One thing all spiritual paths share is that they all lead to awareness – awareness of who we are – Self-Realization, Self-Knowledge, Self-Recognition, etc.
It’s no secret. I can say it: Who we are is God.
But, as far as we’re concerned, that may remain an idea, something intellectually known. As such it doesn’t ring the bell. It doesn’t fuel a bonfire of Self-Recognition.
We have to at least feel something before it moves us to act, never mind realize.
When we realize who we are, in that moment of recognition, in that stillness of mind and openness of heart, God meets God.
If God did not desire to meet Itself, in a world where only It exists and fills every illusory and created Being, none of this would be here. Collectively, as the multiverse, we’re the holodeck on which a particular voyage and drama of Self-Realization is being enacted. (1)
The various paths call this enlightenment, illumination, salvation, buddhahood, Ascension. It’s a basic act of realizing who and what we are, the Truth of our existence.
Love may be the means, but the drama of life culminates in a moment of ecstatic Self-Realization (“O Thou I!”) … in a world where, it becomes clear, only God exists. (2)
I imagine that, when I realize I don’t exist, I’ll break out in laughter. But who then laughs?
Footnotes
(1) See The Purpose of Life is Enlightenment, at http://gaog.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Purpose-of-Life-is-Enlightenment.pdf
(2) Bayazid of Bistun in Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy. New York, etc.: Harper and Row, 1970; c1944, 12.