What’s it like to dive in the deep? I don’t know as I’m not a confident swimmer and don’t like being out of my depth! And yet every day God asks me to go diving. I want to go through some routine to assure my safety and put on my oxygen or at least my snorkel but God tells me that ritual is not necessary and that if I simply trust, I will keep breathing.
In my search for an experience of God I used to sit and pray and meditate for hours. I was looking for some experience that took me beyond the humdrum normality of my everyday life. I wanted to feel a sensation in my body – heat, tingling, anything. I wanted to feel an intense joy and to be able to think only pure thoughts. Sometimes I did feel some of these things and then I’d want to meditate for longer and when I stopped meditating I would feel a sense of disappointment, even fear at finding myself back ‘in the world’.
I decided that something wasn’t right about this. I had been born into the world so why would I have such an intense desire to escape from it? The truth was that I didn’t feel part of the world – I had no sense of belonging. I realised that I needed to heal more than I needed to meditate. Since that day I have chosen not to partake in any ritual whereby I might try to escape from myself and the world again!
Holding Hands with God 