Without the carnival atmosphere of salvation—paying for what is free for the asking—we are left to our own devices. We seek out the experience of the Divine by looking to Gene Gendlin’s book, “Focusing,” and Ann Weiser Cornell’s two books, “The Power of Focusing,” and “The Radical Acceptance of Everything,” listening within and without, seeing what we look at, knowing what’s what within us and what is called for in each situation as it arises, following the way of the Tao from 2,000 BCE: Doing the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, in the right place, no matter what–for the joy of doing it and the satisfaction of having done it.

That is the true heart of it—dropping the secondhand scaffolding entirely and stepping into the direct, pulsing current of life where we actually come alive.

We spend so much of our lives being handed maps of territory others have walked, told that the map is the land, the doctrine is the reality, and the tollbooth is the only way through.

While dogma and doctrine are static; life is wild, fluid, and immediate. Moving past them isn’t about rebelling against a system—it’s about waking up to what is actually here. It is the shift from believing about the Divine to having that intimate, unmediated encounter with the presence of life itself.

It asks a simple, piercing question: What has life for us?

When we slow down, breathe, and pay attention, we discover the exact places and moments where we come fully alive. In those spaces, the arguments dissolve, the gatekeepers fade away, and we find ourselves standing right in the open stream of existence, exactly where we were meant to be all along.

Giving ourselves fully to what brings us alive in the here and now of our living presents us with the experience of life itself–and life is where God is to be found. Life is the experienced essence of God. When we are fully alive, God is fully present with us in the experience of life and that is holiness lived and breathed.

So our task is to know where we come alive and go there, giving ourselves to what we love. And being engaged with the experience of the encounter with God.

Do what you love! Love what you do! Life is as simple as that. And Life is synonymous with God. We can’t have one without the other. To be fully alive is to be in the presence of God. To be in the presence of God is to be fully alive. Finding what has life for us and being alive with life flowing over spilling out is what we are here for. Find what you love! Love what you do! Be one with life and one with God! That is all there is to it!