Look deeper

When everything feels heavy and dim-lit I remember what the teacher said, “The kingdom of God is among you.” Then I hear him add, “Look deeper.”

“How?” I say.

“Look through the trouble, he says, You are fixated on the surface and the symptoms. Look long enough to see what’s underneath. Look deeper.”

I look long enough for the source of my gaze to shift from the eyes in my head to the eyes of my trembling heart. For a moment I see that everything is God showing up as everything and all is wonder and light.

Some time after that I came down with a cold. I was complaining to the teacher about the inconvenience of it all. “There’s so much I could be doing,” I said.

He replied, “Self pity is fertilizer for resentment. You don’t want to go there. Look deeper.”

“What?” I say, I can hear him well enough I just don’t want to play his games. Not today.

“The kingdom of heaven is within you. Look deeper, he says. You’re complaining about symptoms again but your real struggle is with powerlessness. You can’t control this cold, and that upsets you. Look long enough to see what’s underneath. Look deeper.”

“Okay,” I say with a sigh and I fix my gaze on the problem. I feel some part of me sink down deep into my body and after a little while the eyes of my heart come online and open wide.

For just a moment I see through the trouble and I know that God is in the virus that is inflaming the cells of my body, not as source of course, but as presence because there is nowhere that God is not. And this powerlessness I am experiencing is practice for union with the one who will someday swallow all my power and every ounce of my agency in the living flame of love. I can see this when I look deeper, and I begin to feel better.