God as Word, God as Faith, and God as this Only Moment Body.
Copyright 1978–2004 Andrew Shugyo Bonnici, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved
Before world languages, words, and thinking minds, our Only Moment Bodies were intimate with the felt wisdom integrity of an Infinite and Nameless Mystery. Our bodies experienced this nameless intimacy with One Vast Wisdoming Mystery in the turning of the four Seasons, the waxing and waning of our Moon, the rhythms between day and night, the constant shifting of the weather, the endless breaking of ocean waves, and in the simple happenings of our daily life as we journeyed yearly around our Ancient Sun.
Our bodies sensed that the Nameless Wisdoming Mystery penetrated all Beings and Things without preference or comparison, just as they are, just as IT is. Thus, animate and inanimate forms — grasses, trees, stones, oceans, human beings, creatures, planets, and stars — were all honored as true expressions of the One Wisdoming Integrity of all Creation.
Through the evolution of our brain and its neurological capacity for language and thinking with words, we have turned our felt intimate relationship with the Nameless Wisdoming Mystery and our relationship to the world into the objective mental abstractions of names, categories, ideas, and beliefs. Thus it was that in the beginning was the Word God and the Word became God.
Before all creatures, beings, and things became the word objects of thinking mind, before the Word became God, we all lived intimately with the One Nameless Wisdoming Mystery through a deep Silence and Stillness within our Only Moment Bodies.
When the Naming of the Wisdoming Mystery occurred, IT became a personal expression of our humanity, a projection of our feelings, and a limited view of the Infinite Namelessness. Using the power of the word we called the Infinite Namelessness God, Allah, Great Spirit, Goddess, and Yahweh. Thus, the Nameless Wisdoming Mystery entered the history of humankind through the power of the Word.
All religious traditions claim ownership for this True Naming of the Nameless Wisdoming Mystery as their Own. Each claiming to be historically chosen by the Wisdoming Mystery in an intimate spiritual relationship more blessed than all the others. And finally, each religious tradition turned the Unconditional Wisdoming Nature of the Nameless Mystery into the bearer of behavioral conditions — a conditional Supreme Being who withheld or gave the grace of felt intimacy based on merits or demerits, good or bad actions, belief or disbelief.
Yet in the Beginning, before the word became God, the felt experience of the Nameless Mystery was not limited by history or religion. ITS home was, is, and always will be the eternal vastness of time and space, from the infinitely small to the infinitely great, from the infinitely seen in life to the infinitely unseen in death. The One Unconditional Mystery is not originally concerned with merit and demerit, good and evil, love and hate, atheist or theist.
Our original felt intimacy with the Nameless Wisdoming Mystery did not need temples, cathedrals, or churches to validate Its presence. The Vast Wisdoming Mystery had no need for priests, ministers, rabbis, or other holy men to preach of ITS existence. IT called to each of US, from within our Bodies, to be in boundless intimacy with IT as we journeyed through our life and death.
Likewise, the Nameless Wisdoming Mystery did not need our beliefs and holy books to claim our minds and hearts. We gave our hearts and minds freely to express our endless gratitude for the blessings of life, love, family, and friendship. Before the word became God, we had no need to historically integrate or cognitively grasp the Nameless Wisdoming Mystery within partial ideologies, absolute concepts, or exclusive beliefs. Neither fearing death nor grasping at life, we lived the Body of this Only Moment in complete trust that a still intelligent Oneness pervades our bodies, all of Nature, and the Universe as a whole.
We did not mistake our felt inborn wholeness to be our own 'I', 'Me' or 'Mine', for we knew, — through our whole body, before all thought and thinking — that our inborn wholeness was, and is, an Intelligent Oneness that pervades all beings and things equally throughout the universe, everywhere all at once without coming or going. This is how we came to bodily know that all beings and things are expressions of a Sacred Infinite Oneness that was, and always will be, the pristine foundation of our inborn spirituality and our all inclusive humanity. Thus it was before all naming. Thus IT was before ego-self and thinking mind; thus IT was before the Word became God.
Copyright November 1995 Andrew Shugyo Bonnici, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved
The Dictionary defines "faith" as: confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing; belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence; the theological virtue defined as a secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will.
