/13

In reaching out with my prayer into the ether asking God to show himself (see previous chapters), actually to be honest it was to any deity or supernatural being, I found myself eventually no longer alone. It was of course the God of the Christians who allowed me to draw close. Not that I saw God, that would have terrified me and I would probably have checked myself into a psychiatric clinic. But in the same way we can feel the wind but not see it, sense the light of day but not see the actual light but only its effects, so I felt the very breath of God within around and about me.

I was not alone. But I could still feel loneliness. I wasn't perfect. But over the many years since I have been led to see how very far away I am from the purity and beauty of God, so unfit to have anything to do with God. I feel naked and ashamed and completely vulnerable, and that is a welcome purifying spotlight that leads us all to want to say sorry to God and to ask for forgiveness for what we call our sins.

So I had made some progress. I hope we all have. Having explored my inner being, having searched for an encounter, having found what I was looking for, having felt the warm presence of the divine, I should have settled the question once and for all. This should be THE END.

This experience with God isn't an end, but a beginning, the start of a life long journey.

What do you do when you find God, apart from falling to your knees? Well a challenge is issued to dismantle your walls and change your life to live as God commands and not simply as we see fit.

The greatest struggle in seeking union with the divine is smashing down all inner resistance and there is a great deal to be attacked and demolished.

We have to reach, in this journey, a point of absolute submission to this creator and giver of life. To be prepared to hand over your very life itself to God, to remove all barriers and all sense of “I”. How easy it is to write these words, how easy it is to read them, how very very hard to do in reality. It is a great struggle.

All our ideas, values and plans, motives everything else has to removed and replaced in order for us to be made new in the only place that matters, our souls.

Handing yourself over is hard beyond comprehension.

Reaching that point of utter submission brings a wonderful reward. It brings peace to all the warring internal struggles.

A word of warning, getting to this stage in our spiritual growth, is not the end. Every time we climb a mountain and think at last I have arrived, you grab your breath and as you are about to relax suddenly before you appears a fresh mountain. It will always be this way, always. We can never complete this journey. It will last the rest of your life.

But it is worth it.