Epiphany

I'm a mystic. I bask in the presence of God.

I used a Buddhist technique to realize my awareness of God. That's ironic since the Buddha shared no opinions on divinity.

My wife, Carmelita, had given me a set of CDs by Mark Muesse on mindful meditation because I'd been feeling miserable. For a week or two, I spent half my time focused on breathing and the other half feeling itchy. It's easy to see why most people give up. I soldiered on, though, because I wanted to make sense of my misery.

My big epiphany came a few years later. By that time I was spending maybe ten hours per week meditating and often felt a rush of well-being like a waterfall through my heart. Seated comfortably, I would move my focus of awareness through a great variety of patterns such as: 

• breathing
• wiggling of toes
• interplay of light and shadow
• taste of chocolate raspberry candy
• scent of a rose
• sound of the home HVAC system

Eventually my focus fell on prayer. The presence of God felt intimately familiar yet rocked me like thunder.

Since I was a teenager, I had avoided praying for God to do things or give me things. I told my mom God wasn't Santa Claus. Prayer made people feel better, but it couldn't bring on a rainstorm any better than a dance could. Even so, I folded my hands and prayed earnestly like I remembered in childhood. Please God, help me. Please release me from my suffering.

In mindful meditation, I wasn't so much praying as watching the prayer happen with neither judgment nor expectation. It was suddenly plain to me that my heart resonated with a reality beyond me. I saw my heart dance ecstatically in response to the presence of God. I didn't just recognize the sacred presence. I recognized my recognition of it. This reality was a vast source of love, peace, and joy. 

In that moment, if any doubt of the existence of God had arisen, I would have laughed. It would be like worrying that my friend John was a hallucination or that the value of pi existed nowhere outside my imagination. 

If John was imaginary, my dog wouldn't sniff his butt when he came over to watch Steelers games. If pi was imaginary, my mind would be infinite. If God was imaginary, I'd be an illusion myself. Only a soul can yearn for God and celebrate divine reunion.

Those claims aren't proofs for the existence of John, pi, or God. God is not a conclusion I reached in my mind but a home I returned to in my heart. Hearing and reading about other people's journeys helped me chart my path so I'm sharing these experiences with you.