We are looking for Truth, we are looking for Wisdom, we are looking for Love, we are looking for Liberation. We look and look and look, and often only find the uncapitalized, humanized, cognitized versions of our Divine Essence.

We might be temporarily satisfied with crumbs of God, and the most tiny crumbs can move us to our core and even change us in some way. But isn’t it true that when the crumb dissolves and the effect has passed, we find ourselves back in the desert, parched and hungry? Those of us who are most fortunate recognize the crumbs as crumbs and hunger for the meal. We want to sit at the table with God. We want the experience, not the words.

This is my constant angst. The words don’t nourish, but words are the medium I have known. More words, better words have not changed this (I have tried). The road to God, the place at the table, is not of words or even the mind. As Eckhart Tolle says, the words merely point. In this sense, the words are valuable. For human beings, they are essential. Initially.

The great teachings, the best of words, point us to the road to God, but they don’t get us on the road. They are not the vehicle. They can’t truly take us anywhere. The vehicle, the direct access point to God is experience itself. The better teachings talk about Direct Experience. That is what will satisfy our hunger. And the mystics know that that is the only true happiness in this world.

Since understanding this, I look to teachers and teaching who are experienced in Direct Experience, who have themselves been at God’s table and sat with God. Finding these souls in such a spiritually barren world is quite a thing. How do we know who really Knows? There are those who say they Know, and what do they have to say? They say, get quiet, be still, meditate, go deep into nature, chant the name of God, worship — do any practice that will move you beyond the words in your mind into the expanse of your Heart. God’s table is not far from us. It is in our Heart. God waits patiently there for you.

Image: View of the Bug Nebula from the Hubble Space Telescope. See an enlarged view