The Now can be seen as the main portal. It is an essential aspect of
every other portal, including the inner body. You cannot be in your
body without being intensely present in the Now.
Time and the manifested are as inextricably linked as are the timeless
Now and the Unmanifested. When you dissolve psychological time
through intense present-moment awareness, you become conscious of
the Unmanifested both directly and indirectly. Directly, you feel it as
the radiance and power of your conscious presence — no content, just
presence. Indirectly, you are aware of the Unmanifested in and
through the sensory realm. In other words, you feel the God-essence
in every creature, every flower, every stone, and you realize: “All that
is, is holy.” This is why Jesus, speaking entirely from his essence or
Christ identity, says in the Gospel of Thomas: “Split a piece of wood; I
am there. Lift up a stone, and you will find me there.”
Another portal into the Unmanifested is created through the cessation
of thinking. This can start with a very simple thing, such as taking one
conscious breath or looking, in a state of intense alertness, at a
flower, so that there is no mental commentary running at the same
time. There are many ways to create a gap in the incessant stream of
thought. This is what meditation is all about. Thought is part of the
realm of the manifested. Continuous mind activity keeps you
imprisoned in the world of form and becomes an opaque screen that
prevents you from becoming conscious of the Unmanifested, conscious
of the formless and timeless God-essence in yourself and in all things
and all creatures. When you are intensely present, you don’t need to
be concerned about the cessation of thinking, of course, because the
mind then stops automatically. That’s why I said the Now is an
essential aspect of every other portal.
Surrender — the letting go of mental-emotional resistance to what is
— also becomes a portal into the Unmanifested. The reason for this is
simple: inner resistance cuts you off from other people, from yourself,
from the world around you. It strengthens the feeling of separateness
on which the ego depends for its survival. The stronger the feeling of
separateness, the more you are bound to the manifested, to the world
of separate forms. The more you are bound to the world of form, the
harder and more impenetrable your form identity becomes. The portal
is closed, and you are cut off from the inner dimension, the dimension
of depth. In the state of surrender, your form identity softens and
becomes somewhat “transparent,” as it were, so the Unmanifested
can shine through you.
It’s up to you to open a portal in your life that gives you conscious
access to the Unmanifested. Get in touch with the energy field of the
inner body, be intensely present, disidentify from the mind, surrender
to what is; these are all portals you can use — but you only need to
use one.
Surely love must also be one of those portals?
No, it isn’t. As soon as one of the portals is open, love is present in
you as the “feeling-realization” of oneness. Love isn’t a portal; it’s
what comes through the portal into this world. As long as you are
completely trapped in your form identity, there can be no love. Your
task is not to search for love but to find a portal through which love
can enter.