We have many ideas and beliefs about God and what God is. We attribute many characteristics to God: infinite, omnipresent, etc. And some of us attribute very human characteristics because it is all we can imagine: loving, jealous, judging, punishing. Some people don’t believe that God exists at all.
I never really had any of these beliefs. Instead I had what I considered and still consider a direct experience of God. It began when I was a very young child, maybe five or so. Probably before that. I lived in a house with two alcoholic parents. Life was unpredictable, sometimes violent and mostly terrifying. I slept, as they say in the old westerns, with one eye open because I never knew that was going to happen.
Alone in the woods that surrounded my house, I discovered a very different experience. Here there was no fear. I felt connected to every rock and plant and creature. The birds would sing my name. I felt at home, protected and loved in a way I never experienced in my house or anywhere else. And something else. With all the fear that was the rest of my life gone, I often felt filled with a powerful light and love. I was at peace. I was happy. After I learned the word God, I came to understand this as the Presence of God. I felt filled with God. It is possible that without this experience I may not have survived my childhood. So I came to understand God as this experience of being filled with light and love, of being at peace, of being happy, of being Home.
By the time I reached adolescence, I had become harder and tougher, at least on the surface. My attention moved on to other things. I rarely experienced this powerful inner light and love. I began to seek it outside in my girlfriends, where the world told me it was.
At twenty-two, completely unexpectedly, I experienced a powerful awakening. Not only did the experience of light and love return, that was all there was. The experience was so powerful it just blew everything else away. The limited angry young human vanished completely. You might say only God was left. For ten days I lived in this bliss. I healed people simply by shinning this powerful unconditional love on them. And this love was all that I was.
Ten days after it began, this experience faded. Or maybe it is more accurate to say that the sense of a limited separate person returned and overshadowed it. I had no idea how it happened so no idea how to keep it or find it again. I had tasted Nirvana. I had lived in Heaven. I had experienced God. And, more than anything else in my life, I wanted that back again. That was the true beginning of my spiritual search. Forty years later, after many different practices and teachers, after many smaller awakenings, it emerged again. This time more mature, more solid, more consistent. It wasn’t so much all the practices and teachers, although they certainly played a part. It was simply my own readiness. Now I was ready to live in the experience of God. I was ready to return Home.
There is an interesting acronym for the word ego. It is “Edging God Out”. And readiness to experience God directly is simply the readiness to let go of what is in the way, to let go of everything that is in the way. That also includes any beliefs or ideas about what God is. And it includes the belief that you have ever been separate from God. When all beliefs, all attachments are let go, the direct experience of God is right here. It has never been anywhere else. We tend to search for God everywhere else but right here. This is exactly why we cannot find God, why we cannot directly experience God.
I have nothing to say about what God is. This experience burns away all thoughts and ideas and beliefs. It leaves you empty so you can be filled with God. And that is better than any thought, idea or belief. This is the real deal. This is the direct experience of God. As it turns out, this has never been separate from you.
Beautiful. Thank you.