A new dating app for Gods, Goddesses, Teachers, and Saints?

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The divine is everywhere, all the time, if we slow down enough to notice.
Yet it is also helps to have some guidance, a mentor, or an inspirational teacher.
A humorous idea is that someone should come up with a dating app for Gods,
Goddesses, Teachers and Saints.

You fill out your profile, and then describe the divine partner you are looking for.
Then the app shows you a list of possible dates, and you swipe left (uninterested) or
right (interested). Then you start messaging with the divine beings that you are
interested in, asking them questions, seeing how you relate to them, exchanging
photos. Finally you whittle the list down and eventually go on a date with the being.
The first dates are exploratory, but over time you become more intimate and loving.
Then both parties; you as an individual, and the archetypal being develop “faith”.
Faith is love that remains consistent over time. At some point you decide this is a
sacred covenant for this lifetime and beyond, and you get “married” to your divine
partner.

Easy, eh?

Have a rendezvous with your transcendent being every day.
A deeper approach is when it seems that the divine form and tradition chooses you.
When someone close to me was 13 she found herself at an open air Taizé service.
Taizé is a Christian community located in France which has attracted thousands of
young people with its focus on chanting, singing repetitive short phrases in many
languages in candlelight. During the service she had an experience of being
overwhelmed by love, a love that was real and that lies at the heart of the universe,
and a sense of being utterly seen and known by this love. The feeling lessened over
the next few years but in her first week at university a stranger knocked on her
window and asked if she wanted to go to church. She hadn’t thought of going but
said yes. On that first occasion she had a powerful sense that the other people at the
church knew much more fully what she had experienced at the age of thirteen, and
she again experienced something of that love and joy. That day, she met people who
have remained friends and are her spiritual community, and over the years their
children have grown up together.

My own story is that I had a student, Diane Stanley who was a Tibetan Buddhist, and I
asked her “where might I find a Dzogchen (nondual Buddhist) master?” She looked at
me strangely and said “come to my house on Tuesday”. It was there that I met
Shenphen Dawa Rinpoche, who I had an intimate relationship with for over 20 years
until he died, and I will continue to be guided by him forever. It felt to me,
poetically somehow, that Diana was “sent” to bring me to my teacher.

As a wise man once said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.” 1

The real guide

is one who makes you see
your inner beauty,

not the one who wants to be admired.

Rumi

 

The company of saints
is like a gentle breeze
that carries the fragrance of divinity

Unknown

 

The spiritual teacher
is like a mirror.
He reflects the light
of your own Self back to you.

Anonymous

 

 

1 Matthew 7:7 (New International Version, The Bible)