Ordinary Enlightenment: Experiencing the Presence of God in Everyday Life - A Mystic's Handbook
This world, right now, is a mystical experience. The reader is invited directly into the mystical experience known to the founders of all the great religions. The words and exercises of this book provide numerous opportunities to directly experience the Presence of God, confirming the first hand descriptions from mystics across the ages.
Reviews
| "A work of tremendous spiritual vision, courage and insight, Ordinary Enlightenment makes God as real and tangible as the morning sunlight. I urge everyone seriously interested in spirituality to read it!"-John Gray, Author Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus | "Ordinary Enlightenment is a workbook for the soul...Robinson's manuscript is not just good reading - it's good practice."-Michael Moseley, reviewer for the Daily Republic |
| "Your book reads like a prayer!"-Bob Colonna, Author The Addiction Process | "ForeWord Magazine" : Finalist for Best Book in Religion from Independent and University Presses in 2000 . |
| Introduction 1. Preparation 2. Experiencing the Presence 3. Presence as the World: Being and the Return to Eden 4. Mystical Union |
5. The Ecstatic Poetry of Reunion 6. Transformational Practices: A Workbook 7. Darkness on the Path: Stories of Suffering and Evil 8. Ordinary Enlightenment: Living the Mystical Life |
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Excerpts:
Presence refers to the real and tangible experience of God's existence and consciousness in the world. This book is an invitation to experience that Presence.
Mystics, saints, and the very devout have referred to the Presence for centuries but few have left us with practical instructions for experiencing it. Maybe the process is impossible to describe. Maybe the Presence is a gift of grace that cannot be encountered intentionally. But that's not what I have found. Based on my own experiences, and those of countless others, this book will describe:
* Why the search for first hand experience of God typically fails
* 15 extraordinary insights about everyday life revealed in the mystical experience of Presence
* How to locate and enter the Presence
* What the experience of Presence is like
* 33 discernible qualities to the actual experience of Presence
* The mystical experience of union with the Presence
* How the world becomes Eden in the Presence (and 20 observations from Edenic consciousness)
* 25 exercises for experiencing the Presence first hand
* How ecstasy becomes poetry in the Presence
* The ways Presence transforms suffering and evil
* How healing takes place in the Presence
* What it means to "Practice the Presence" in everyday life
* 7 keys to living in Garden consciousness
The Purpose of This Book From the everyday sacred to the full blown mystical experience, Presence is always leaking (or breaking!) into human consciousness. The purpose of this book, however, is not to talk about God, for countless volumes in the religious section of bookstores and libraries do that. The purpose is to experience God. I want to lead you into a remarkable kind of consciousness that opens directly to the Presence of God. This is not a new religion, it is the oldest of religions, it is the basis of every religion. Simply put, our native ability to experience the imminent divine, available since the dawn of time, has been minimized, dismissed, and even forbidden with the rise of western civilization. This has been a tragic but reversible loss. Written from the experience of mystical consciousness, Ordinary Enlightenment will spark, and then ignite, your own experience of the divine. Are you interested?
Ordinary Enlightenment now strives to bring the mystical dimension into immediate, first hand experience. Avoiding the confusion of complex theological debate and esoteric disciplines, it goes straight to the point: There is an Presence in the world (and within us) that can be located and experienced directly. Entering the Presence, we not only confirm the remarkable teachings of the mystical experience (which we will discuss soon), we experience our own ultimate nature. Then the world, and our lives, are transformed in ways you could never imagine. And the proof I wish to offer for these wild assertions is your own experience.
Finally, the material in this book represents a spiritual confession: a window into my own transformation, shared not as proof for any personal superiority but as an entirely commonplace example of the mystical awareness available to each of us. Yet it is also the legacy of a well trained and seasoned mental health professional with twenty-five years of clinical practice. Having read and explored numerous paths, and known an equal number of dead ends, I am no longer seduced by spiritual fads and fancies. I write instead from the kind of direct mystical experience each must have to realize that God is real, alive, present, and knowable. So, let's get on with it.
Invitation
This little book is about learning to experience the Presence - here, now, literally, directly - and discovering how mystical consciousness can transform your life. It doesn't matter what religion you practice, or don't practice, or what you believe or don't believe. You are invited to come with me deep into the Presence of the universe and find out for yourself what the mystical realization of God is all about. You will find mind jolting spiritual propositions, down to earth explanations of spiritual problems, confirmatory words from mystics across time and religion, powerful transformational exercises, ecstatic poetry, a surprising analysis of suffering and evil, and guidelines for living the mystical life. Join me, I'll show you what I've seen.
Wait. Do these ideas seem outrageous, ridiculous, or even heretical? Good, I have your attention! This book is about the practical mechanics of enlightenment, challenging you to overthrow all you "think" you know for actual contact with the living divine universe. But I need you to be fully awake, alert, and present. Read this book slowly, carefully, consciously, over and over, until the aperture of your awareness opens into a new and radiant dawn. Discover, test, and prove each proposition for yourself, until you are ready to leave ideas altogether for the actual experience of God. May your journey into the Presence be rewarding, powerful, and transformative. T.O.C TOP
From Chapter 2. Experiencing the Presence
On a spiritual retreat in the Santa Cruz mountains one summer several years ago, I walked late one afternoon in the dry and deserted California hills. I was thinking about God intensely. Many times I called out silently, "God, I know you are here. Where are you? I need you." On and on I hiked, higher and higher into the dusty sunlit hills. Coming around a corner, I sensed it distinctly. A Presence in the wilderness, everywhere. I was stunned. But there was more. I sensed the Presence was aware of me, too, and that it was aware that I was aware of it.
