What It's Like To Suddenly Start Completely Believing In God
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What It's Like To Suddenly Start Completely Believing In God<br>It happened to me.<br>Lydia Laurenson<br>Aug 03, 2022
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Preface:<br>I began working on this piece years ago. It’s gone through several drafts. I published one previous draft in 2021, briefly, then unpublished it.<br>The reason for my hesitation has been that this piece tends to trigger people who don’t believe in God — in particular, atheist skeptics. I’m close to a number of these folks. When I’ve asked them to read the draft, I found their outrage and condescension to be exhausting, and deeply demoralizing. I have quailed at the prospect of attracting more of the same from strangers.<br>My request for any such person who reads this is as follows: Please understand that the intention of this piece is not to persuade you of anything. It is simply “notes from the road” by a person who had a certain set of spiritual experiences. If you comment publicly, or message me about this piece, please consider choosing not to interact as if you or I have something to prove.<br>It may be for the best that this took so long to publish, as there ended up being a twist ending. And of course the story, which is part of my life story, is unfinished. I hope that some good comes from finally publishing this today.<br>“And though I know that there are no words that can express this inner journey of mine, I believe in words. I am a believer of words.”<br>~ The character of Rumi as portrayed by Elif Shafak in her fictionalized account, The Forty Rules of Love
I’ve heard stories about how people seek God. Some pray for hours, every day. Some meditate. Some travel to meet the enlightened.<br>One metaphor I’ve heard is that spiritual seekers are trying to get into a club with a zealous bouncer. You can go, over and over, day after day and month after month. Eventually, the bouncer might take a liking to you and let you in.<br>I did not think I was looking. I never went to the bouncer and begged for entry. The divine happened to me suddenly; I didn’t consciously make a choice.<br>I used to catch myself complaining about it, aloud or silently. And I felt so embarrassed!<br>How strange, how selfish that I would complain. I hear about people who beg for a sign. I hear about people who spend decades seeking a moment of awakening.<br>And it’s absolutely something to be grateful for. Even if it leaves you feeling lost. Even if it changes everything. Even if it puts you on a seemingly endless road of change.<br>On the day I found God, I thought I was going to a fun professional meeting.<br>This was 2016. I was on a business trip. I was meeting a man I’ll call “Jason,” who’d gotten connected to me by a friend. I knew Jason worked in an emerging tech field; my plan was to discuss digital strategy and product development.<br>Nope! Instead I connected to the universe, or something.<br>This is not a joke or a metaphor (besides how life is a joke and a metaphor!). But this is tricky to explain, because I don’t know how Jason did it.<br>Jason’s office is small and unassuming, with white walls. Jason himself is a hyper man in his fifties. We started out chatting about mutual friends, and digital media, and Burning Man. I wasn’t sure I liked him because he kept interrupting me. I was jetlagged, having landed from San Francisco the day before. I was wondering how to get a quick synopsis of Jason’s work so I could go back to my Airbnb and crash.<br>It was a normal networking meeting. I’ve met hundreds of people in similar circumstances. And then.<br>There came a moment when Jason met my eyes and said, “From here, I could totally mess with you,” and I suddenly realized he was right. He had activated — what? Perhaps you could call it a cheat code for my brain.<br>It may be useless to describe what happened on the material plane, but I’ll try. Here’s one thing I saw him do: He held my gaze, and he seemed able to perceive the shift when I stopped paying attention. At those moments, he would drag my attention back into the present. Sometimes he did this by waving a hand in my peripheral vision. Sometimes he did it by telling me to listen to sounds around me, to look at what was in front of me.<br>I could feel that he was doing something, altering my state, but at first it did not occur to me to be afraid.<br>As we kept talking, my consciousness shifted. My mind felt clear as a bell. My awareness opened outwards and expanded, encompassing patterns I’d never consciously seen before. And then we talked about God.<br>“The world around you is a language,” Jason said to me. “Forces are moving that we don’t understand. Reality is the mind of God.”<br>And I perceived exactly what he meant.<br>People often get weird when one talks about God. So here’s a disclaimer.<br>I am not here to convert you. I don’t follow a dogmatic religion. I’m writing this in an attempt to remember, and to share how it felt.<br>I did not expect to have this experience of the divine. Yet I’ve learned that...