Showing Your Face

There are times to show your face in public and times to sit to the side. That doesn’t hold true only for periods when a person is ill or there is an epidemic and we’re all wearing masks. Or we’re unaware of the fact that scientists have learned people who refuse to wear masks have cognitive difficulties. It doesn’t make us better or worse to know this. There is no moral superiority. There is, however, being spiritually solid.

To be spiritually solid can be tremendously uncomfortable.

It can be like sitting on an ice block when it’s twenty below zero with high winds. You’re cold to the bone. Your brain says you’re about to freeze and yet, you stay where you are. Something is keeping you in place — besides freezing to the ice. There is something inexplicably attractive about the cold. Beyond the cracking of tree branches in the wind there is a sound you never knew could exist. Beyond the shallowness of your breath.

There is the unearthly knowledge that you are in the presence of something too immense to be described. You know if you reach out you will touch the incorporeal body of somebody you cannot see. You are absolutely clear that It sees you. Your face is known to this — whoever this is. Whatever it is. It’s vaster than anything you’ve ever known. It is unseen, unseeable. But you can feel It. It is the most solid presence you have ever encountered in your life.

At the same time your mind wants to tell you this can’t be. It’s absolute madness. Nothing exists that cannot be seen or proven by a mathematical equation.

Electricity can be proven.

We can see a spoon.

But this feeling you have can only be a feeling because….

Because.

Because it can’t be real. How can you feel a presence you can’t see or touch? If there is no sound, it is impossible to hear a voice. Any voice. Whether it’s a bird’s song or someone speaking into your ear. A presence must be visible. It must be subject to the rules of science which say it can be touched. That my hand will feel a solid sensation when it comes to rest. A voice that has no sound is not a voice. It is only an illusion.

This is real life. It is not a Hollywood movie. It is not some television show about ghosts and monsters.

We decide what can be because we are the arbiters of all knowledge. We think we are objectively correct in all matters.

Aren’t we?

Or do we mimic what we have been told? Is our spirituality not our own, but what others have said it ought to be? Do we even have a spirituality we can name and touch and hold deep within our beings?

There is religion and there is spirituality. Religion is the public exercise of what a group of people believe. Spirituality is what you believe. They coincide to the extent they coincide.

I have a lifetime of experience breaking the rules in religion. It is breaking society’s rules to feel the touch of that unseen presence. And other presences. It is breaking the rules to hear voices and see spirits that have no physical body.

It is a sin to break religions’ rules. Or so I’ve been told.

I have a lot of fun with that. So many learned men and women have told me that it’s impossible for me to see or speak with God and other spirits. I’ve had spiritual directors who informed me that I am not good enough to witness the Absolute.

Have you ever heard an angel smack his own forehead in disbelief at hearing utter nonsense from people who ought to know better?

You don’t have to show your spiritual face in public. It’s your decision. I know many men and women who live their lives quietly away from any public acknowledgement of their true selves. Others refuse to behave with false piety. They are condemned for their wickedness. To put oneself out in public by saying what we see is dangerous. It is an act of sedition against generally accepted social behaviors and graces.

I dropped the mask I had long used to protect myself. What is life if not to live outrageously, madly for knowledge of the Ultimate? Every moment of every human life is infused with the divine. There is one thing we must do to be completely infused with the divine.

Drop the mask from your eyes to see.