A most startling experience! I had stumbled upon the consciousness of the universe: awesome, omnipresent, and other than my own. I had sensed the Presence of God. This was the beginning of an ongoing exercise in spiritual awareness, a study of the phenomenology of Presence that would intensify, differentiate, and unfold for years, eventually growing so physically near and emotionally intimate, that it would at times merge with and be none other than my own presence. T.O.C TOP
From Chapter 3. Presence as the World: Being and the Return to Eden
The mystics tell us that the divine not only shines through the world, the divine is the world. Matter is sacred substance, made of and permeated with the divine Being. God is not only in all things, God is all things. Transfigured in the Presence, the world literally shines as Eden again, restoring Creation and opening the gate to Heaven. If we could, but for a nanosecond, experience the infinite holiness of this world, we would fall instantly to our knees, kiss the ground, and proclaim with the mystics, "It is this, It is this, It is this."
The world seen through unenlightened eyes, however, can seem a pretty scary place, rampant with disease, poverty, danger, and hatred. Indeed life can seem a veritable theater of fear and its hellish manifestations (e.g., anxiety, distrust, greed, narcissism, ambition, competition, violence, addiction, despair), and we spend our lives in worried imagination, frightened of the perilous world created by our minds. In the ruthlessness of the workplace, the poverty of the inner city, or the obscene materialism of western life, it is difficult to believe that God's Presence exists at all.
This stark contrast between the world of the mystical experience and the one we see through everyday eyes will be discussed later (Chapter IX: Darkness on the Path, and Appendix B: Suffering, Evil, and the Mystical Experience). My goal in this chapter is simply to bring you Home to the Garden- consciousness of Creation in which the world is again experienced as Presence, God, and Eden. "Proof" of this ultimate reality will not come through logic or clever discourse, but only with the direct experience available in mystical consciousness. Stepping back into Paradise, therefore, requires that you slow down, cease thinking, and come into the Presence. Then, if you really look, you will find a world transfigured in the eternity of God.
There is a living radiance that shines through the world, as if each "thing" were a piece of stained glass beautifully crafted to give color, detail, texture, and form to God's imminent and all pervading light. This place we take for granted is a moving kaleidoscope of Being constantly dazzling us with its ever changing beauty. Pulsating with divinity, amazing and beyond anything we could preconceive, reality is the dwelling place of God. Gaze out the window at whatever scene is calling you to be with it: gracefully dancing trees, wild-riding wind, gently falling rain, glistening snow, hot suburban asphalt, or jet black night pierced by more stars than anyone has ever counted. Wherever you are, come into the Presence: be there and really see it. Explore this miraculous world with fresh, curious, and loving eyes.
Everyday, every moment, God's consciousness permeates being. It is in me, in you, in the children, in the animals, woods, trees, rocks, air, and insects. As our capacity for mystical awareness grows, we discover that the world itself is conscious. Existence once again becomes a timeless flow of divine revelation. In the Presence, creation becomes Creation, and we are home. T.O.C
From Chapter 8. Ordinary Enlightenment.
So Where Have We Been?
Before discussing Ordinary Enlightenment, let's take a backwards tour through the book to set the stage for this final chapter.
We began with a sampling of sacred experiences, from the everyday ("Breakfast with an Old Friend") to the full blown mystical experience ("Lifting the Veil), and I invited you to journey with me into the Presence of God. Do you remember how you felt reading that first chapter? Chapter II suggested that many of us have been looking for God in all the wrong places - in practices, beliefs, and expectations - inadvertently replacing the experience of the Presence with the "search" for God. After distinguishing mystical consciousness from mystical experience, Chapter III presented a remarkable perception of reality derived from hundreds of first hand mystical Presence, calling for a complete paradigm shift toward an understanding of life as a mystical experience (Radical proposition on the Spiritual Life).
But all that was preparation. Then it was your turn. After describing how others experience Presence, Chapter IV invited you have your own experience. I hope you stayed there long enough to know first hand what being in the Presence really feels like. Chapter V went further, suggesting that mystical consciousness confirms the mystical description of the world as Presence, God, and Eden (Homecoming: Experiencing the Mystical Nature of Being). Coming into the very heart of the book, Chapters V and VI shared the dynamic intimacy of mystical union and the ecstatic poetry that flows from it. Then it was your turn again, as Chapter VIII provided twenty-one workbook exercises for experiencing the sacred. I hope you'll return to them often as you go more deeply into the Presence.
In Chapter IX, I challenged you not to dismiss the reality of mystical experience with stories of suffering and evil, because if you do, the Presence and its capacity to transform suffering and evil, will slip through your fingers. Remember, too, the words of the mystics throughout these pages, repeatedly confirming all that has been said here. I am not alone in this extraordinary vision, nor is it some strange and cultic message, but you must confirm it for yourself. That's the whole point of this book. T.O.C
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