The Temple Within: A Journey Beyond the Holy of Holies
An exploration of Solomon’s Temple, the mysteries of consciousness, and the forgotten art of directing the soul toward God.
I. The Temple That Was Never Meant to Contain God
Imagine standing before the gates of Solomon’s Temple.
Before you rises a magnificent structure, built of stone, covered in cedar, adorned with gold. Two enormous bronze pillars guard its entrance. Beyond them lie chambers that become progressively more sacred, more silent, and more inaccessible.
And somewhere deep within this extraordinary building is a room that almost nobody has ever seen.
The Holy of Holies.
No windows. No ordinary visitors. No crowds gathering to pray. Only darkness, silence, and an extraordinary sense of mystery.
Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest was permitted to enter.
Imagine being that priest.
You have spent your life preparing for this moment. You cross the outer courts, leave the noise of the world behind, and approach the great veil separating the sanctuary from its innermost chamber.
Your heart is pounding.
What awaits on the other side?
Will you encounter God?
Will you hear His voice?
Will you finally see what no ordinary human being is allowed to see?
But before we lift that veil, consider something remarkable.
When Solomon himself dedicated this magnificent temple, he asked a question that seems almost to undermine the entire purpose of building it.
“Will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!”
— 1 Kings 8:27
What a strange declaration.
The man who built the most sacred house in Israel recognized that its intended guest could never be contained within it.
Centuries later, the prophet Isaiah would deliver a similar message:
“Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What is the house that you would build for me?”
— Isaiah 66:1
Perhaps the temple was never intended to contain God.
Perhaps it was intended to teach human beings something about approaching Him.
And perhaps its architecture holds a deeper lesson about the most mysterious sanctuary we have ever encountered.
Ourselves.
II. The Two Pillars: Entering the World of Opposites
We begin our journey at the entrance.
Two great bronze pillars stand before us.
The one on the right is called Jachin.
The one on the left is called Boaz.
Their names are traditionally associated with establishment and strength.
They are not merely architectural ornaments. They stand at the threshold between the ordinary world and sacred space.
For centuries, esoteric traditions, including forms of Freemasonry, have interpreted these pillars symbolically.
One particularly fascinating modern interpretation associates them with the two hemispheres of the human brain.
The left hemisphere, frequently associated with language and certain analytical functions.
The right hemisphere, involved in many aspects of spatial processing, contextual understanding, and other functions.
Of course, real neuroscience is more complicated. Both hemispheres work together across enormous networks, and neither belongs exclusively to reason or imagination.
Nevertheless, as a metaphor, the two pillars invite an extraordinary reflection.
Our entire experience of reality is constructed through distinctions.
Light and darkness.
Pleasure and pain.
Good and evil.
Love and rejection.
Success and failure.
Everything the mind encounters becomes something it can recognize, compare, categorize, and interpret.
And gradually, these interpretations become the world we believe we inhabit.
A person insults us, and anger arises.
Someone embraces us, and affection appears.
We lose something precious, and grief takes hold.
We achieve something wonderful, and pride fills our chest.
We begin chasing pleasant experiences and resisting unpleasant ones.
Without realizing it, we become prisoners of a world that exists partly through the interpretations of our minds.
But the entrance to the temple invites us to notice something extraordinary.
There is an awareness in which all these experiences appear.
Anger comes, and something knows anger is present.
Fear comes, and something knows fear is present.
A thought appears, and something recognizes that thinking is happening.
In The Godward Way, we sometimes call this observing dimension the Bigger Eye.
Not another physical eye. Not a supernatural organ hidden somewhere inside the skull. Not even a separate entity that we can locate and examine.
The Bigger Eye is a way of describing the recognition that we need not be completely absorbed in whatever the mind produces.
And now, standing between the two bronze pillars, we face our first discovery.
We are not required to destroy the world of opposites.
We do not need to silence our thoughts, eliminate our desires, conquer our anger, or become indifferent to suffering.
We can recognize them without allowing them to determine the ultimate direction of our consciousness.
The pillars remain standing.
But we are no longer condemned to remain between them.
We may enter.
III. The Long Passage: Thirty-Three Steps Toward the Unknown
Beyond the pillars, our journey continues inward.
The outside world begins to fade.
The voices of the marketplace disappear.
The sunlight no longer reaches us.
Now imagine that the passage transforms into a staircase rising through the human body.
Vertebra by vertebra, it climbs from the base of the spine toward the skull.
