I was thinking earlier about a difference that I don’t think we pay enough attention to, perhaps one that we don’t even acknowledge most of the time. It seems to me that we, in our unquestioning acceptance of an objective knowable reality, that we place a great deal of weight upon two things. First, an occurrence or existence, and secondly our reaction to that occurrence or existence.

We tend to view things as part of a two tier system. A song is played. We react to the song. A light flashes. We react to the light. Perhaps it’s all the thinking about the intersection between fire and water lately, but I’m kind of hung up on the middle part that we don’t mention.

This is something that I’ve put a lot of thought into before, but never looked at it from this angle. We talk about stimulus and reaction. But we tend to ignore the defining feature, which is interaction. Our experience of the stimulus is not the same thing as our reaction to the stimulus. Reaction is the counter-stimulus that results. Our experience is the part that happens before we act in response to that stimulus.

When we place our hand over a candle flame, the sensation of heat in our palm is the result of the experience. It is the reaction of our nerves interacting with the energy/heat that is rising from the candle.

Objectively we don’t really have a good way of examining or talking about that place of interaction, just as we don’t objectively have a good way of talking about life. We categorize life based on it’s behaviors, on the patterns it exhibits, but these are indicators of life, not life itself.

So I’m interested, as I have been for a long time, in how our understanding of the world, and of each other, would be different if we acknowledge that our experience of a song, or a color, or a candle-flame is not different only because of our reaction, but different because the interaction, the experience itself is different.

It goes in the face of what might be considered common sense, but we know that no two people perceive things identically. Everyone experiences the universe in their own way. The reason I’m thinking about this, is because I’m thinking a lot about how I and others interact with the Divine.

I’m wondering if one of the reasons we have such difficulty helping each other to feel the light of the divine, to touch each other, has to do with a failure to understand the core truth of our experience, that our experience is unique to us, and trying to replicate it with another person is ludicrous.

This doesn’t mean we can’t communicate our experiences of the Divine, or that we can’t understand each other. I’m not sure what all the implications are yet, but I know that it’s important to my ministry to understand this. The core tenet of the Brotherhood of the Phoenix is “Find the divine in your own experience.” There is nothing I personally feel more important than that understanding. And I find it interesting that we chose the word experience. We’re not talking about our reactions to the divine, but our experience of the world. The Divine is be found in the intersection of stimulus and response. Ideally, we are conscious and in communion with the Divine, and so our reactions are governed by that understanding, by that recognition of the Divine.

I feel like I’ve lost the plot a little here, so I’ll try and come back to the lack of point. Nobody can tell you how to experience the divine, or where you will find it. What we can do is help you recognize the divine when you do find it.

I actually think that a great deal of our trouble connection with God is based on the simple fact that we don’t notice the Divine when it’s right in front of us. One of my favorite lines about God is:

God hears and answers all your prayers. What we forget is that sometimes the answer is no.

I think I may have first heard that out of George Carlin’s mouth, but I’m not certain. I believe that the Divine is both immanent and transcendent. I believe that we experience God far more often than we realize, and that what makes a person spiritual is learning to recognize God when we encounter her.