At the risk of scaring off some people, I thought I would talk about worship and what it really means in spiritual unfoldment.
Full Dawn Circle recognizes spiritual practice as worship. Spiritual practice aligns us with the Divine. Or, if you prefer to use more secular-sounding language, spiritual practice aligns us to our true nature beyond the individual self.
The mission of Full Dawn Circle involves sharing about the reality of the Divine and our true Divine nature, and the peace, love, joy and contentment that arises and deepens as we align, increase our receptivity to the Presence of the Divine, and prepare for the Grace of Awakening.
But what is worship really? Is it just spiritual practice? Or does it have a deeper significance?
First let’s consider the definition of worship. The formal definition of worship is this:
“The act of offering reverence, love or devotion to a deity, idol or sacred object, through ceremony, prayer, or other religious form.”
This definition implies a duality of a worshipper and that which is worshipped. But it is just this duality that limits how we view worship.
Before we enter the spiritual path with the intention of Awakening, we can only worship in duality. Whatever our object of reverence, it is something different from us. We’re separate individuals worshipping this object of reverence.
What we don’t realize is that, ultimately, worship is the Divine worshipping the Divine, beyond duality, and beyond oneness. We’re just along for the ride.
This understanding begins to unfold as we move along on our spiritual journey. Through the surrender inherent in effortless spiritual practice, and the preparation for Awakening, we encounter Divine Grace which wakes us up as Pure Conscious Being, and out of identification with our limited individuality. This is when we awaken to Self-Realization, or Cosmic Consciousness. Now our sense of who we are has changed, although our individuality continues to appear within that Pure Conscious Being — and within that also appears everything else in Existence that we can perceive.
So, who would the worshipper be — the individual or Pure Conscious Being? And, one might also wonder what would the object of worship be?
And these questions arise again when further along in our unfoldment we awaken to the Oneness of Unity Consciousness. In this Awakened Reality, all is one Universal Being. Is worship now obsolete?
And then there’s more. Later in our unfoldment we discover the reality of the Divine beyond Oneness as the origin of who we are. Now we really have to question whether worship is obsolete, or if not, who worships what?
Now we get to the heart of the matter.
At this point in the spiritual journey we discover that Being, Consciousness and all of Existence resides in the Divine, and that our true origin is not limited to Being or Consciousness, but is Divine.
And because Being, Consciousness and Existence arise from the reverence of the Divine for itself, we ultimately realize that the worshipper is actually the Divine in the appearance of us as individuals. And that which is worshipped is also the Divine. So once we recognize our true divine nature, we are worshipping the Divine as the Divine, both as the appearance of an individual and as the Divine itself.
Everything we experience is the Divine worshipping itself. We just seem to be part of the flow in that grand reverence and love of the Divine. And we find that worship is always in process, even if we as individuals, are not actively engaged in any apparent specific act of worship.
Worship, then, is the perfect communion, in which we are continuously engaged, even if we are not conscious of that Divine reality. But the beauty of worship, is that we can be engaged in the process, whatever our status of Awakening, just by engaging in worship in the form of spiritual practice. With spiritual practice we align with the Divine, we open to its Presence, we prepare for its Grace, and we unfold spiritually until such time we recognize our true origin, and the origin of everything, is Divine. And then worship is a continuous flow of love and light of the Divine in reverence to itself, in which we have the great joy of being a participant.
– Joel
The above is a revised, edited transcript of the video: “What Worship Truly Is” which you can find HERE.