The human spinal column is commonly described as consisting of approximately thirty-three vertebrae, although the number varies.
The symbolic parallel is irresistible.
Jesus is traditionally believed to have been around thirty-three years old at his crucifixion.
The Scottish Rite of Freemasonry has thirty-three degrees.
Certain spiritual traditions describe an ascending journey along the spine.
In Hindu traditions, Kundalini symbolism describes spiritual energy rising through centers associated with the body.
In some Kabbalistic interpretations, the human form itself becomes a symbolic expression of divine emanation.
These correspondences are intriguing, although they do not demonstrate that biblical architecture secretly encodes human anatomy. Solomon’s Temple is not described in Scripture as having thirty-three steps.
But suppose we allow ourselves to treat the staircase as a spiritual metaphor.
What would each step represent?
Not another level of secret knowledge.
Not another supernatural power.
Not greater control over reality.
Perhaps each step represents something far more difficult.
The gradual surrender of our obsession with possessing certainty.
At the first step, we want to know whether God exists.
At the second, we want to know whether He loves us.
At the third, whether He hears us.
At the fourth, whether our prayers work.
We continue climbing, hoping that somewhere near the top we will discover the evidence we have been searching for.
A sign.
A sensation.
A revelation.
A miracle.
Something undeniable.
Something we can remember tomorrow when doubt returns.
But an unsettling realization begins to emerge.
What if the demand for certainty is itself keeping us from the very encounter we seek?
What if our desperate desire to know whether we are receiving divine love is preventing us from simply becoming receptive?
The higher we climb, the more we discover how much of our spiritual seeking is secretly driven by fear.
Fear of abandonment.
Fear of being deceived.
Fear that nothing is happening.
Fear that we might spend our entire lives praying toward an empty heaven.
And perhaps most subtly of all, fear of forgetting.
We encounter something beautiful, some fleeting sense of openness, gratitude, or connection. Then we rush to capture it.
We define it.
We explain it.
We write it down.
We create doctrines, techniques, and elaborate systems of interpretation.
All because we are afraid that the experience might disappear.
But what if what we seek cannot be preserved by the mind?
What if every attempt to capture it produces only a memory of what has already passed?
We are still climbing.
And the question becomes increasingly uncomfortable.
Are we approaching God?
Or are we building an ever more sophisticated picture of Him?
IV. The Veil: The Last Illusion
At last, we reach the great veil.
Behind it lies the Holy of Holies.
The ancient sanctuary separated its innermost chamber from the outer holy place by a magnificent curtain.
The veil represented a profound boundary.
Beyond it lay a sacred space that ordinary human beings could not enter.
In contemporary esoteric interpretations, this veil is sometimes compared with structures inside the human skull.
One of them is the claustrum, a thin, deeply situated region of gray matter connected with numerous cortical areas.
Neuroscientists have investigated whether the claustrum participates in coordinating conscious experience. Its precise role remains uncertain.
Another structure is the arachnoid mater, a delicate membrane surrounding the brain.
Because of its web-like appearance, it is tempting to compare it to a sacred curtain.
These comparisons are poetic rather than established anatomical explanations of Scripture.
Yet they raise an interesting question.
What separates ordinary consciousness from a deeper spiritual orientation?
It is tempting to imagine that a literal barrier exists somewhere inside the brain.
Perhaps a secret chamber.
A hidden switch.
An anatomical doorway into divine awareness.
If only we could activate it, awaken it, or direct enough attention toward it, perhaps we would finally experience God.
But this is precisely where The Godward Way departs from much of the esoteric search.
God is not an object waiting to be discovered inside the machinery of the brain.
If you direct your attention toward your forehead, you may experience pressure.
If you remain still in darkness, you may observe lights, images, sensations, or unusual states of consciousness.
If you meditate deeply, your sense of time, self, and bodily boundaries may change.
Such experiences can be fascinating.
But why should any of them be mistaken for God?
A sensation is still a sensation.
A vision is still a vision.
An image of infinite light is still an image appearing within awareness.
Even the magnificent feeling that we have become one with the universe remains something we experience.
And anything we experience can become something we desire to repeat.
Something we try to possess.
Something we fear losing.
Suddenly, the veil reveals its most mysterious character.
Perhaps the obstacle is not a physiological barrier.
Perhaps it is our insistence that God must eventually become something the mind can recognize.
We imagine the Father as a presence.
Then we imagine a greater presence behind that one.
