First Experience of God

It wasn't until about a year later that I thought to myself I had better make good on my promise and I started where most Westerners would probably start: by picking up a copy of the bible. I read the Gospels, and although I found myself drawn to a lot of the teachings of Jesus Christ, I never considered what I was reading to be any more than a book. One night I was up late reading in bed, and I came to a passage in one of the Gospels that to this day I wish I had earmarked, but I think it was either in the book of Matthew or the book of John. I found myself reading and re-reading this one piece of writing, stopping in between to try and process exactly what I was reading but drawing a complete blank. I felt as if there was something just beneath the level of my conscious perception that I was missing out on, that despite reading this particular passage multiple times I was still missing out on the real meaning contained therein, and that there was something potent lurking beneath the relatively banal surface-level layer of literal meaning. You know when you check your watch and then realise after that you didn't register the time? It was exactly like this. I decided to stop, put the book down, and say a prayer to God. "I can sense that there is something in this writing, but I cannot see what. If it is your will, if I am at all worthy, bless me with an insight to see what is really written. Amen." I turned my lights out and went to sleep.

I should add that at this stage despite praying, I was not a believer in God: I was however open to the prospect that a reality represented by the word God might actually exist, and I was offering a prayer with an open mind and an open heart and literally seeing what happened.

Sometime in the early hours I was awaken by a strange phonecall. My phone was on the table next to my bed, and I answered it almost immediately. "Hello?" I said, "Hello?" said the voice on the other end of the phone. "Who's this?" I asked, "Who's this?" was the mocking reply, imitating my tone of voice. "Yeah what?", I was now more than a little annoyed at the obvious prank caller, "yeah what?" came the reply, just managing to finish before I slammed the receiver down in a half aggrevated, half too-tired-to-care manner. I was living in student digs at the time, and prank calls of one nature or another were relatively common among the internal phones that every room had. More significant to me though, was the fact that I had been woken out of a very deep sleep in just such a way that I was aware of what I was dwelling on once I fully regained waking consciousness, something which rarely happens, to me at least (I often cannot recollect upon waking exactly what the deep levels of my mind were mulling over only a few seconds previously). Allow me to elaborate: the moment the first ring of the phone went off, I "awoke", but I awoke within my deep level of sleep, within my unconscious mind if you will. It took a few seconds and a few more rings of the phone for me to fully "ascend" out of deep unconsciousness and into a full waking state, and as I gradually ascended, I equally gradually lost my grip on whatever it was that my mind was dwelling on, so that by the time I fully awoke, I was left with only an imprint and a vague memory of the thing that I was previously fully connected with. I hope I have explained that well enough to understand.

The thing itself is something that cannot be put into words. As far as our relatively puny consciously controlled minds go, it was something so significant and meaningful and powerful as to be able to exist only in conceptual form; but in my deep levels of sleep, while my waking mind was dormant and an older more venerable part of my mind was doing the business, I was fully aware of it and fully connected with it. I only remember thinking right before I fully awoke and lost it for good, "If only I could tell people about THIS!". It was monstrously epic, and profoundly positive. Beyond that, I have no waking recollection of it to speak of.

That day marked the first day of my true believer status. I experienced something profoundly life-changing, and have walked the earth ever since with a sense of something I can't quite put my finger on.

What was it? This "thing" that can exist only as an ungraspable concept in the waking mind I am using to type this blog? I do not know, for certain, but it was something very deep and very powerful and profoundly positive and pure. Was it God? Was it the Holy Spirit? It was certainly a revelation, and it was as real as the socks on your feet, or the monitor you're looking at to read this blog.

Date experienced: Approx. Winter 2003