Experiencing Oneness with God

James Finley on the benefits of contemplative practice.

You write, “The true nature of the present moment is the reality of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.” Could you explain what you mean by that?

Christ’s life is a mirror of our own life and the deepest reality is that we’re called to die to our most cherished illusions about ourselves. And our most cherished illusion about ourselves is that our failing, and our shortcoming, and our “sins”as horrendous as they might behave the power to separate us from the love of God. As I die to that illusionwhich is an act of radical childlike trust in God’s loveI am participating in the mystery of the cross in the ground of my own consciousness. That is, with God’s grace, I’m dying to the last traces of fear and doubt and shame within myself. So that by dying to those cherished illusions of my own imaged autonomy from God’s love, I am born into this kingdom consciousness or this mystery of the resurrection.

So for the Christian mystics, they didn’t see the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as a story dualistically other than their life; rather they saw it as a story that revealed the deepest reality of their life. And we enter into this reality, which is at once God’s life and our own, in the silent simplicity of meditation.