Holy of Holies: On Identity

Image by Num Skyman, shared with permission, c. 2013.

“The unfolding of the universe entails full divine loving presence. The divine perspective changes to include human beings. It is an intimate relation of shared identity. We participate in God and God participates in us. The great mystery of reality is the mystery of intimacy. God is both erotically within me and beyond me at the selfsame moment. Touching and not touching. The intimacy of shared identity without losing the integrity of individuality. Two solitudes that share in a sublime moment of Sameness.

“This is the first intimation of union and the beginning of all self-love.  This is the great audacious mystical certainty that underlies every great religion, even if its contemporary leaders have long forgotten its wisdom. The world is not a dead-end material universe, where separate entities constantly collide and explode, where all is  accident and chance fated for meaningless destruction. It is not, in Shakespeare’s pathos-filled phrase, “…a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Instead, it is an infinitely conscious, integrated whole, whose underlying fabric is love.”

by Dr. Marc Gafni
The Erotic and the Holy

Elizabeth Helen Adael Bullock is a Center for Integral Wisdom Senior Editor and empowered Senior Teacher of Unique Self. Adael has been trained in Introductory and Advanced Shalom Retreat Leadership Process. She has also completed training in Tantra, 5 Rhythms, Insight and Metta meditation, creative writing, and Integral Theory. Adael is currently editing the CIW think-tank book Teachings from the Holy of Holies: Daily Reflections on World Spirituality.

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