The Changing Face Of God In My Life PartIII

As the years went on, I was in and out of church membership but always seeking. About fifteen years ago, probably more, I read a book titled “Shall We Call God Mother?”…written by a Southern Baptist male. So, God became mother as well as Father. I explored the Divine feminine. I discovered that the Buddha healed several hundred years before Jesus. Hmmm…healing wasn’t just a gift for Christians. I knew the Holy Spirit lived in me but…God was generally external. Then I reached a point of despair…Father…Mother…Brother…all were short circuited by how those words were defined in my sub conscious.   And then I realized that the word God also short circuited into the definition of God given to me by my mother, grandmother and aunts. I needed a way out. I knew someone who went to a Religious Science church and I knew that the beliefs were based on cause and effect and they didn’t care what you called God. I went and began to redefine who/what the creator, maintainer, sustainer of the universe was. I realized I didn’t believe in the God in whom I was told to trust and I had to ferret out those false images from my subconscious.

The first class I took in the new church was “The Power of Decision” based on a book by the same name written by Raymond Charles Barker. I started to learn how the subconscious worked. Then I discovered Thomas Troward. In one of his books he poses the question “What is the natural state of a human being?” I almost answered “I’m a sinner saved by grace” until I realized that the natural state of a human being is that he is made in the image and likeness of God and that everything God is…man is. No, man isn’t God, but has all the same qualities as God. A cup of seawater isn’t the ocean, but tested in a lab they will show that they have the same qualities. That was a biggie. I studied for five years…I became a practitioner…now mind you, being a Religious Scientist doesn’t mean you’re not a Christian. You can be a Christian or not…it’s the Science of Mind…originally based on the teachings of Jesus. I began ministerial studies and I left with a year to go. I had learned what I needed and it was time to put what I had learned into practice.

Along the way, I had become aware of a 20th century mystic named Joel Goldsmith. I had bought one of his books and it was waaaay over my head. I was in a resale shop one afternoon and there were two of his books,,,25 cents apiece…I couldn’t leave them there. They were on meditation…about going to God in contemplation of a question, ultimately going into the silence asking nothing…just with “your grace is sufficient…speak Lord, your servant hears.” Now, this was a huge one for me. I used to argue with Jesus about “Seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things shall follow…” I’d tell him I didn’t have the time to wait for things to manifest…the rent was due, I needed this, I wanted that, blah, blah, blah. But I followed Goldsmith’s instructions and it was wonderful…until I went backwards and took practitioner training, which is all about getting stuff. About six or seven years ago, after I left Religious Science, I got really serious about the Goldsmith material. And I flourished spiritually. In the midst of a lot of chaos…a body that hasn’t healed from a bad fall…not being able to work…losing my beautiful big apartment…I feel more content than I ever have in 71 years. The God that I have grown to know is different from anything I ever thought that God would be….gentle…all encompasing…ever present. A presence…not quite a feeling, but a knowing, a loving, a caring…indescribable, but that’s no surprise, because who can describe the infinite? He comes to me in the song of a bird…the purr of a cat…in wonderful music…in laughter, in company, in solitude. I can’t explain. All I know is that GOD IS and I AM.

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