How to Get Closer to God: A Journey Beyond Religious Boundaries

Silence has a peculiar way of making us uncomfortable. In those quiet moments between sleep and waking, when the world hasn't yet demanded our attention, something stirs within us—a longing, perhaps, or an awareness of absence. Millions of people across cultures and centuries have felt this same pull, this inexplicable desire to connect with something greater than themselves. Whether you call it God, the Divine, the Universe, or simply the Sacred, the yearning remains remarkably consistent across human experience.

I've spent years exploring this territory, both personally and through conversations with spiritual seekers from various traditions. What I've discovered is that drawing closer to the divine isn't about following a rigid formula or checking boxes on a spiritual to-do list. It's messier than that, more personal, and infinitely more rewarding.

The Paradox of Seeking

Here's something that took me years to understand: the very act of desperately seeking God can sometimes create the distance we're trying to bridge. It's like trying to catch your own shadow—the harder you chase, the more elusive it becomes. This doesn't mean we should abandon our search, but rather that we might need to reconsider our approach.

In my twenties, I attended every spiritual workshop I could find, read stacks of books on mysticism, and tried meditation techniques from a dozen different traditions. I was spiritually exhausted, and ironically, felt further from any sense of divine connection than when I'd started. The breakthrough came when I stopped trying so hard and started simply being present.

The mystics have always known this secret. Whether you look at Rumi's poetry, Teresa of Ávila's writings, or the teachings of Ramana Maharshi, they all point to a similar truth: God isn't hiding somewhere waiting to be found. The divine presence is already here, closer than our own breath. Our task isn't to travel great distances but to remove the barriers we've constructed.

Cultivating Sacred Awareness in Daily Life

Most spiritual traditions emphasize the importance of regular practice, but what does this actually look like in the context of modern life? I'm not talking about retreating to a monastery (though if that calls to you, by all means). I'm talking about weaving threads of sacred awareness through the fabric of ordinary existence.

Prayer, in its broadest sense, doesn't require specific words or postures. Sometimes my most profound prayers happen while washing dishes, feeling the warm water on my hands and experiencing genuine gratitude for the simple miracle of running water. This shift in perspective—from viewing daily tasks as obstacles to spiritual life to seeing them as opportunities for connection—changes everything.

I remember a conversation with an elderly woman who told me she found God most clearly in her garden. "Every seed that sprouts is a resurrection," she said, her eyes bright with certainty. She wasn't speaking metaphorically. For her, tending plants was a form of worship, a daily practice of co-creation with the divine.

The Role of Community and Solitude

There's an interesting tension in spiritual life between the need for community and the necessity of solitude. Both serve essential functions in drawing us closer to God, though they work in different ways.

Community provides mirrors. When we gather with others who share our spiritual aspirations, we see our own struggles and triumphs reflected back to us. We learn that our doubts aren't unique, that others have walked similar paths and found their way through dark nights of the soul. There's something profoundly healing about singing, praying, or simply sitting in silence with others who understand the journey.

But solitude offers something community cannot: unmediated encounter. In the quiet spaces away from others' expectations and interpretations, we meet ourselves and the divine without intermediaries. This can be terrifying. Without the buffer of social interaction, we're left with raw experience, with questions that have no easy answers, with a presence that defies our attempts to categorize or control it.

I've found that neglecting either dimension leads to spiritual imbalance. Too much community without solitude can result in a faith that's more social than spiritual. Too much solitude without community can lead to spiritual narcissism or delusion. The path to God seems to require both the challenge of relationship and the clarity of aloneness.

Wrestling with Doubt and Darkness

Let me be honest about something that spiritual books often gloss over: the path to God isn't always blissful. Sometimes it's characterized more by absence than presence, more by questions than answers. The medieval mystics called this the "dark night of the soul," and while the phrase has been overused and misunderstood, it points to a real phenomenon.

There have been periods in my life when God felt utterly absent, when prayers seemed to hit a ceiling and bounce back, when all the practices that once brought comfort felt empty and mechanical. During one particularly difficult stretch, I considered abandoning the spiritual path altogether. What was the point of seeking something that seemed determined to remain hidden?

But here's what I learned: these dark periods often precede breakthrough. They're not punishment or abandonment but invitation—invitation to go deeper, to release outdated concepts of the divine, to discover faith that doesn't depend on feeling. Some of my most significant spiritual growth has happened not in moments of ecstatic connection but in the patient endurance of apparent absence.

The Transformation of Desire

One of the most profound shifts in drawing closer to God involves the transformation of our desires. This isn't about suppressing what we want or pretending we're above human needs and longings. Rather, it's about discovering that our deepest desires point beyond themselves to something infinite.