Then something more infinite, more luminous, more abstract.
But however sophisticated these representations become, they remain creations of the mind.
In this sense, the veil is not simply hiding God from us.
It is exposing our inability to stop constructing substitutes for Him.
And then we remember the ancient prohibition against making idols.
What if an idol is not merely a statue carved from stone?
What if it can also be a beautiful mental representation of God?
What if the image we most desperately want to encounter is the very thing we must surrender?
We reach toward the curtain.
And for the first time, we understand that we cannot carry our imagined God through it.
V. The Holy of Holies: Where There Is Nothing to See
Now imagine that the veil opens.
You enter.
There is no dazzling supernatural light.
No thunderous voice.
No angels descending from heaven.
Only silence.
Only darkness.
Only the extraordinary absence of everything you expected to find.
In Solomon’s original Temple, the Holy of Holies housed the Ark of the Covenant, overshadowed by cherubim. The chamber was not literally empty.
But it contained no image representing God’s physical appearance.
And that absence matters.
The God of Israel could not be reduced to the form of a man, an animal, or a celestial object.
The innermost sanctuary was not a gallery displaying what God looked like.
It was a place of encounter with the One who transcended representation.
And now, standing in our imagined inner sanctuary, we face a disturbing possibility.
Perhaps we have traveled this entire distance only to discover that there is nothing for the mind to grasp.
No object of concentration.
No divine face.
No sacred symbol.
No miraculous phenomenon.
No proof that we have arrived.
But something remains.
The capacity to direct ourselves toward the One we cannot represent.
And here, at the deepest point of the journey, we encounter the meaning of Kavanah.
Kavanah is a Hebrew word associated with intention, direction, and attentiveness.
In Jewish prayer, it concerns the inward orientation accompanying sacred action.
Within The Godward Way, it becomes the defining movement of consciousness.
Not an attempt to think about God.
Not an effort to visualize Him.
Not a repetition of descriptions about His nature.
But a deliberate, gentle, continuous orientation toward the unknowable Father.
A direction without an imagined destination.
Attention without possession.
Reception without demands.
We do not know what God looks like.
We do not know what divine love must feel like.
We cannot confirm that every moment of stillness represents supernatural contact.
Yet none of this prevents the act of turning toward Him.
And suddenly, we realize something beautiful.
We did not need to see God to direct ourselves toward Him.
We did not need to hear His voice to become receptive.
We did not need a miracle to offer our attention.
For the first time, we stop demanding that our experience provide evidence of God’s presence.
We simply offer ourselves.
And perhaps that is prayer in its most intimate form.
VI. The Crown: Where the Will Finds Its Direction
Our journey now reaches a final symbolic mystery.
The crown.
In Kabbalah, the highest of the ten sefirot is called Keter, meaning crown.
Keter is associated in several Kabbalistic traditions with ratzon, the will.
This is an extraordinary connection.
Because a crown does not merely occupy the highest physical position on the head.
It symbolizes authority.
That which governs.
That toward which everything beneath it is ordered.
And suddenly, the architecture of our spiritual journey begins to reveal another meaning.
The central question was never whether consciousness could ascend into a hidden chamber of the brain.
It was whether the will could discover its ultimate direction.
Consider how we ordinarily live.
We desire pleasure.
We desire security.
We desire admiration.
We desire love.
When we obtain what we want, we feel satisfied.
When we lose it, we suffer.
Our attention moves continually between possibilities, searching for conditions that will satisfy our desires.
We call this freedom.
But how free are we when every desire depends on circumstances we did not choose?
We can select from what life makes available.
We can pursue one opportunity rather than another.
Yet our bodies, histories, instincts, fears, and environments constrain what we can desire and accomplish.
The Godward Way proposes a different philosophical possibility.
Perhaps the deepest freedom does not consist in controlling the experiences life provides.
Perhaps it lies in the direction we give our consciousness while those experiences unfold.
We may not choose whether grief visits us.
But grief need not become the ultimate destination of our consciousness.
We may not choose whether anger arises.
But anger need not become the authority governing our spiritual orientation.
We may experience longing, terror, excitement, resentment, ambition, desire, or despair.
These experiences are not necessarily obstacles.
They are energies arising within the human condition.
And each can be caught and offered.
Not destroyed.
Not denied.
Not forcibly transformed into something pleasant.
Offered.
This is the heart of Catch and Offer.
The observing consciousness recognizes what appears while intention remains simultaneously oriented toward God.
