Bhakti: A journey of Soul discovery

One: The Journal

I had never kept a journal until March 31, 2012, the day I randomly decided to start writing. Little did I know that the very next day I would be thrown into a journey that would require a life-changing shift in my understanding of reality.

In retrospect, I believe that I was guided to begin recording my journey so that I could eventually share it with others. Now, eight years later, I’m feeling guided to make my story public.

My transition from avowed atheist to a soul filled with devotion to God was initially fraught with disbelief. Desperate for a place to vent my incredulity, I used my newly opened journal as a repository for my unedited thoughts. Writing allowed me to express my awe freely and sort through the overwhelming newness of what I was experiencing.

To this day I am struck with awe at the magnificence of my experiences. The absolute knowing, and the confidence to diverge from preordained dogmas, came not from external influences but through my own inner experiences of union with divine Grace.

It was only through these unexpected experiences that I was able to change so radically and find a sure footing in my new faith. And while my journey was deeply personal and beyond the reach of doubts, the fundamental changes at first posed a profound challenge.

I’ve included in this book many letters to friends in which I express my struggles, fears, joys, and my initial massive confusion. I also include letters that reflect the guidance I received from beloved friends who helped me by serving as channels for divine Truth. Throughout the book I offer additional insights on spiritual topics that initially challenged me. I hope that this material will help the reader in their own search.

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In writing this journal, it was never my intention to publicly share the saga of my deep experiences, my inner struggles, my naiveté, my weaknesses, fears, and doubts, and my final, intimate relationship with the Divine. The journal wasn’t intended to be lofty, intellectual, or to be read by anyone but myself. I have edited my original writing for typos and clarity, but not for intellectual profundity. Thus I hope that as you read, you will feel the honesty and the depth of sincerity with which I wrote.

I’ve decided to share my story not for personal gain or a desire that my journey be publicly acknowledged, but because I feel inwardly prompted by a higher guidance to do so.

I would be more comfortable keeping these accounts to myself. Assembling them for publication was an uncomfortable step that I was inspired to take, a divinely assigned duty for my own spiritual progress. Any fears of public opinion that I might harbor must yield to the quest for inner expansion.

Remarkably, the story began with a letter to a friend in which I expressed my absolute rejection of any form of God.

3/31/2012 First entry

Dear Chris

Good evening, my friend. I wish that you’d been able to join me on this morning’s hike. It was so beautiful.

As you know, I’m not religious at all - I do not believe in a God. But sometimes I’ve experienced what, for me, is the closest I come to a spiritual epiphany. It happens in quiet moments when something so simple as an incredibly beautiful sky takes my breath away, or when I’m sitting outdoors in a stunning natural environment reading a great book, or when the perfect music is juxtaposed over an emotional event. It happens when I’m completely in the present and everything seems in perfect balance and miraculous.

Whenever I find myself there, I can think clearly, my senses are heightened, and my life feels larger. There is no formal religion, no God reaching down from above, just a gentle, amazing feeling of union with everything. These are my spiritual moments. This was my hike today.

I’m sharing it with you since you couldn’t join me.

I hope you and your family are enjoying wonderful celebrations. You’re so fortunate to have each other. Have a fantastic time.

Love,

J

Before the events described in this book began, there had always been an intangible, missing element in my life that felt just out of reach. I was aware of it from a very young age, and I can even remember as a child wanting to interview people in my search for it. However much I tried, I couldn’t identify it. I wandered for a half century, sensing that something important awaited me, and that I would know it when I found it. But whatever it was remained elusive.

For fifty years I was a judgmental atheist. I believed that religion was for the weak - an excuse people leaned on rather than take responsibility for their own actions and the course of their lives. I disliked it for its long historical association with power-grasping, social control, and financial gain.

I had never sought any form of a higher power. I definitely never consciously sought God. The idea of a powerful, all-knowing creator went against everything I believed.

I was raised by atheists. My parents were relatively conservative in the sense that they didn’t deviate too far from the social norms. They did not rail against institutions or try to make social statements. They were pretty much rule followers and seemed normal to me - but my normal may be unique since my parents were somewhat extreme in their own areas of interest.

When I was nine, my older brother and I moved with our parents from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara. My father was an engineer who had retired early to pursue his dream of being an astronomer. He created a company that would become a world leader in designing software and hardware for deep space research. He built a computerized, domed, rotating observatory in our backyard and collaborated on research projects with NASA and other observatories. Intellectual and professorial, there was no space in his view of the universe for an omnipresent Creator.

Guests in our home would periodically be treated to slide shows of deep space phenomena and discussions about the universe. My father spoke not of God, but of science.

