique.
Or perhaps a sense of coming house surfaces, the mirror is obvious, and also you perceive why you might be right here.
I expertise this sense as an inside vibration that quivers inside me. I additionally expertise it as love. To me, our soul, our essence, seems like love; the felt sense of oneness and interconnectedness I really feel by means of my soul seems like love; the one thing better seems like love.
These are all examples of what one thing better may really feel like. What does it really feel prefer to you?