There is no need to perform two separate acts.
We do not first detach ourselves from life and then remember the Father.
The recognition and the offering belong to one movement of Kavanah.
And this movement can occur anywhere.
In a church.
In a prison.
On a battlefield.
In a hospital.
During an argument.
In the midst of overwhelming pleasure.
Or while sitting alone in a dark room.
The outer circumstances may change completely.
Yet the direction remains possible.
Like a planet traveling through space, the soul has its own storms, movements, and changing conditions.
But the central question is what holds its spiritual orbit.
What is its ultimate center of gravity?
For The Godward Way, the answer is the Father.
Not because the mind has solved the mystery of His existence.
But because the soul has chosen its direction.
VII. The Unexpected Encounter: Love Without Evidence
There is still one question troubling the traveler.
We have entered the temple.
We have passed the pillars.
We have climbed the symbolic staircase.
We have crossed the veil.
We have abandoned our images.
We have oriented ourselves toward God.
But how do we know that He is receiving us?
How do we know that His love is reaching us?
This is perhaps the most painful question of the entire journey.
Because there is something profoundly vulnerable about loving someone whose response we cannot verify.
Human love generally offers signals.
A smile.
A touch.
A voice.
A message.
A gesture of affection.
We learn to recognize love through experiences.
But what happens when the beloved is beyond every category of human perception?
How can we know whether love is being received?
Perhaps we cannot know in the way we ordinarily demand.
And this uncertainty is not a minor inconvenience.
It is the very place where the desire for control becomes most visible.
We want assurance.
We want to measure our progress.
We want a spiritual instrument capable of telling us whether we are closer to God today than yesterday.
We want to know that our prayer is working.
But notice what has happened.
We have begun treating God as an outcome.
An achievement.
A desired experience.
Something that must provide evidence before we can trust the relationship.
And perhaps our fear has quietly turned prayer into a negotiation.
Give me something, Father, so I can know You are there.
At this point, another spiritual voice enters our temple.
The philosopher and mystic Simone Weil.
Weil understood prayer as a form of attention, an openness that does not attempt to seize its object.
Her approach invites us to reconsider the distinction between reaching for something and becoming capable of receiving it.
The difference is subtle.
When we grasp, we attempt to make reality conform to our expectations.
When we attend, we allow ourselves to remain present without forcing the answer.
And perhaps the greatest act of trust is to direct our attention toward the Father without requiring an experience in return.
Not because we have proved that divine love is reaching us.
But because our orientation is no longer conditional upon receiving proof.
We do not demand a feeling of love before becoming receptive.
We become receptive without demanding the feeling.
There is a profound freedom in this.
Even if no miracle occurs, something valuable has happened.
Even if no supernatural voice is heard, something has changed.
Even if science never establishes that meditation opens a channel to the divine, practices of contemplative attention can still support psychological well-being and emotional regulation.
Their practical value does not depend on demonstrating supernatural effects.
The spiritual interpretation remains a matter of faith.
And within that faith, we can continue directing ourselves toward the Father without pretending that a particular sensation proves His presence.
That is not a defeat.
It is the surrender of the demand to control the encounter.
VIII. The Great Return: The Temple Was Never a Place to Hide
Our journey could end here.
We could remain in the darkness.
Enjoy the silence.
Practice uninterrupted attention.
Escape the noise of human life.
But something unexpected happens.
The veil opens again.
And we are invited to return.
Back through the inner chamber.
Back through the corridors.
Back between the two pillars.
Back into the sunlight.
Back into the imperfect, noisy, unpredictable world.
People are arguing.
Children are crying.
Merchants are negotiating.
Someone is laughing.
Someone is grieving.
A stranger insults another stranger.
A lover waits for a message.
A prisoner hopes the door will open.
Nothing has changed.
And yet everything is different.
Because the temple no longer feels like a destination.
We realize that we never needed to physically withdraw from the world to practice Kavanah.
The silence of the inner sanctuary was only a beginning.
A place where we could learn the direction of attention without being overwhelmed by the demands of ordinary life.
But the greater adventure begins outside.
Can we remain Godward while speaking?
While working?
While desiring?
While celebrating?
While struggling?
Can we experience anger without allowing anger to replace the Father as the ultimate center of our consciousness?
Can we experience love without demanding that another human being become the source of our spiritual existence?
Can we confront conflict without losing our direction?
Can we pursue ambitions without mistaking their fulfillment for our ultimate purpose?