The meaning of Original Faith differs from this usual understanding. Original Faith is the felt experience of our Innate Confidence and Trust in the Vast Wisdom that gives us Life, embraces us unconditionally in Death, and eternally sustains the manifestation of the Infinite Universe as a Whole.
Original Faith, as felt experience, is not a belief. It is the Original Way of being in our human body while experiencing life through our pristine senses before the mental influences of languages, histories, cultures, ideas, and religions. Original Faith is our Innate Felt Trust in the Vast Wisdom that is This Only Moment.
All Religions seek to nurture the felt experience of Faith — a deep innate confidence in the wisdoming wholeness of our embodied self, our relationship with others, our relationship to an infinite universe, and our passage into death. That confidence is the liberating basis and support for expressing the behaviors of humility, love, gratitude, integrity, purpose, and compassion for all sentient and insentient beings.
Although religious beliefs arouse and nurture the felt experience of Faith, they are not the actual bodily experience of Original Faith itself. Original Faith is the human need to consciously experience the deep meaning, entrustment, purpose, and confidence in the innate wisdoming wholeness of our physical body and its journey through life and death. This means that the need to consciously realize the felt experience of Original Faith is common to all human beings without exception.
ORIGINAL FAITH
No Practice can Gain It.
No Being can Lose It.
No Religion can Own It.
No Words can Capture It.
Breathing is Its Wisdom.
Silence is Its Presence.
Stillness is Its Nature.
Not Attached to Beliefs,
It is a Deeply Felt Confidence
in One's Embodied Self
and in each Moment as it Arises.
Its True Body of Meditation
may be said to Preserve the Breath
at the Dawning of Humanity.
Its Sincere Living Expression,
Beyond and Yet Inclusive of All Spiritual Beliefs,
is the Hope of the World.
Copyright November 1995, Andrew Shugyo Bonnici, Ph.D.
The Only Moment Body is Dr. Bonnici's central teaching — the experiential reality that this present breath, this beating heart, this living body is the direct manifestation of the Infinite Wisdoming Mystery.
When we speak of "God as this Only Moment Body," we mean that the Vast Wisdoming Mystery that all religious traditions seek is not found in a future state, a past belief, or an abstract theology. It is found exactly here, in this body, in this breath, in this moment — just as it is.
Applied Meditation Therapy® does not ask you to believe in any particular version of God or to abandon the beliefs you hold. Rather, it invites you to discover, through the daily practice of embodied meditation, the felt experience of that Original Trust — the confidence that your body, your breath, and your life are held in and by the One Infinite Wisdoming Mystery.
"Inside, this is just as I am. Outside, this is just as IT is." — Dr. Bonnici
This is not a theological claim — it is a description of what is directly available to every human being through the sincere practice of embodied Zen meditation and core-Self mindfulness. This Only Moment Body is not something to be attained. It is what you already are.
In summing up, we can say that the evolution of our concept of God as a meaningful reality must include a rational humility and a cognitive clarity that honestly acknowledges our human species-centricity and all the dogmatic, exclusive, absolute, and historically prejudicial views and divisive mental projections perpetuated by a variety of theistic world religions. On a more personal level, our human mental maps of reality will come closer to reflecting the true territory of this Only Moment Body when each of us is willing to honestly face the limitations and biases of our own spiritual, rational, logical, and scientific ways of knowing while learning to accept and live with our fundamental not-knowing when faced with an Infinite and Eternal Wisdoming Mystery that is inclusive of all things, beings, creatures, races, religions, cultures, and histories.
What all this means is that the evolution of God and the farther reaches of our humanity are both beyond all our racial, social, cultural, political, and religious differences. Each of us needs to incarnate deeply into this Only Moment Body to experience our boundless intimacy with a vast intelligent Oneness that exists in both life and death. In this Way, we will finally come to know that we all share an inborn Wholeness and a vast Oneness that is our True Home. Then we will come to know, through our very body, that everyone and everything is no other than the Vast Wholeness we daily experience as an original and unownable Self.
Dr. Bonnici's counseling and teaching supports all religions and walks of life — helping each person discover their own felt experience of the Vast Wisdoming Mystery.