Augustine captured this beautifully when he wrote about the restless heart that finds rest only in God. But what does this mean practically? In my experience, it means learning to trace our surface desires back to their source. The longing for love points to divine love. The hunger for beauty reflects our connection to divine beauty. Even our less noble desires—for recognition, security, power—often mask deeper spiritual needs.

This process of transformation doesn't happen overnight. It's gradual, often imperceptible, like the slow turning of a plant toward light. We might notice one day that things that once consumed us have lost their grip, that we're able to hold our desires more lightly, that we can enjoy good things without grasping at them desperately.

Sacred Texts and Living Wisdom

While direct experience forms the heart of spiritual life, we'd be foolish to ignore the wisdom preserved in sacred texts and teachings. These aren't just historical artifacts but living documents that continue to speak across centuries and cultures.

However, approaching sacred texts requires a particular kind of reading. It's not about intellectual analysis (though that has its place) but about allowing the words to work on us, to reveal layers of meaning as we grow and change. A passage that seems obscure or irrelevant at one stage of life might suddenly blaze with significance years later.

I've found it helpful to approach sacred texts with what the Benedictines call "lectio divina"—divine reading. This involves reading slowly, meditatively, allowing phrases to resonate in the heart rather than just the mind. Sometimes a single sentence is enough for a whole day's contemplation.

But we must also remember that wisdom isn't confined to ancient texts. God speaks through contemporary voices too, through poetry and art, through the natural world, through the insights of other seekers. The key is developing the discernment to recognize authentic wisdom wherever we encounter it.

The Practice of Presence

If I had to distill everything I've learned about drawing closer to God into a single practice, it would be this: cultivate presence. Not presence as a technique or strategy, but presence as a way of being in the world.

This means learning to inhabit our bodies fully, to feel our feet on the ground and breath in our lungs. It means engaging with others not from behind masks of personality but from a place of authentic openness. It means approaching each moment as if it matters—because it does.

Presence is both the simplest and most challenging spiritual practice. Simple because it requires no special equipment or esoteric knowledge. Challenging because our minds are constantly pulling us into past and future, into stories and strategies, anywhere but here and now where God waits.

I've noticed that when I'm truly present, the question of how to get closer to God dissolves. In presence, there's no distance to traverse. There's only this moment, this breath, this inexplicable mystery of existence that we're all participating in whether we realize it or not.

Integration and Daily Rhythm

The spiritual life isn't separate from ordinary life—it's ordinary life lived with awareness and intention. This means creating rhythms and practices that support our connection to the divine while remaining flexible enough to accommodate the unexpected.

For some, this might mean rising early for meditation or prayer. For others, it might mean taking contemplative walks or maintaining a gratitude journal. The specific practices matter less than the regularity and sincerity with which we engage them.

I've learned to be wary of overly ambitious spiritual programs. Better to commit to five minutes of daily practice that we actually maintain than to attempt an hour that we abandon after a week. Consistency trumps intensity in spiritual life.

It's also important to remember that life itself is practice. Every interaction, every challenge, every moment of beauty or sorrow offers an opportunity to deepen our connection to God. The question isn't whether we'll have opportunities for spiritual growth but whether we'll recognize and embrace them.

Beyond Individual Journey

While the path to God is intensely personal, it's never merely individual. As we draw closer to the divine, we inevitably find ourselves drawn into greater connection with all life. The boundaries that seemed so solid begin to soften. We discover that serving others isn't separate from serving God but is perhaps the most direct path to divine encounter.

This expansion of identity and concern happens naturally, without force. As our hearts open to God, they open to creation. We find ourselves caring about justice not from ideology but from love. We engage in service not from duty but from overflow.

This is where the spiritual path reveals its ultimate paradox: in seeking God, we find ourselves. In losing ourselves in divine love, we discover who we truly are. The journey that began with personal longing leads to universal connection.

The path to God isn't a destination but a way of traveling. It's not about arriving somewhere but about how we move through the world. Each step, taken with awareness and love, is both journey and arrival. In seeking God, we discover that we are already found, already held, already home.

Authoritative Sources:

Augustine. Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick, Oxford University Press, 1991.

McGinn, Bernard. The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century. Crossroad, 1991.

Teresa of Ávila. The Interior Castle. Translated by Mirabai Starr, Riverhead Books, 2003.

Underhill, Evelyn. Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness. Dover Publications, 2002.

Bourgeault, Cynthia. Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening. Cowley Publications, 2004.

Rohr, Richard. Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer. Crossroad Publishing, 2003.

Keating, Thomas. Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel. Continuum, 2006.