The Godward Way does not require us to retreat permanently into peace, serenity, or detachment.
It does not assume that spiritual life must eliminate conflict or dissolve the intensity of human desire.
Life may remain fierce.
Desire may remain powerful.
Grief may remain devastating.
Anger may burn.
The question is not whether these energies disappear.
The question is where they are directed.
And so we discover the greatest secret of the temple.
The Holy of Holies was not meant to become another room in which we imprison ourselves.
It was meant to teach us an orientation that we could carry into every experience.
We do not have to remain in darkness to pray.
We do not have to close our eyes.
We do not have to sit perfectly still.
The temple is no longer somewhere we must enter.
We carry the possibility of Godward attention wherever we go.
IX. The Final Mystery: The Temple That Disappeared
Our adventure began with a magnificent building.
Gold-covered walls.
Bronze pillars.
Sacred chambers.
A mysterious veil.
A room hidden from almost everyone.
We imagined the temple as a map of the human body.
We explored the brain, the spine, the mysteries of consciousness, the Kabbalistic crown, and the extraordinary possibility of directing the will beyond the mind’s representations.
But now something even stranger happens.
The temple itself begins to disappear.
The pillars fade.
The staircase dissolves.
The veil loses its meaning.
The Holy of Holies is no longer a chamber.
Even the image of the traveler approaching God begins to vanish.
Not because the symbols were meaningless.
But because symbols are not the realities toward which they point.
A map is useful only until we mistake it for the destination.
A representation can direct our attention, but it cannot contain the Father.
Even the words we have used throughout this journey are only temporary structures created by the mind.
God.
Soul.
Consciousness.
Will.
Love.
Temple.
Each word carries meaning.
Each word can illuminate something.
And each word can become another image to which we cling.
Perhaps this is why the Book of Revelation offers such a remarkable final vision:
“And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.”
— Revelation 21:22
The Bible begins with humanity in a garden.
Its history unfolds through altars, tabernacles, temples, exile, longing, and restoration.
Yet its final vision describes a holy city without a temple.
The building is no longer necessary.
The distinction between sacred chamber and ordinary space has been transformed.
And here the symbolic adventure reaches its most extraordinary conclusion.
We entered the temple hoping to discover where God was hiding.
But perhaps the deepest lesson was never about finding God in a particular place.
It was about discovering that no place, no image, no experience, and no concept could ever contain Him.
Not even the most sacred chamber of our own consciousness.
And what remains when every representation falls away?
We cannot describe it without creating another representation.
We cannot possess it without making it an object.
We cannot guarantee it without attempting to control what lies beyond our control.
But we can remain directed.
We can remain receptive.
We can Catch and Offer.
And we can continue doing so tomorrow, even if every feeling we experienced today has disappeared.
Epilogue: The Fear of Forgetting
There is one final confession.
Everything you have just read is another temple.
An architecture made of words.
Each paragraph is a corridor.
Each metaphor is a pillar.
Each philosophical explanation is another step toward something that cannot be explained.
And why have we built it?
Perhaps because we are afraid.
Afraid of forgetting the direction.
Afraid of losing the tenderness of an encounter we cannot prove.
Afraid that tomorrow, when work becomes overwhelming and life becomes chaotic, we will return to our old habits of chasing, grasping, fearing, and controlling.
So we write.
We explain.
We construct beautiful systems of thought.
We decorate them with philosophy, theology, neuroscience, and ancient symbolism.
We try to preserve something that feels too precious to lose.
And then we discover that even this beautiful temple of language is built partly from fear.
But fear does not need to become our enemy.
We do not have to destroy the temple we have built.
We can simply recognize it.
Catch and Offer.
The desire to remember.
Catch and Offer.
The fear of forgetting.
Catch and Offer.
Even the desire to understand Godward attention perfectly.
Catch and Offer.
And perhaps, in this final act, the entire journey becomes beautifully simple.
There is no need to climb another staircase.
No need to find another secret chamber.
No need to activate an invisible spiritual organ.
No need to manufacture a supernatural experience.
No need to explain one more thing.
Just this moment.
Whatever it contains.
And the gentle, deliberate direction of consciousness toward the Father.
Not because we know what awaits us.
Not because we have finally conquered uncertainty.
But because love need not begin with possession.
And prayer need not begin with proof.
The temple was built to teach us where to turn.
But once we discover the direction, we no longer need the temple.
Catch and Offer.
Kavanah.
The Godward Way.