Falling
In Love
With God
"Have
you ever wondered if it is possible to fall in love with God? If someone
asked me that question thirty years ago I would have said that I don't even
know what God is about. So much has changed for me since that time. Today I am
both awed and humbled by the love affair I've had with my Source."
~ Author
of this web site |
How
did it all happen for me? What brought it about? How is something like
this even possible?
I
was raised a Christian. The priests and nuns who educated me were nice
people who meant well. However, they also had been trained to believe in certain dogmas and
other religious teachings, almost all of which were man made.
Many of these
teachings, rooted in fear and guilt, were
passed on to my innocent mind at such a young age. Needless to say, it
made a deep impact on
my thinking and behavior. When we are young, we believe and accept so
easily. They know that.
As I grew into adulthood, the
fear and guilt associated with these dogmas
stayed with me. Looking back, it seemed like endless visits to the
confessional box every week with feelings of sin, dirtiness, and worst of all, fear of God.
I
was taught that God was "up there," I was down here,
and they were needed to make the divine connection for
me.
As a
child and young adult, I learned that God
was someone who got angry, was jealous, created hell for bad girls and
boys who ate meat on Fridays, drank water before receiving communion on Sundays,
and on and on.
In the Old Testament,
God was someone who started wars, sent angels to kill the first Egyptian
new-born males, sided with nations against other nations at war with one
another, was jealous, and more and more of the same. It's time for these foolish fairy tales to end and the truth be told.
How can anyone even
begin to appreciate what God is all about when there is fear, guilt, and
hell to pay for believing in our Creator? What an impossible situation.
Sadly, it still goes on. Were Jesus alive today, I often wonder what
he
would say about all of this.
Things began to change for me 30 years ago. I didn't realize it at the time
but I was about to enter into a severe spiritual crisis or
Dark
Night of the Soul experience that began in 1991 and lasted seven
long years. During
that time, I lost of my job, career, marriage, home, cars,
virtually all of my personal possessions, all that I had worked for in
life, and was left penniless with a lot of back taxes and debt to pay.
It
was a stunning contrast to the many years I had been a responsible provider and head of household. Towards
the end of my crisis, I began to lose confidence in myself. Because of it,
my self-esteem suffered a great deal. That was
replaced by a deep sense of hopelessness and dread that made it very, very
difficult to function normally in every day life. More and more I turned
to God for help just to make it through another day without losing my
sanity.
While
these external changes were turning my life upside down, I was also going
through a profound spiritual awakening that was turning my inner world
inside out.
Amazingly, just when my crisis began to intensify during 1991,
my sister gave me a book to read called, Seth Speaks. I had
never heard of New Age teachings, and this book was no
exception. I was stunned by the profound and radical effect it had on me.
My mind and heart was instantly propelled towards a very powerful
spiritual awakening.
Five
years and several hundred New Age/spiritual books later, I was beginning to
understand that God is something we will never fully comprehend with our
minds. It's just too big a thought. It's like a drop of water trying to
wrap itself around the ocean. It became clear to me that all of my wondering about God
was taking place in
my mind. It took me a while to figure out that the place to really
comprehend and appreciate God was in the heart...through feeling.
My
first real insight into God began in 1995 when I read a remarkable book
called, Conversations with God (Book 1). Since that
time, it has become my all-time favorite.
As I
began to read that book, my concept of God changed dramatically. No longer
was my Source the God I'd always feared. Rather, God now became someone
who loved me unconditionally no matter what I did.
For the first time I
began to
understand the connection that exists between myself and God, and it made so much
sense to me. This new insight reached a place deep within my soul that
awakened a sense of
wonder and truth that felt so good and so right. It literally changed my
entire perspective of All That Is overnight. All of a sudden God became loveable.
That
was the beginning of my falling in love with God. The affair had just
started. More was to come. From June 1996 to the late fall of 1999, I
fell deeper and deeper into spiritual crisis. It was the three most difficult years
of my life. Towards the end, all that was left was
God and myself.
Slowly
but surely, I
began to realize that the most important part of spiritual crisis,
especially when severe, was to have a serious one-on-one with
God. After all, if there were too many distractions in one's life, how
could someone really get to know our Source. And if you don't begin to know and
understand God on an intimate basis, how can the both of you fall in love? That's one of the
problems today. We've created too many distractions for ourselves within
the material world. We've misplaced our God-centeredness.
It was during the fall of 1998 that I hit bottom. The
hopelessness and despair was so bad I could barely walk across the room.
Worse still, it felt as if God had truly abandoned me even though my heart
knew otherwise. I was still unemployed,
destitute, borrowing for my living expenses, unable to help my family, and severely depressed because of it
all. No one really understood what I was going through...including myself.
I
reached a point where I simply couldn't take it any more. I told God that
when the lease on the ramshackle cottage where I lived came up for renewal the following May
I would walk the streets with Him, but I
would not borrow another dime to pay the rent and other bills. Nor would I live with
family any more. I was more than capable of earning my own way.
That's
when things began to change for me. That was the turning point. That's
when I surrendered and chose Father/Mother God as my sole source of
sustenance and security rather than money or
anything else the material world had to offer. That's what the entire nine
years of intense spiritual madness was about: putting God before money.
From that point forward, I committed myself to God, not in
bitterness or resignation, but with trust and love.
Soon
after surrendering, the intense fever of spiritual crisis began to break
and, out of the blue, a miracle occurred. I was offered a lucrative
consulting assignment from someone whom I hadn't spoken to in 10 years. That
opportunity would last for 13 years, and I was finally able to help my
former wife and children.
From
that moment forward, things fell into place,
as if by magic. They continue to do so up through today, even
though life still has its challenges and tests at
times.
Several
times, during the darkest moments of my spiritual crisis, I asked God to come and
take me because I just couldn't go on any more. These were times of severe
depression and hopelessness. When I did, my Source always came along to pull me back from
the edge of total despair. These momentary
healings were short-lived,
because God wanted me to continue walking the path as much as I could on my
own. On the other hand, they were so incredibly loving and helpful.
In
other instances, I saw how time and time again Mother/Father God brought other miracles into my life
over the past 20 some odd years to show that Spirit was there for me
when the road of life got bumpy. I also began to understand how this whole experience transformed
my inner world in ways I never dreamt of.
At
one point, all the dots of this collective experience connected and
crystallized for me.
For the first time in my life I began to feel in my heart how God truly loves me and
wants nothing but my highest good.
That is when I fell deeply in love with my Source. Today I continue
to cry tears of gratitude and joy every time I think about the magical
love affair I've had since surrendering to the will and care of God years
ago.
Our
minds will only take us so far when it comes to understanding God. What
takes us much further in our love affair with Spirit is our hearts. That's where the
feeling is. It's the most profound way that God
connects with us.
Sooner or later each and every one of us will fall
deeply in
love with God. I wish that experience and feeling for all who read these
words. The
wise ones say this love affair becomes more and more profound as we journey
through eternity. What an incredible adventure. I am truly awed and
humbled by it all.
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