When we die, we don’t go anywhere, but rather, we cross over into unmediated, infinite union with God. We cross over into loving God, with God’s own love for God, which is the Holy Spirit. We cross over into knowing God, with God’s own knowledge of God, which is Christ.
—James Finley, Turning to the Mystics, podcast
James Finley leads us through a meditation to help us experience the immediate presence and intimacy of God’s love and those who have joined God before us:
I invite you to imagine that you are sitting alone in the middle of a well-lit room. There are no windows and no furniture in the room other than the chair you are sitting in…. As you sit there alone in silence, the light in the room slowly begins to dim. As the room dims, a light on the other side of the wall you are facing slowly becomes brighter and brighter. You begin to realize that the wall you are facing is not really a solid wall, as you had imagined, but is rather a gossamer veil that is becoming increasingly translucent in the light that is shining through it, filling the darkness of your room with an unfamiliar light.
In the light shining out from the other side of the veil you see God, the angels, and the saints. They are all laughing and waving at you, letting you know how delighted they are that you can see them. You start laughing and waving back at them.
Then God, the angels, and the saints pass through the veil to join you, rendering the room radiant with communal joy and delight in which your very presence begins to glow with the presence of God. Illumined and transformed in this way, God and the angels and saints carry you with them into heaven, just on the other side of the veil, where all are dwelling who have died and crossed over into God. Then God and the angels and saints carry you with them back through the veil, back to the room, now aglow with heavenly wonder and delight. Then, once again, they transport you back into the celestial realm, and then back again into the room….
You are left once again in the familiarity of your earthly experience of yourself sitting there alone in the room, facing the wall. But while everything is the same as before, everything is, in an interior way, radically different. For you now realize that while, yes, it is true that, on one level, the wall you are facing really is a wall, … yet in the afterglow of the unitive experience that has just graced your life, you now know in the depths of your awakened heart that, ultimately speaking, the wall is no wall at all…. You have been graced with a fleeting experience of being immersed in God-immersed-in-you in a boundless communion that utterly transcends, even as it utterly permeates, the darkness and fragmentations of this world.
Reference:
James Finley, The Healing Path: A Memoir and an Invitation (Orbis Books, 2023), 16–17, 18.
Image Credit: Ravi Sharma, untitled (detail), 2021, photo, India, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. There is a wisdom that knows humanity as one continuous breath—the veil between worlds thin and alive—where the memory of our ancestors moves through our very cells.
Story from Our Community:
My husband and I, our children, and grandchildren met by the sea for two whole weeks. It was a time full of many blessings and much love. One evening we were all present—working puzzles, reading, preparing dinner, and watching the world go by—and for just a moment, I felt the Presence of all the generations before us and after us, felt the lives, love, and stories that made each of us who we are and will be. I knew our own lives would join our ancestors in shaping those coming after us. We’re all part of a glorious oneing. Now, in times of doubt, I bring this moment back to my heart and remember that the Divine is indeed always Present.
—Lucienne S.
