{"id":18039,"date":"2025-07-03T05:12:20","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T05:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/?p=18039"},"modified":"2025-07-03T05:12:20","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T05:12:20","slug":"nowhere-to-be-found-and-nowhere-to-be-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/?p=18039","title":{"rendered":"Nowhere to Be Found and Nowhere to Be Lost"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

God is nowhere. God is everywhere. God is.
These aren\u2019t contradictions. They\u2019re co-ordinates on a map that doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

\n

Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence? \u2013 Psalm 139:7<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The ancient psalmist asked what mystics, theologians and poets have whispered through centuries. But what if the answer is not only that God is\u00a0everywhere<\/em>, but that there is no\u00a0where<\/em>\u00a0apart from God at all?<\/p>\n

Not even the space in which the question arises is free of what we try to name.
Not even the silence between thoughts is untouched.
This isn\u2019t omnipresence like wind in a chapel.
It isn\u2019t that God fills space.
Space is inside God.<\/p>\n

In every tradition, this truth shimmers like heat on the horizon.
The Qur\u2019an says, \u201cHe is with you wherever you are.\u201d
The Upanishads: Brahman is that which pervades and is all things<\/em>.
Meister Eckhart: \u201cGod is at home. We are in the far country.\u201d
But even these affirmations tremble within language too small.
God with us. God in us. God above us.
Each phrase still draws a line, as if God sits beside, behind, beyond.
But what if even withness <\/em>is too much distance?
What if God isn\u2019t a guest in the room,
but the architecture of being itself,
the impossibility of walls,
the fire that makes form possible?<\/p>\n

To say God is everywhere <\/em>is still to imagine \u201ceverywhere\u201d as a cup to be filled.
But what if that very idea of cup <\/em>is an illusion?
God doesn\u2019t fill a container.
God is the overflowing that renders all containers meaningless.<\/p>\n

Not presence in a place.
Presence as the fact of place.
Not an eye that sees all,
but the seeing, the light, the very possibility of vision.<\/p>\n

And even that is too much.<\/p>\n

This is where language begins to crack.
To speak of God is to feel the floorboards of thought buckle.
We say God is Being itself<\/em>\u2014and already we reduce.
We say God is not Being<\/em>\u2014and already we vanish into fog.
The truest speech may be silence.
Or a tongue that knows it\u2019s burning.<\/p>\n

The mystical path doesn\u2019t give better answers.
It dissolves the need to ask.
We can\u2019t say \u201cGod is in things,\u201d
nor even \u201cGod is the ground of things,\u201d
because both betray a split: source and stream, flame and ember.
But if the truth is more intimate\u2014more terrifying\u2014
then there are no \u201cthings\u201d apart from God.
No location more or less holy.
No time before God arrives,
no exit once God departs.<\/p>\n

There is no arriving at God.
There is no being distant from God.
There is not even a we that could move towards or away from.<\/p>\n

So too must dissolve the cherished binaries:
transcendence and immanence,
near and far,
divine and dust.
God isn\u2019t closer than your breath.
God is your breath,
and the lungs,
and the air,
and the silence between each inhale.<\/p>\n

God isn\u2019t \u201cthis\u201d or \u201cthat.\u201d
God isn\u2019t even \u201cis.\u201d
The categories fail.
They burn up on contact.<\/p>\n

To say God is nowhere to be found and nowhere to be lost<\/em> is not a riddle.
It\u2019s a surrender.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t find God.
We don\u2019t experience God.
For experience presumes subject and object,
a seer and the seen.
But if God is all, there is no subject left to seek,
no object left to behold.
Only the undivided blaze.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWe are part of this apartness,\u201d I\u2019ve written.
And God includes even that.
This isn\u2019t pantheism.
Not panentheism.
Not metaphysical theory.
Not spiritual claim.
It\u2019s the unravelling of every place
where theory and claim once stood.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

God isn\u2019t a thing.
Not a no-thing.
Not Being.
Not the absence of Being.<\/p>\n

There isn\u2019t even what is.<\/p>\n

Only this:
the non-local, non-conceptual,
non-differentiated flame
that can\u2019t be spoken of without lying,
and can\u2019t be denied without lying, too.<\/p>\n

And so we don\u2019t end.
We vanish.<\/p>\n

Not with a resolution, but a relinquishment.
Not with a discovery, but with the disappearance of the one who seeks.<\/p>\n

God isn\u2019t here.
God isn\u2019t there.
God Is<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

And that is all.<\/p>\n

\n

Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI will be what I will be.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u00abRELATED READ\u00bb CRACKED OPEN: The sacred architecture of becoming\u00bb<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

image: George Payne<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

God is nowhere. God is everywhere. God is.These aren\u2019t contradictions. They\u2019re co-ordinates on a map that doesn\u2019t exist. Where can<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspiration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}