In truth all the secrets and mysteries of the Bible are really perfectly explicit and revealed.
It is only that our eyes are covered and we do not see.
WISDOM OF THE JEWISH MYSTICS
Have you ever thought the way organized religion is often taught lacks something basic?
Have you tried to repent and accept God into your heart and nothing happened? Could it
be that God is in our body, our very flesh and blood and that if we don't focus there we will
never have a deep experience of the Holy Spirit?
There are rituals at the core of Judaism and Christianity that lead us to such
embodied focus if we do them in a devoted manner. Spiritual-physical methods are described
herein to aid the reader in answering these questions for themselves.
WHERE IS GOD?
Jews and Christians are often taught to think of God as far off and remote. After all, if Moses
had to climb Mt. Sinai to communicate with God in the form of a burning bush, the Holy One
must be totally separate from our mortal bodies, so the notion that the Divine Presence can be
felt within our very body tends to evoke resistance in those of us raised in the Judeo-Christian
tradition. Also, isn't the body "the flesh," the container of sin that we are supposed to transcend?
What, then, are we to make of the following scriptures?
More than all else, keep watch over your heart, since here are the wellsprings of life.
Proverbs 4:23 (New Jerusalem Bible)
Behold, thou desireth truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden parts thou shalt make me to
know wisdom.
Psalms 51:6 (KJV; here and unless stated otherwise)
Related to these passages, have you ever seen someone press a Bible to their heart? It is as if the
person is trying to open their heart to the "wellsprings of life" represented by the Bible.
For the commandment is a lamp and the law is light.
Proverbs 6:23
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.
Psalms 119:105
Similarly, the Bible teaches us that the commandment to "love the LORD...shall be upon
thine heart" (Deuteronomy 6:6) and to "bind it upon thine hand...and between thine eyes."
(Deuteronomy 6:8). These passages are the basis for the ancient Jewish practice known
as putting on phylacteries (tefillin). Phylacteries (from the Greek root meaning "to watch, guard")
are two leather boxes, one placed on the forehead (as a window to one's thoughts) and the
other on the biceps near the heart (as a window to one's emotional life). Each phylactery
contains the commandment to "love the LORD" and related passages. A strap from the heart
phylactery is wound the arm and hand in the shape of a Hebrew letter that stands for "the LORD--
the Name of God."
Man With Radiant Tefillin
To explore how such a practice can become a perfect spiritual-physical therapy, try the following:
Write the commandment, "And thou shalt love the LORD thy GOD with all thine heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy might" (Deuteronomy 6:5) upon three small pieces of paper. Tape
one commandment to your forehead. Think of the commandment as a miner's light illumining
your mind or as a window to your thoughts.
As you "look out" at your thoughts with your mind's eye, notice how they slow down. You are
no longer immersed in a chain of thinking. Rather, you are making contact with the spirit of
Psalms 46:10 "Be still and know that I am God." and "Be quiet before the LORD, and wait patiently for Him (Psalm 37:7).
You are redirecting attention from stress-based thinking to river-like flows of Divine peace (as
described in Isaiah 48:18).
Now tape a commandment upon either hand. Feel the contact of the commandment, which represents the source of all peace.
Lovingly focusing upon the contact of the commandment with your hand will help keep your
attention apart from stressful thinking. Each time you notice yourself distracted by thinking, simply bring your attention back to the contact
of the commandment with forehead and hand. At first, you may wish to limit focus to either
forehead or hand. As your practice deepens, you will be able to expand to two and then all
three areas at once.
Now tape the commandment to your chest area, over your heart. This helps us enact Proverbs 4:23, which says "Above all else
keep watch over your heart. For here are the wellsprings of life." In time, hidden fears, resentments
regrets, hurts, and other emotions may come to light. We may see the need to apologize and heal with people we have hurt.
You need not try to create any certain feeling. If hidden emotions need to emerge, they will in their own time. Simply be
aware of the commandment in contact with your heart area.
