"The chief thing that separates us from God is the thought that we are separated from God."

—Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart

The sense of distance from something larger than ourselves may not be a description of reality. It may be a description of a thought we are having about reality—a thought that, once believed, tends to produce exactly the experience it predicts. We feel alone, so we contract. We contract, so we feel more alone. The story reinforces itself.

Keating spent decades exploring what happens when that thought is simply not followed. Not argued against, not replaced with a better thought—just not followed. What remains, his teaching suggests, may be closer and more available than the distance ever implied. Whatever we name as the ground of our lives—God, Presence, Love, Reality—it is not be waiting to be reached. It is what we are already inside of.