The Practice of Oneness

 Bernadette Roberts

There could be no premature manifestation, however. We could not put on Christ like a coat or work from the outside in. First we had to realize his own permanent, abiding state of oneness with the Divine before we could move out of this oneness or hope to manifest it in our own lives. It is one thing to believe and at times see or experience our oneness with the Divine, but it is quite another to abide experientially in this oneness to the extent that it would be impossible to live any other way, or to have no other choice. 

But this is how the contemplative practice of oneness gradually becomes the whole of life: practice eventually brings us to a turning point, after which, life itself becomes the practice, life is the practice -- life is the manifestation. The day I saw how this work, however, was still a long way off. Yet I knew the immediate goal -- to come to Christ's same abiding oneness with God in order to live out this oneness in my own daily life.

Journal of Ongoing Formation, November 1987