Worship?

[Steppingfeet]

I think that it is a fair question to ask "When Source A uses this word, does it mean the same, or carry the same connotation, or have the same implication when Source B uses the same word? Because not only have I never resonated with the way Source B has intended the term, historically at least, but it's contributed to active harm in my path." 

This thread is beautiful to read. In its depth is considerable contemplation, I feel like I'm reading contemplative inquiry à la Thomas Merton or similar. Thank you.

Obviously there is a great spectrum of meaning enfolded in the word "worship" as it's been used in the religious sense. The mystics, of which many practiced in a religious context, likely use it to describe a mode of being and activity akin to the word's use among Confederation sources. But I would wager that in the conventional range of the spectrum, the term is intended to convey a religious piety, or a subscription to creed, or a fealty to concept, or a conformity to group ritual, or some other kind of disempowering, self-denying displacement of authority to a perceived external object.

Worship is not a word that falls naturally off my tongue in my own experience of spiritual seeking, but I resonate with what I believe is intended by its highest meaning. To describe it in its truer, purer sense has already been spoken to eloquently here, including in the helpful quotes, not that it is a subject that can be exhausted. I would just like to contribute an additional reflection on what I believe Diana was keen to hone in on, the notion of relationship.


Consciousness, says Ra, is the microcosm of the Law of One. But the incarnate experience of a mind veiled from its true identity in oneness-with-all is necessarily an experience of separation and being other than. The lived experience, the illusory lived experience, is as a fragment of the whole. From that vantage point, unless and until self realizes the self as a product of the dismantlement of the veil, there is a relationship, I would contend, whatever the conceptual understanding of unity.

Ra even mysteriously speaks of a yearning between the incarnate self and the Creator, the former embarked upon a journey of seeming movement toward a destination, so to speak, of realization and becoming of the latter. (The paradox being that upon this unitive realization, one realizes that there was ultimately nothing to "become" because the self had always and fully been nothing other than the Creator all along.)

In that relationship, the incarnate self touches that which is far, far greater than its present scope of awareness, intelligence, and ability, that which the human heart can never fully contain. But that which is greater is not held as an isolated entity or place or source, but as the Face behind all faces, the purity and truth behind all illusion, the true source and meaning behind the great play. The devotional being is humbled and feels enveloped with love in an awareness of the infinite love of the Creator or the universe. As the Confederation describes of positive entities, love comes not from but through the incarnate self. Insofar as it is perceived as outside the illusion, which in one sense it is, it transcendent; insofar as the entity (probably gradually) experientially understands it to be in all things, as all things, it is immanent.

Worship in that sense, then, might be seen as a centralizing of the focus upon that which is true, eternal, and present, a gathering of the scattered, fragmented attention, and the many illusory pursuits therein, to point the compass needle upon the Creator. A connection is made. Enlivening light and love are encountered. Redemption, forgiveness, liberation, and resurrection become available. Whatever the unique experience, colored better in the poetic than my words are capable, the response is gratitude, wonderment, and love for the eternal-never-ending gift. The incarnate self steeps itself in this worshipful communion, first and foremost, I believe, through inhabitation of the sacred, but also as a way of living and practice. Maybe in synonym, worship could be seen simply as grateful remembrance or loving reverence.

I wonder whether and how the fully self-realized would use the term.