YouTube: The Trinity Revisited
On occasion people will ask me about the Trinity. They usually say they understand the ideas of the Father and the Son, but they aren’t so sure about the Holy Spirit. Though a formal presentation of the Trinity is not put forward in the Gospels, John opens his Gospel with this important trinity of ideas: 1. God, 2. the Word, and 3. the creative ability of the Word. “… without him was not anything made …” Think of the Holy Spirit as the creative aspect of God, carried out through the Word, or the Soul.
Those of us who accept God as an omnipresent field of life, love, power, and intelligence wonder how this unseen Presence translates into the visible realm. John tells us that it is through the Word (Logos) that this universal presence expresses as individual forms of creation. “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” This is a clear example of the paradigm of oneness.
Think of the Holy Spirit as the desire in you to be and express more. It is an inner prompting that tells you there is more to life than you have experienced thus far. We often know this pressing out as dissatisfaction, a feeling of unrest that we cannot quite pinpoint. It often drives us to acquire and accomplish more with the hope that something we achieve will satisfy this unrest, that will signal that we have finally found the thing we seek.
Some who fail to find satisfaction in their acquisitions will denounce material gain altogether. This, however, will not cause the desire to subside. The Holy Spirit just keeps saying, “Come up higher. You hear and feel me speaking. Now, lift up your spiritual eyes and know your unity with God.”
Baptism of the Holy Spirit is a major spiritual breakthrough, the joyous experience of knowing your oneness with God. This is very different from contemplating the possibility of oneness. It is knowing without question that you are in God and God is in you.
If you are aware of this feeling, set aside time to sit quietly and listen with an open mind. “Here I am Father. Show me what I need to see.” Be still and listen.