The Kingdom Was Never Somewhere Else

There is something about the teachings of Jesus that becomes incredibly beautiful when we stop approaching them only as rules to follow and begin experiencing them as an invitation to awaken.

This is not an argument against Christianity.

It is not an argument against church.

It is not an argument against religion, scripture, prayer, ritual, priests, pastors or spiritual teachers.

All of these things can be beautiful.

Community matters. Gathering matters. Sitting beside another human being in prayer matters. Singing together, grieving together, celebrating together and reminding one another of what is sacred matters. But community and conformity are not the same thing. Faith and dogma are not the same thing. Surrender and obedience to an institution are not necessarily the same thing. And perhaps the church was never meant to become a place where we outsourced our relationship with God.

Jesus continually redirected attention away from outward appearances and toward something deeper.

When asked where people should worship, he said the time was coming when worship would belong neither to this mountain nor Jerusalem, but that true worshippers would worship “in spirit and in truth.” — John 4:21–24

When teaching prayer, he did not say that God could only be reached through a temple. He said: “When thou prayest, enter into thy closet… and pray to thy Father which is in secret.” — Matthew 6:6

Paul would later write: “God… dwelleth not in temples made with hands.” — Acts 17:24

And even more intimately: “Ye are the temple of God, and… the Spirit of God dwelleth in you.” — 1 Corinthians 3:16

Read those words slowly.

The Spirit of God dwells in you.

What happens when we stop treating that as poetry and actually sit with what it might mean?

What if prayer is not simply speaking to a distant God somewhere beyond the clouds?

What if prayer can become so quiet that eventually the one asking, the asking itself and the One being asked begin to feel less separate?

This is where prayer begins touching meditation. Where words become silence. Where seeking becomes surrender. Where trying to reach God becomes an openness to the presence that was already here. Jesus said: “The kingdom of God is within you.” — Luke 17:21, KJV. Other translations render this “the kingdom of God is in your midst,” and that distinction deserves respect. But either way, Jesus is pointing away from the idea of a kingdom arriving as some ordinary external spectacle.

There is something here worth contemplating. Perhaps awakening to God is not about adding more beliefs.Perhaps it is about removing what obscures love.

The fear.
The judgment.
The identity.
The endless mental stories.
The obsession with being right.
The separation between “us” and “them.”
The belief that God belongs more to one group than another.

Jesus continually moved toward the people religion had pushed away.

He touched the untouchable.

He ate with the rejected.

He forgave.

He served.

He surrendered.

He loved.

And when asked to summarize the law, he brought everything back to love: love God, and love your neighbour as yourself. Maybe that simplicity is telling us something. The deeper spiritual path may not be about controlling life until it conforms to our beliefs. It may be about surrendering deeply enough to discover what remains when our resistance to life falls away.

Not rigidity.

Allowance.

Not superiority.

Humility.

Not separation.

Communion.

Not fear.

Love.

And this is where the teachings of Jesus can open into something profoundly contemplative and even non-dual.

Christian traditions will interpret the relationship between humanity and God differently, and I don’t need everyone to agree with my interpretation. But when Jesus says, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30), and later prays that his followers “may be one, as we are” and even “that they also may be one in us” (John 17:21–23), I hear an invitation into a depth of union that cannot be understood through intellect alone.

It must be lived. It must be surrendered into. You do not need to abandon your church to discover this.

You do not need to abandon Christianity.

You don’t need to abandon your prayers, traditions or practices.

Go deeper into them.

Let church become community rather than conformity.

Let scripture become contemplation rather than ammunition.

Let prayer become communion rather than transaction.

Let meditation become the silence beneath the words.

Let your spiritual practice soften the boundaries you have constructed between yourself, humanity, creation and God.

And perhaps, eventually, you may discover that the distance you spent your entire life trying to cross was created largely by the mind.

God was never hiding.

Love was never absent.

The sacred was never confined to a building.

You were never required to search the entire world for what could only be discovered through surrender.

Be still.

Look deeply.

Love completely.

And allow yourself to discover what has been here all along.

The Kingdom was never somewhere else.