Bet that subject title got your attention? A recent series of events occurred that has given me quite a bit of contentment and inner peace. I’m going to try and relate what happened to me but just like relating dreams to someone else, it’s probably not going to make a lot of sense or be as profound for you as the experience was for me.
Here’s the tl;dr version:
I’ve always been a spiritual but not religious person. I’ve done large doses of LSD and had an extraordinary experience with sound but nothing religious or divine. My wife and I, along with one of our kids as well, had to euthanize our very old dogs because of cancer. So death and if there is anything after death had been on my mind. Couldn’t get to sleep, internally debating the existence of heaven, can pets go there, then started thinking about the nature of hell, does God exist, etc. In a totally darkened bedroom with my eyes closed, I experienced a complete and abject darkness that was suddenly pierced by a staggeringly momentary, yet indescribably intense light that I have no doubt whatsoever was inspired by God. I suddenly _understood_ and had answers to all my questions about heaven, hell, devil and God.
Yeah, if I would read this statement before experiencing it, I would without a _doubt_ close out this web page immediately. Since college, I’ve _always_ believed God doesn’t talk or communicate to any one person or make and/or control anyone do anything. But it happened to me. I now know, without a solitary doubt, that heaven is not real, hell is not real, the devil is not real but God most assuredly is.
For the complete story and astonishing conclusion, you have to read the long version.
A knowledge of my religious background will help to understand the foundation of my beliefs, that were initially formed in what would now be an absolute impossibility, a liberal Southern Baptist church. Our Pastor would pray for the killing to stop and for the end of the Viet Nam war, marched with Dr. King in the 60s (he was a white man), did missionary work, etc. But he was still all hell, fire and brimstone if you weren’t a Christian. It was either heaven or hell but if you “accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior”, your ticket to heaven was punched Express… no matter what sins you committed. Sunday school teachers pounded it even harder, “…even Hitler could go to heaven if he was a Christian.”
But if you weren’t a Christian, you went to hell.
Even as a 10-12 year old child, that just didn’t seem right to me. I used to get into arguments with Sunday school teachers about how a “just and loving God” could exclude all the Jews, Muslims and Hindus in the world from heaven and condemn them to hell. When I turned 13, I was rather persistent and vociferous with the parental units that I wasn’t going to church anymore and after much screaming, I was no longer required to attend church.
Didn’t really give religion much thought after that until a couple of years later in high school when I go to a Seals and Crofts concert. After the last encore, they said they were going to hang around and talk about what inspired their music, the Baha’i faith. My girlfriend wanted to see what they had to say so we stayed and learned how they think God sent various messengers down to earth, including Jesus, Mohammed and Buddha. They believed in the unity of all people and were against racism and sexism. Sounded really intriguing and in college I took several religion classes (Dante’s Inferno was quite the trip) so I learned the basics of all the major faiths. I was particularly intrigued by the Jefferson Bible, which is an unpublished book by Thomas Jefferson where he removed all the magical and supernatural facets of Jesus in the New Testament.
I had major philosophical differences with all of the religions I studied and won’t waste time now reciting chapter and verse of the various issues. I eventually decided I wasn’t going to follow any organized religion but I firmly believed in God, heaven and hell. I kinda settled on a Universal Mind concept of God, a spiritual entity that was responsible for but did not control human life here on earth.
After I became a Registered Respiratory Therapist, I began to see just how brutal human beings can be to other human beings. Between all of the innocent victims of gunshot wounds, rapes, stabbings and other assorted trauma, I began to question whether God really answered the prayers of those who had just been murdered.
I don’t remember all the specifics of this particular incident, blocked it out from memory no doubt, but it convinced me that God just doesn’t intervene in human lives. A young child, victim of horrible abuse from Mom’s boyfriend, essentially beat to death because he peed his pants. Mom praying and wailing to God to please save her child, saying she will do _anything_ God asks her to do, go to church, repent her sins, _anything_. The child flat lined and died, as she was praying to God with all her might.
If God didn’t answer that prayer, God ain’t answering _any_ fucking prayer.
I always used to tell people I worked with in a hospital that when I died and if I made it to heaven, God was going to have some explaining to do on the whys and how’s of innocent kids getting cancer, suffering horribly and then dying from it. I needed some help to understand how a just and loving God could allow that to happen to innocent children.
Eventually settled on believing in a non-interventional God who was good and responsible for all that was good, a devil who was evil and responsible for everything that was evil. Heaven was where good people were rewarded for living a good life and hell was where bad people were punished for living a bad life. I know, grossly simplistic but it worked for me seeing disease, trauma and death on a daily basis.
I was quite content with that interpretation for almost all my life but a series of totally random and insignificant events blended together to give me what I’m characterizing as an Inspirational Clarity. One of our dogs, who had been with us over 13 years, was rapidly approaching her end of life from cancer. We had the vet come up here on the mountain and euthanize her. One of our kids was dealing with the exact same situation and their dog was almost 16. I had read the Rainbow Bridge poem many years ago, so I sent it to them to provide support and love. Feeling pretty low, decide to watch some comedy to lighten things up, cue up George Carlin and this kinda stuck out:
It was a little too heavy on subject matter, so I did a channel scan and a rerun of Modern Family we’ve seen 10-15 times was on. Here’s the part that caught my attent
Damn, that was heavy for a sitcom.
Fuck this, time to go to bed, get some rest and sleep but haven’t been to RIU in a while, so after I go to my usual Indoor Grow and Grow Room Construction subs, the Inspirational sub kinda catches my eye, for the first time ever. I read a thread from urhighness, from KY (where I was born and raised) describing the horror of her child being murdered. Jesus God Almighty, no Mom should have to suffer that fucking horror. Do an indepth search on what exactly happened, they are from Owensboro, a town I’d been to many times as my grandfather was a conductor for the L&N railroad. Read the whole, tragic story of a 15 y/o, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, who was murdered. The absolute horror of this sentence stays with me:
“When life gets broke down so far from a pain so desperate to be done, food has no taste, the sun has no warmth, and you realize there will never be a better time in your life than what has already been had... there is nothing left worth having.”
