Knowing God

In the past, I’ve spoken here about How to Know God or Experiencing God. But I thought it might be useful to review how this experience may unfold.

Different people will experience the process uniquely, emphasizing certain steps and skipping others. Or will have minor variations in the sequence. But this may offer a general idea of it. Note that by “divine” I mean divinity or God, not angels or spirits. They will show up but this is the progression in recognizing the divine itself, the source.

-Belief
(be it belief in or non-belief)
-A lived sense of the divine or presence
(not making a mood of it)
-Experience of divine qualities
(through senses or feeling)
-Experience of the divine in form
(perhaps at first as a visit, later always accessible)
-Impersonal God, formless Being
(divine as ever-present & all-inclusive)
-Personal God, profound intimacy beyond imagination
(the Personal)
-God Realization, the climax of Unity Consciousness
(God Realization, a becoming)
-Holiness, beyond consciousness
(refined Brahman)

Some, following a more impersonal path with a focus on development of consciousness, will have less of the divine in experience and a more “dry” unfolding. Some will also have a resistance to the necessary unfolding heart for this process. Others may experience more of the expressions of the divine, like angels, but not yet have the depth of being to progress past perceptions. The ideal is both in tandem, depth and refinement.
Davidya