When I was young, I would occasionally spend evenings in his observatory, enjoying his explanations of astronomical phenomena: deep-space nebulae, dual stars and black holes. I enjoyed our time looking through the telescope together, but his work didn’t hold the same mystique for me that it did for others. To me, it was all very normal - he was just my Dad.

My mother was very creative. Her art was, in the fullest sense, outside the box, and her creativity so completely defined her that her tombstone reads: She refused to color within the lines.

Her home was an ever-changing canvas. As adults, we never knew quite what to expect when we walked through the door, particularly if we hadn’t visited for a while. Sometimes she would forewarn us with a phone call about her latest creation, which might sound either amazingly beautiful, or horrendous. But the results were nearly always stunning.

As an example - she once called to announce that she was painting three of our living room walls metallic silver, and the fourth and largest wall a Pepto-Bismol pink. The ceiling would be metallic-gold, with a medieval chandelier to hold candles over the coffee table. Who in their right mind would imagine that this would have a good outcome? Yet when we came home, we inevitably found something magnificent. She had the creative vision to turn ordinary spaces into uniquely beautiful art.

Like my father, she did not believe in any form of a higher power. Both of them were born Jewish, although to call them practicing Jews would be misleading. We went to temple for the occasional Jewish wedding, but none of us ever resonated deeply with those experiences.

Growing up surrounded by my parents creativity fostered in me a sense that I, too, could accomplish anything I chose to. I’ve always felt very capable, independent, and confident - traits that deepened my inner sense that I alone could determine my fate.

Within that high-energy family circle I was quiet, introverted, and curious - an observer, preferring to spend time with a few close friends. I didn’t drink, smoke, or date much. I was squeaky-clean, never caused trouble, and wasn’t popular. I existed, waiting, going along quietly with the flow of life. I received decent grades in college, but school wasn’t terribly important to me. I enjoyed learning, but I hadn’t found my purpose. I was, in general, a fairly boring good kid.

Spirituality was absolutely never on my radar. If anything, it was on my list of things to avoid. The minimal exposure I had to religion never rang true. I had a few Christian friends, but I couldn’t understand why they would blindly believe whatever they were told. I had no personal experience upon which to believe any of it, and when asked, they didn’t seem to either.

My distrust of organized religions was fanned whenever I heard dogmatic misinterpretations of Higher Truth. In my early life, I had no idea what Higher Truth might mean, but I somehow sensed the incorrectness of the standard interpretations, for example, when a college roommate declared, You are going to hell for eternity because you don’t believe Jesus is your only saving grace.

I wasn’t familiar with the Bible, but I certainly knew there was something wrong with her statement, and the anger with which it was shared. This and other experiences supported my heart’s sense that organized religion is often a fear-based control mechanism.

College wasn’t all terrible. I had some fun and I met my husband, Mel, in a business club. We are the same age and shared our first date on my twenty-first birthday. Mel’s beliefs fell somewhere between atheism and agnosticism. We’re fifty-nine now, celebrating our thirty-fourth anniversary, and we’ve been together since that first date. Our life has been easy - we’re best friends who’ve comfortably negotiated life’s trials together.

We have two adult children: a married thirty-year-old daughter and a twenty-six-year-old son. I hate to sound like the typical proud parent, but I must say, they are beautiful souls. They are both successful in the sense that they are happy, and they possess the skills to cultivate a joy in their lives that uplifts those around them.

Having them in our home was wonderful. When they left I felt lost to an extent that surprised me, and that forced me to redefine myself. My self-definition had become deeply entwined with being their mother, and now I had to find a new sense of identity, but I had no inkling of what it should or could be, or the revolution in my image of myself that was soon to come.

Indeed, this story is about rediscovering my true Soul identity, though it would happen in a way that I could never have dreamed of, nor could I have imagined what my true identity would be, or that I would reclaim an unbridled inner joy, calmness, peacefulness, strength, and love. I’ve experienced more of these in the past nine years than in the previous fifty years together. I found these gifts through the path of Self-realization, which I’m now aware was the long-sought missing element in my life.

This book will not be an exposition of the nonsectarian truths of Self-realization. Instead, it’s my personal story of discovery, which I completed with the help of that high path.

Nevertheless, it might be helpful at this point if I say a few words about the path I follow.

Self-realization is the exact opposite of formal religion, yet it unites all religions.

It is a timeless, non-dogmatic, non-sectarian state of consciousness that helps us transcend the delusion that we are defined by our egos and our physical bodies.

Self-realization comes through our own, personal, inner experiences of our eternal Soul in union with Spirit. Through these experiences we gain a sure knowing of our spiritual truth as unlimited Divine beings, made of Divine energy itself and not separate from, but part of Absolute Oneness. As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

It was only through my own inner experiences of this great truth that I developed a foundation of faith. No one could have said anything that would have persuaded me to believe in God. Nothing short of actual, personal experiences could have caused such an enormous shift in my worldview and understanding.

