We talk about ups and downs. "Ups" are good, "downs" are bad. But we can never quite reconcile in our minds how God can be in the middle of all of it. How is it that my faith can be so strong at times while at other times the word itself seems like a cruel taunt?
Part of the problem stems from what I wrote about recently: the need for emotional assurance. It's not enough that I know God is there. I need to feel He is there. And early on in our spiritual lives God does allow odd things to happen to let us know that there is more the our reality than just the surface. As time passes I've found that these experiences become fewer, not because God is withdrawing from us, but because He expects us to mature. We weren't meant to live a spiritual life of constant reassurance any more than we were meant to live on mother's milk forever. And what God is weening us from is precisely this need to feel emotional assurance every step of the way.
This doesn't solve the problem, of course. We still lack something and we become frustrated when we fail to receive what we think is essential. My experience is that people of high spiritual development almost universally experience these times of emptiness and alienation. And just as universally come out the other side with a more profound relationship with God.
And here lies the crux of the matter. We swing from elation to desolation and back, and we manage to convince ourselves that God is behind all of it. What we fail to realize is that God is just trying to get us to stop swinging. A pendulum eventually comes to rest because friction and gravity compel it to the center. And the essence of mature spirituality is not the constant feeling that God is present, nor is it the constant struggle to stave off the feeling of alienation. It is not about feeling at all. It is about resting.
"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." - St. Augustine
I often hear about people who are trying to be "centered." Good news: you are already "centered." You may be self-centered, or you may be centered on the drama in other people's lives, but centered you certainly are. And, like a pendulum perturbed by a magnet. it is a centeredness that exposes the forces acting to deny us rest. So we use the term "God-centered" and never really ask what that means.
"God-centeredness is not a state of mind. It is not an emotional state. And it is not, in the sense that some use it, a spiritual state. It is not, in fact, sensible. It is a state of being. And when we begin to surrender this childish demand for feeling, we begin ever so slowly to rest. We are pendulums that swing ever more gently to the point of equilibrium.
