Krishna Playing His Flute: calling all back to God
painting by Gargi/Lakshmi of Anandashram
Recognizing the Presence of God is something many have difficulty in doing, and doing so consistently. It is not that God is far away from you, that is not the problem. In fact, for the brain the opposite is true. The Presence of God is so familiar that the brain has ceased to cognize it.
Let me give you an example. Your eyes take in photons bouncing off every object in the room in which you sit, however your brain has learned to filter out much of what you see as not worth noticing, or another way of saying it, it has become efficient in processing what seems relevant. So, instead of seeing everything in the room within your 180 degree viewing range, your brain only sees certain objects. If someone walks into the room you may notice them only, and while your eyes have been seeing the chair as well as all other objects in the room, it only notices the chair when the person sits on it. The real truth is that what you see is really a complete fabrication by your brain.
All of your senses function in much the same way. Your brain, being efficient, only presents to your conscious mind what it thinks is required and what it can make sense of. If something is not deemed useful, the brain does not see it. There are other faculties of the brain that are also turned on or off depending on what are useful. Your ability to recognize certain sounds, appreciation of beauty, intuition, or God-consciousness are abilities of the brain that may never have been turned on because it was deemed not relevant to your situation.
A spiritually oriented child may never lose the faculty to recognize God, while a more earthy child does not see the value in it, so that ability quickly drops away. The Self may be like a breeze you do not notice, or some fixture of a room you have grown familiar with, or any other countless phenomena going on all around you that you simply do not notice.
In the book The Science of Religion Yoganandaji makes the point that all human beings seek out happiness, and that only through God-experience can anyone find lasting happiness; therefore knowing God is a universal necessity that has been largely unrecognized. When the value of God-experience is truly known, the search for triggering the part of the brain that can see and feel God begins.
Because the brain is not used to seeing the value in knowing God it overlooks what it already knows; much like seeing but not seeing the chair in the room. Spiritual practice is learning the necessity to know God. Until the brain fully appreciates the value of Bliss, Light, and intuitional Wisdom that can only come from the Divine Presence it will treat the whole idea like a foreign concept that it chooses not to see or feel.
If your brain does not recognize the supreme value of God-experience, do not think it is because you do not have that ability. Rather, slow the mind down and feel what is already present within you. Learn to perceive the sacred behind all other experiences, for it is the vital life within that makes life possible. God is not absent because He is distant; rather you do not see Him because He is so very close to who and what you really are.