I use the word God often in my journal, though there are many names for this loving Creative Force: Spirit, Atman, Divine Mother, He, She, Heavenly Father. There is no right or wrong name for it – we are free to think of it in the terms that feel right and comfortable to us individually. Spiritual truth is personal and experiential; it cannot be outwardly defined.

Fundamental to the path of Self-realization is meditation. Meditation is the laboratory where we can apply practical, scientific tools to calm and quiet our minds and test and deepen our inner relationship with the Divine. As Paramhansa Yogananda said, Meditation is the science of reuniting the soul with Spirit.

I had never meditated until I was fifty and its arrival in my life felt foreign to me. But with practice, learning to meditate became easier, and it was through meditation that I was able to experience a Higher Truth and place my fifty years of atheism firmly in the past.

This is why the path of Self-realization is so wonderful - because it offers effective, scientific techniques that help us achieve direct, personal inner communion with God. We need nothing more, and no one else, to discover that great Truth.

How these radical changes came about in my life is the stuff of my journal. After the first entry in which I described my total rejection of God, spirituality, and religion, the second entry, written only two days later, on April 2, 2012, records the beginning of an amazing journey.

4/2/12

Two days ago, something happened that was completely outside my known reality.

I can’t figure out how to process it. I have no idea why it happened, and I’m unable to place it in any familiar context. The experience was so intense and physically all-consuming that I simply couldn’t ignore it, nor could I focus on anything else.

I was sitting in Elaine’s home, feeling so stunned by what I was experiencing that I had no choice but to tell her and her husband. In retrospect, I see that it was divinely orchestrated that it should happen while I was with these particular friends.

Intense energy, perfect love, and deep joy were flowing throughout my body. My friends watched and listened as I described its power. After sitting with me for several hours, Elaine dared to suggest that what I was experiencing was what she knew as God’s unconditional love being poured into me. A ridiculous comment that I did not appreciate.

Elaine and her husband are both well-versed in spirituality and religion, though we’ve rarely discussed either, since they know I am an atheist. Our mutual respect has prevented us from arguing about it, but there was no avoiding the discussion that took place two nights ago.

Can a God actually exist?

Knowing my beliefs, Elaine cautiously continued to suggest that she understood what was happening - gently balancing her words against my absolute resistance. I continued to insist that it had to be something else. I do not believe in God, and I was annoyed by her suggestions which felt like proselytizing.

She and her husband are rational, intelligent people whose opinions I have always respected. He has a Ph.D. in theology, so I felt that I could trust his spiritual insights, at least to some degree. But even as I repeated my pressing question, Is it really possible that I’m experiencing God? I marveled that I was even asking such a question. God is not possible!

My questions and my overwhelmed feelings were so far beyond anything my at-best-agnostic husband would be able to handle that I spent the night at Elaine’s, feeling that I desperately needed her support.

All night long and into the next morning the loving energy flowed through me as I listened to Elaine speak passages about God!

What in the world was happening? Whenever she stopped, I would ask for more. I have no idea where my desire to hear more was coming from. On any other day I would have been disgusted and annoyed by her words; but now they literally felt so good, like a wonderful, physical energy.

Through the night, Elaine gently and kindly listened to my concerns, fears, and doubts, and to my yearning for more, while I remained immersed in massive confusion.

I cannot say the word God aloud. It carries too many feelings of social stigma and judgment. But hearing it and listening to the words she spoke about union with a higher source weirdly resonated inside me. The words literally felt good - they had an energy that my body welcomed but my mind could not understand.

This was definitely not a normal experience for me. But it was somehow accompanied by a profound inner sense that it was perfect.

I give Elaine credit for not pushing an agenda and for simply responding to my questions. She heard my resistance and my doubts without pushing me. Her spiritual knowledge allowed her to answer each question thoroughly, while calming my distress at the possibility that something revolutionary was suddenly happening in my life.

At a deep level that I can’t seem to access with the rational mind, I understood what was happening. I have no idea where this understanding came from, but I understood every word Elaine shared, as if I had known it already. I can’t explain it, it just all felt so familiar. But even as the energetic love continued to pour into me, I was intensely confused.

I wasn’t doing anything with my own will power; it was simply happening. It was very physical, all-consuming, and incredibly perfect.

The next morning, I still was not prepared to go home and face questions, or be alone with this, so I stayed with my friends for most of the day. No matter where we went, the experience followed me, with massive amounts of energy flowing through my body - loving, perfect, powerful energy.

I couldn’t focus on anything