You can experiment with letting your attention move among all three areas. This will help
createa unified loving flow among thoughts, emotions, body, and actions. In time, you will
say with the psalmist "All my bones shall say LORD, who is like unto thee?" (Psalms 35:10)
and "Thank you for bringing me to 'truth and wisdom in the inward parts.' " (Psalms 51:6)
As with the above practice, the last chapter of the Bible describes worshippers with GOD's Name
"written on their foreheads" (Revelations 22:5). This scene is in the New Jerusalem with
the worshippers seeing God "face to face."
THE EMBODIED DIVINE IN CHRISTIANITY
Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you.
I Corinthians 6:19
Christians grow up hearing this scripture repeated in church. If we take it seriously, why don't we focus inwardly on the embodied
Holy Spirit? One answer is that the clergy is not generally trained to understand or teach such
practices. Sadly, our Judeo-Christian traditions have often equated the body with sin. While
the Bible makes clear that the body is the container of sin--describing stony-hearted, brass-browed
and stiff-necked resistance to God's Love--it is also the door, the very opening to the Divine.
In this sense, the body is like a movie projector and screen capable of transmitting great darkness
or light.
He who eats my body and drinks my blood dwelleth in me and I in him.
John 6:56
It is well known that this passage is a the heart of Christian Communion. Christians are reminded
by clergy before Communion that this is the Body of Christ, which is "broken for you."
When you eat healthy, vital food, have you ever noticed how your body is enlivened with new
energy? If this is so, how much more can our bodies respond to imbiding the Holy Body when
we lovingly focus upon it flowing through out veins?
Jesus uses images of radiant, river-like flows to describe the embodied Holy Spirit: "...out of
his belly shall flow rivers of living water. Thus spake he of the Spirit that those who believeth
on him were to receive." John 7:37-8
Jesus also taught that we can experience the Holy Spirit througout our body:
If thy whole body be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light,
as when the bright shining of a candle shall give thee light. Luke 11:36
These passages could also aptly describe the ultimate aim and experience of Baptism and
the laying on of hands. The Baptismal immersion of the whole body in water represents
the transformation of the sinful body to the Christ Body.
Be baptized and wash away thy sins.
Acts 22:16
The scriptural description of the laying on of hands also leads us to re-member and focus on
on our body as an instrument of the Holy:
Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost.
Acts 8:17
Returning to Communion and how it can be a perfect therapy, practice focusing lovingly on
your body as a "temple of the Holy Spirit" or a "member of Christ." "Be still" focus on and learn
to become aware of the "rivers of living water" flowing through each part of your body.
At first, and for varying extended periods, our bodies may feel lifeless. As we learn to be still
and release the thoughts, emotions, and actions that the Bible calls "sin," our bodies become more
flowing with "rivers of living water." At first
this feels like faintly sparkling water. Many
people first exerience this in their fingers.
Eventually, with practice, these "wellsprings of
life" or "rivers of living water" can be felt in
the heart and throughout the body.
In LIVING FLAME OF LOVE, Saint John of the Cross writes eloquently of how Communion with God might
feel within one's body:
"And of this good which comes to the soul a part
sometimes overflows into the body through the union
of the spirit, and this is enjoyed by all the
substance of sense and all the members of the body
and the very marrow and bones, not as feebly as is
usually the case, but with a feeling of great
delight and glory, which is felt even the remotest
joints of the feet and hands. And the body feels
such glory in the glory of the soul that it
magnifies God after its own manner, perceiving that
He is in its very bones even as David said 'All my
bones shall say, God who is like unto Thee?'
(Psalms 35:10) And since all that can be said of
this matter is less than the truth, it suffices to
say of the bodily experience, as of the spiritual,
that it savors of eternal life."
The Bible's Best Kept Secret--loving focus on the embodied Divine--has always been "perfectly explicit and revealed." It was only that our "eyes were covered and we did not see."
Randy Berkman, Ph.D. is a licensed psychotherapist
in San Diego. He is State certified to teach
Philosopy, Psychology, Religion, and Physical
Education and has published many related articles.
He elaborates on this topic, giving practical
applications in his audio tape THE BIBLE'S BEST
KEPT SECRET described above.
