Sleeping With God

This article is a hard one for me to write. It’s even a little embarrassing to be honest. As a podcaster who has interviewed over 500 highly influential spiritual teachers, you would think that I would learn a thing or two about the traps of modernity. Lately, I have been feeling complacent. I have felt stuck, like a prisoner on the treadmill of modernity. The taste of life had become stale. The cause? I chalk it up to the repeated effect of the daily schedules, meetings, practices, school dropoff/pick up, chores, and daily operations, or better known as The Automation of Being, otherwise known as the Patriarchal model of Society.  My bubble of being had created a sense of systematic responses to stimuli that unfold during my day, rather than reflecting on the wondrous nature of happenings and interactions that I experience.  The mornings blur into evenings, each day a repetition of the last, my soul dulled by the mechanical hum of existence. I’ve been so consumed by the need to do—to check boxes, to plan, to control—that I’ve forgotten how to be. It’s as if I’ve been sleepwalking through a sacred garden, blind to the blossoms of divinity blooming in the ordinary.

To make matters worse, this modern-day apathy has cut me off from my family.  I found myself going through the motions, not even present with them, obsessed with the future, trying to control each variable to achieve a probable outcome: freedom. This mode of living has created an imbalance in my body, heart, and intuition.  This separation created a hardening of the heart, disconnection from emotions, and inability to tap into my creative flow. I had fallen asleep to who and what I truly am.  But have faith, the alarm clock was set. 

One morning, after dropping off my son at school, I picked up my phone and quickly selected a YouTube video titled “Searching” by the Mystic Teacher Geoff Thompson.  While listening, it was as if the alarm clock of the universe turned on.  After listening to his content for about 10 minutes, I quickly realized my transgression. I was disconnecting myself from the great mystery of life, always plugged into the drama of the role within the patriarchal model of society. I was fully participating in the unsustainable model of patriarchy that emphasises logic, control, action, productivity, and external achievement and devalues Intuition, emotion, and receptivity.  I had isolated myself,  fallen under the spell of separation.  Separation from nature, the divine, the self, and most importantly, the divine feminine.  I was asleep, disconnected, and I was not making time to hold communion with the divine.  I was alienating myself from my most vital life function: the breath of spirit. 

And it wasn’t just theory. I had a direct encounter. A few weeks ago, while preparing for a sweat lodge ceremony, I went out to harvest bamboo with Brothers from a men’s group. As we entered the grove, thick with tall, creaking stalks and filtered light, a profound stillness settled over me. It wasn’t just quiet—it was sacred. I felt completely enveloped by something pure and alive, like I had stepped into the breath of Sophia herself. The Holy Spirit. The Divine Mother. The air was thick with presence—so clear, so pure, that I couldn’t help but cry. Not out of sadness, but reverence. I didn’t need to seek in that moment. I didn’t need to think or define. She was there, and I was in communion. It was one of the most tranquil experiences of my life. And it reminded me: the Divine Feminine doesn’t demand; she invites. She doesn’t shout; she whispers. And I had finally become quiet enough to hear her.

The breath of spirit, symbolically, can be different for everyone. For me, the breath is the Holy Spirit, or what the Gnostics called, Sophia, “The Divine Mother”. In the gospel of John, he states, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Now, Word was translated from Logos (λόγος) in Greek, meaning something much deeper. The ancient Greeks saw Logos as the underlying structure of the Universe; moreover, it was the divine order (consciousness) in which God communicated purpose. God communicates through Sophia (The Holy Spirit), Greek for Wisdom.  

I came forth from the mouth of the Most High,

and covered the earth like a mist.

I dwelt in the highest heavens,

and my throne was in a pillar of cloud. Sirach 24:1–4

In synthesising the two concepts, the Logos or Consciousness is everything; it makes up our reality, and we are moving through it, like the fish in water metaphor.  Sophia, or Wisdom, is the Holy Spirit, and she can be a bridge to true knowledge, freeing us from the sleep of idleness, lethargy, and apathy. Now, I consider myself a seeker, but sometimes, too much of a seeker.  You know that saying about the hammer always walking around looking for nails.  Yeah, I think that's me.  Always looking for Truth, but always as peak experiences: the fireworks! I was always looking for the grand mystical events.  But I wasn’t noticing it in the obvious. I had blinders on. I was in a hypnotic state of mind.  Sleepwalking. I had defined meaning into a specific rule set of actions that were associated with the end goal of enlightenment, or in other words, I placed a higher importance on what the Western world claimed to be enlightenment, rather than revering the beauty of the mystery of existence.  I can admit, my analytical nature disallows me to be 100 percent in the moment.  The way that my mind often works is similar to that of a philosopher searching for the direct causation of the phenomenal world, conceptually striving for answers that my brain knows damn well is beyond it’s capacity to fully understand. Hence the search.  The search for meaning in the machine of modernity. The matrix can be cold.  I guess this is what Jesus meant when he said in the Gospel of Thomas, “ Whoever is near to me, is near to the fire.  Whoever is far from me is far from the kingdom.” (Gospel of Thomas, Logion 82, Leloup trans., 2002).  Getting stuck in the thralls of the simulation had led me far away from the kingdom of inspiration, creativity, and significance. I was drowning in the dark depths of the void of meaninglessness, despair, and apathy.  

 Geoff pointed out the bible verse in Matthew: “And the King will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’” He reminded the audience, who I’m assuming are seekers as well, that what we are seeking is right in front of our faces. It's the lifeblood of our everyday dramas.  The Bhagavat Gita states, “He who sees Me everywhere and sees everything in Me, to him I am never lost, nor is he ever lost to Me.” This realization, or remembering, rather, shook me to the core. I realized that I have always searched for God, Christos, the Holy Spirit, and the cosmos, but I had failed to see them.  Again, I had failed to see the All in everything.  Narrowly focused on completing tasks, but not seeing the mystery behind the curtain. I was waking up next to my wife every day and not realizing her divinity.  I was sleeping with God.  

Now, here comes the hard part.  What do you do with this information?  You have been pointed towards God, but what next? Can your ego step aside for you to truly worship the source of all?  Meaning, how do I serve God? Pointing back to the Bible, the Gospel of John speaks to how Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. Now, back then, washing feet was a suggestion of humility.  Think about it, back then, these folks were walking everywhere, and I mean everywhere.  Those puppies must have been wretched, but J.C. cleaned them. It was J.C.’s way to worship his father by recognizing him in another.  This can be recognized as a great symbol of worship, by putting down the ego and surrendering to another, and by worshipping their divinity.  

I was not doing this.  I was searching to satisfy my means to an end. Like Piaget's Preoperational Stage in his Cognitive Development Theory, it was all about me, baby! I had failed to see the divine within my life.  My realization: the divine doesn’t just show up in an intense meditation, psychedelic trip, or breathwork session.  The divine shows up each morning next to me in my bed.  The divine shows up as my children getting ready for school. The divine shows up as my coworkers sending me emails. The divine shows up as my dog needing to go outside to pee.  The divine shows up as all things; the question you have to ask yourself is, how will you worship it? Will you allow the ego to blind you, or will you expand yourself to see the beauty in everything? The most important question you can ask yourself today is--How will you show up for God/Universe/Cosmos/Source?