How To Connect With the Divine with Michelle Medrano

[00:00:03] Have you ever found yourself yearning to feel connected to the divine? I love that our teaching has at its core a belief that whatever the divine is, it's everything. It's expressing through all things, through all people, through all experiences, through all relationships.

[00:00:24] Our belief is that the divine is a presence rather than a person that it's an energy, much like science has now talked about. Physics is broken everything down into its all energy, just in vibrational

[00:00:39] attunement such that it forms and fashions more or less solid matter in the world. And we believe that this energy that is connecting all of creation is akin to and is God expressing.

[00:00:54] And so we can feel that and think about that and contemplate that and meditate upon that. And yet sometimes that seems really elusive and far away. So how do I get connected to the divine? How do I feel that connection? Not just have that be a nice idea.

[00:01:12] A number of months ago I was meditating and I was having a difficult time feeling that connection. I was feeling kind of lost and sad and just really disconnected. And in a moment kind of of divine whiningness I would say,

[00:01:27] I started saying to myself, oh, I just want to view God's presence. I just want to feel the divine right here and right now I want that so badly. And I just sat there waiting and then I felt this kind of a chuckle.

[00:01:45] I can't say that it was God juggling at me but it felt like some inner aspect of me was chuckling at me. Almost like, job of the hut. You know that. And it caught my attention.

[00:02:00] And then this feeling sort of rolled over me like as a being in the oneness. There's never a moment I'm not here. There's never a moment you're disconnected from me. It's such an illusion that you're sitting here right now,

[00:02:21] crying over something you don't feel you have and all the while I'm right here. It was hard to put into words the feeling in that moment. I went from feeling completely disconnected in a dark space to thinking, oh my gosh,

[00:02:45] even this horrible feeling I'm having, this moment of sadness, this moment of disconnect is still in the kingdom of heaven. It's still in the realm of the divine. And that idea kind of broke me open into this feeling of, wow! I can only describe it as awe.

[00:03:03] That feeling of, oh my gosh. Wow! Mind blowing awareness. It had an ineffable quality to it. No words yet it was a very powerful awakening moment of content, contentment and connection.

[00:03:27] So I began to ask myself like you might be asking yourself like you might have asked the universe. How do I have this more often? And the only word that I come up with is the word awe.

[00:03:39] And it's probably because I've been so excited that we get to have an expert on awe here at Mile High Church in November. Dacker Keltner is going to be with us for a speaker event and he says, I got a quote here.

[00:03:53] I want to get it right so I'm going to look down here at something. He says awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding, a feeling of something vast that transcends your current understanding.

[00:04:10] That's I think what I felt in that moment of darkness and that moment of reconnection. It was a vastness, a bigness yet I felt connected and alive again. And so I want to invite us to use the word awe today as an acronym

[00:04:29] to consider as we go about our days and weeks, how we can usher ourselves into connection consciously, to pause and to recognize at any moment if I'm scared. But don't know what to do, but don't know what to say. If I'm feeling sad or disconnected,

[00:04:51] can I even in this allow myself to feel that connection? So if we use the word awe, the first letter of course is A. It's awakened. We have to awaken to it. See it's just like in my experience, we think God or the divine connection has left us,

[00:05:13] but that's not possible. So what's really going on is that through our human experience, we've left it. And that can happen in life and in moments because we're just keeping ourselves too busy, we're just going going, human doing, human doing, human doing,

[00:05:31] and we miss the chance even in our busyness or our hecticness to awaken to life all around us. I like that word. I just created a new word hecticness. We miss it. And so it takes us choosing to be awake. To be about our busyness,

[00:05:53] but to notice the people along the way, to notice the beauty along the way, to notice the sky along the way, awakened. And the W of course is connected to that it's wonder or wonderment. I know as a kid, I was so full of wonder.

[00:06:09] I was curious about everything. I asked so many questions. I would sit out under a tree in my yard for hours, looking at the sky and contemplating life, even at four or five, six years old. I would ride my tricycle down the road

[00:06:28] in our neighborhood and touch every flower and every leaf because I was so curious about it. And of course in busyness, sometimes we lose our sense of wonder. So that child-like sense of being curious and wondering and ushering ourselves out

[00:06:46] underneath the night sky as we wonder about the stars. Ushering our awareness through the window as we look at a tree or look at the clouds floating by, calling ourselves back to that sense of wonder in nature, looking at people in our lives and feeling the wonder

[00:07:06] at how blessed we are that we get to share our life with this person who's just sitting in front of me drinking their coffee, feeling that sense of wonder helps us feel connected. And the last one is embody for the e-embodied.

[00:07:23] Don't just contemplate it, don't just intellectualize it. Don't just read about the divine and feel that sense of, oh yeah, yeah, like when I read it, that's so true. It takes embodiment at every level, a willingness to feel the awesomeness of the divine

[00:07:42] in body, mind, soul, and feeling. In feelings and heart, in every part of us, in every aspect of life, the joys, the challenges, the ups, the downs. It's entering through awe into the feeling of divine connection. It's here now, it's available always, get connected.

[00:08:17] And so I just take this moment to give thanks. To give thanks for that divine connection that is always flowing through us. Floss from Martin Booberset, I am that which God is God is that which I am. And in this moment of prayerfulness,

[00:08:36] I attune my presence consciously to the divine. By closing my eyes, I allow myself to feel and sense and consciously become aware of that which is already been so. It is as though I turn my attention to electricity that is always present in the air,

[00:09:01] it's never been not present. It's just becoming conscious of it and utilizing it consciously to turn the light on or to plug in something that I want to use that needs electricity. All of electricity is always available and in this prayer, we are plugging in.

[00:09:22] We are plugging into divine connection. Feeling the all that is everywhere present and feeling it right here and right now. And so let us breathe it in and breathe it out. Let us feel and sense it.

[00:09:39] And I affirm and accept that for every person within the sound of my voice, the oneness that connects us, allows each one of us now to feel that divine connection. Right here right now in whatever space we're in, whatever conditions are going on,

[00:09:55] whatever is happening in around us, we are divinely connected at all times. We are plugged in, turned on a live with God presence on board to meet and greet any moment of life. A decision, a challenge, a joyous opportunity, a conversation, whatever it might be,

[00:10:23] we accept and affirm that divine connection is ours that it goes with us in every moment, it is simply who and what we are. And I give joyous thanks to accept and affirm this for myself and all of us now.

[00:10:39] And I give joyous thanks that this is the truth of us in this moment and in every moment. And in this state of gratitude, I simply release this prayer into that law that makes it so. I accept and affirm it is done,

[00:10:54] I let it be, I let it go, and so it is on it.