Excerpt from Spiritual Enlightenment

I was not raised into any religion. I was allowed to explore the experience of spirituality and of life through my own sense of intuition. I had never believed in the personified version of God that existed as a man somewhere in the sky. I was not in any way religious, although since childhood I had a need at times for prayer. A need to speak with God, the universe, whatever it may have been. To ask for help. This existed until the day I experienced what God is.

In the week before my experience, there was still a sense of separation during my meditation. It seemed there was a barrier between myself and existence. I would try to force through it, not understanding where it began and where it ended. I stepped through trees, their leaves giving off immaculate colors from the season’s change and I would know that they were beautiful but I could not experience them fully. Even with what felt like an empty mind, I still had the sense that a greater peace would be felt without this thin layer of separation.

On one day, I sat in meditation, experiencing once again this barrier to peacefulness. I had finally to ask myself, what is this? Why are you not content? The answer that came immediately was that I am looking. In a sense of frustration I ask myself what, what are you looking for? Then I realized, God. For maybe my whole life I’ve been looking for God. It was my theory that God existed in everything, however not until that moment did I experience it. I realized, why are you looking away when God is in everything. It is in every cell within me. It is not only in the trees and the rocks, it is in this very room. On this material that touches my skin, in the air that I breathe in.

Suddenly, I melted into everything, and everything melted into me. For the very first time, there existed no border between myself and the reality around me. No barrier to separate me from existence. As if a drug had settled into my bloodstream, I felt a sense of complete bliss and weightlessness that I drowned in for the entire week. A feeling that even now I can slip into at any moment.

It was very strange, I thought, that I could have known this intellectually for many years without having had experienced it. To know that there is no barrier while still experiencing a barrier. In an attempt to come back to a state of oneness, we can use the mind to create an understanding of the world around us. It can conclude that if there was a beginning of the earth, then the same materials all were used to create everything that exists within it. Even that which has been manufactured by man. It can conclude that there is a driving force within everything that creates life out of nothingness, that is responsible for growth and for aliveness. What is this force, but God? What is God but the nature that exists within everything? It can be concluded that all material does not die but is broken down into its smallest parts and recycled back into existence. That every material we touch and we see is in fact ancient and filled with what we can call God.

This is what the mind had already concluded. The trouble was that it was only information collected in the mind. Until I searched within myself to find what was limiting, I could not experience this. I still only was experiencing the barrier. Collecting information will not transform you. It will be necessary to go within and know yourself. To unravel all of the limits that have been created by the mind itself.