My dear friends...

We have been discussing here what I have called The Holy Experience, in a long series of articles that have formed the content of The Weekly Bulletin now for many weeks. I trust that these articles have served you, and I am delighted to move forward in this discussion this week with an observation about the difference between “exploring” and “seeking.”

I have learned in my life, after spending years looking for The Holy Experience (which, of course, is the experience of Divinity) that I can’t stay where I am and experience Divinity if I believe that Divinity is not where I am. And I apparently believed that it was not where I was, or I wouldn’t have gone looking for it.

We’ve talked here in previous weeks about two others tools: Yearning, and Willing. To recap: Yearning is the expression of a person who is not now experiencing. If you are experiencing something, you do not yearn for it. Yet yearning can produce an experience—in which case the yearning has ended.

When the energy called Yearning is combined with the energy of Willing, and when those two energies are then further combined with the energy of Exploring, one can arrive at The Holy Experience very rapidly.

Exploring something is not the same as seeking it. You may be seeking wealth in your life, but when you will it (call it forth), you are then able to explore every aspect of what it is like. You may be searching for love in your life, but when you will it (call it forth), you are then able to explore every aspect of what it is like. So seeking and exploring are not the same thing.

Seeking is looking FOR something. Exploring is looking AT it.

When you are exploring something, you already have it, and you are moving deeply into every aspect of that experience of having it in order to know the thing fully.

It is natural after yearning for, and then willing, the experience of Divinity to begin an earnest exploration of ways in which to have that experience fully. (There are many ways in which to have the experience of wealth. There are many ways in which to have the experience of love. And there are many ways in which to have the experience of Divinity.)

Yet, natural as it may be, exploration of one’s Divinity takes courage. The fact that a thing is natural does not mean that it is easy—and in this case that may be especially true. For embarking upon an exploration of something is an announcement to the Self and to anyone who witnesses our personal process that we do not now have a full Knowing of that for which we have yearned.

The step of Exploration is a stepping out. It is an inner—and in some cases an outer—declaration that we are an explorer, that we are choosing to Know something completely. Or, as the late author Robert Heinlein put it, to grok it in fullness.

Heinlein could not find a word in the English language that came close to the kind of total, complete, and utter knowingunderstandingcomprehendingexperiencing? that he was describing in his novel A Stranger in a Strange Land, so he invented a word: grok.

To be one who seeks to grok, to be an explorer, may not be comfortable. In fact, it rarely is—until we redefine for ourselves what comfort is. (There are some people who are very uncomfortable not being an explorer!) And we will “explore” more of that next week!

Hugs and love