The Practice of God's Presence Within
Our understanding of who we are in relationship to God can often be a source of great divides in our lives. In response, we offer this simple devotion, originally published by Cindy Senarighi, founder of Yogadevotion.
This post resonates with us because we envision a time when, through the deep transformative power of Christ, Christians practicing yoga and contemplative prayer make a significant contribution to healing the divides in our lives and in our world.
We hope you will find it useful in your own practice and/or your teaching.
The Scripture
“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” - 1st Corinthians 3:16
The Spiritual Focus
“May you awaken to the mystery of being here and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence [longing for the divine].” John O’Donohue
The Devotion
Many faith traditions teach from a very early age that we are born sinful. As we grow older sinfulness is often linked to our behavior, sometimes even before we are able to understand what we have done that is sinful. The argument about whether we have anything good in us or not has been argued since the time of the early church. The argument was around the idea of whether or not we have a “Divine Spark” within us, any God breathed good within us. Contrast the idea of a sinful predisposition with what we read in Genesis, when God says what God creates is good, very good. Contrast the idea of worthiness with what we read in 1st Corinthians about our ‘being’ as the temple of God, where God’s spirit lives. Perhaps we could think about sin differently, perhaps sin is anything that is an obstacle to, or suggests that, we can be separated from God’s loving presence. Thinking we are, at our core sinful is an obstacle to experiencing the presence of God within. We change that narrative by going within and realizing the “Divine Spark” of our true nature, created in the image of God.
One yoga practice that guides us to examine our true nature is simple. Find an easy seated posture, close your eyes, disconnect from the outer world, and simply sit in the quiet. Sitting in quiet space is sacred and shapes us to realize our inner landscape as the temple where God's Spirit resides.
The Breath Prayer
Inhale: God’s Spirit
Exhale: Dwells in me
