Believing in God versus Experiencing God: What matters to you?

Spiritual Life Explained – Transcript

Part 1 – Introduction

Over the last few years I’ve been sharing my spiritual journey with you on this podcast, and it’s truly a journey I didn’t expect. It started when I was about 7 but back then podcasts didn’t exist and neither did the internet. However, running pretty much on pure intuition and a strong inner sense, by 18 I was already seeking. Like many others, that seeking led me to meditation, which makes sense because if we’re looking for answers beyond the physical world around us, then we’re likely to end up looking “inwards” rather than outwards.

I discovered “Light and Sound” meditation and after thousands of hours of practice spanning more than a decade I attained states of awareness that I could not have imagined. Along the way some spiritual teachers tried hard to convince me and their other students that God didn’t exist and that Jesus was made up. But it seems truth will always come out and eventually I found the limits of their teachings and started to comprehend that not all we had been taught was true. These falsehoods weren’t just about God and Jesus but also included matters like what happens after we pass away and even down to the source of spiritual Light.

It’s a negative path to dwell on someone else’s wrongdoing, whatever their reasons, and so instead I chose to learn from the experiences and importantly take responsibility for allowing myself to be misled. Having been deceived it made me even more appreciative of the importance of putting truth first, no matter what.

As my desire for truth grew then many other falsehoods I had picked up started to fall apart and I distanced myself from those who were deliberately being dishonest. I was not alone and other people I knew were starting to “wake up” too. So it was about that time that I started producing videos and in time podcasts, to share what I was discovering with good people like them, and you.

I carried on meditating and even revealed light and sound energy to a number of people. So over the last decade I’ve deliberately and consciously put truth first and piece by piece let go of what I was led to believe and I’ve got to say, the truth is far more amazing, and frankly simple too. So why reflect on the past here? Well I mention it to give context to what I say next. You see when I now talk about things like “God”, “Jesus”, “Love”, or “Light”, it’s not because “someone told me in the past” or “that’s what my teacher said”, nor that I simply grew up with those ideas from childhood and never questioned them.

Rather it’s because I was pushed away from those truths and it is only through the conscious choice to find the truth even if it was the opposite of what I believed that I have overcoming deception to come to the fact of God, Jesus, Love and Light. You notice I say “fact” which I know is quite bold. When I was a kid I was taken to church where a priest told me there was Jesus and God and asked me to believe them. I did. When I was at university studying biology we were indoctrinated into the belief that life is a chemical accident, nothing more and I went along with it. When I started advanced light and sound meditation, the teachers said there was no such thing as God or Jesus and they made it clear that if I was to get their help I had to believe them. So I did.

It’s only when I stopped “believing” and started valuing truth that I discovered that almost everything I had believed, or rather had been encouraged to believe by others like priests, scientists and spiritual gurus, was wrong. Religion hadn’t really got it right; science is only concerned with the tangible; and the numerous “spiritual groups” seemed at best confused.

None of what they claimed matched what I was able to experience within inner-stillness. Now I’m not saying I’d got it right, but rather, I’d stopped valuing belief, whether that was religion, science or spiritual philosophy, and instead started to really put experience first. Beliefs can change, but what we know from our own deepest inner-experience, when we are really present and awake, truly transcends belief. But many people never get past ideas and belief.

So truth based upon direct personal experience is obviously very important to me, how about you? The journey to seek it is still ongoing and perhaps it isn’t a journey with a destination, but rather a way of being? However we view the pursuit of truth though I truly hope that if you’re listening to this it is because you appreciate on some level the value of experience over beliefs? Perhaps you’ve never really thought about it before, if so, take a moment and ask yourself what’s more precious to you, what you’ve picked up from others in your life or what you absolutely know from your own experience?

If experience trumps belief for you then you’re not alone and perhaps what I’m going to share will help you and those you care about on your journey to seek the truth. I know that I’ve been helped by open minded people along the way too and that’s the point, this isn’t about me saying something and you believing it, it’s about us being mature enough to listen without prejudice and to recognise what is belief and what resonates for you as truth. You can believe in something that is also true, but wouldn’t you rather know it with a certainty that transcends mere belief?

All this said, seeking the truth, especially spiritual truth, is never going to be a personal journey since there’s only one truth. So whoever seeks it will eventually find the same truth as others since absolute truth must be the same for everyone. To that end I’ve made a point of being very open and honest in the podcasts over the years, because this is a journey, and the destination is still ahead of us all. As I’ve come to understand things from experience you’ve heard me say, “To seek the truth, is to seek God”.

You’ve also probably heard me explain that God doesn’t belong to religion, and neither does Jesus, who was, and still is, very real, irrespective of what some would have us believe. So this all brings us to our more recent podcasts such as:

33 How do I Have More God in my Life
37 Closer to God
40 I’m sorry to tell you that might not be spiritual
42 Reverence to God
43 For the Love of God and Jesus.

Quite a contrast to the first few podcasts on topics like meditation and how to develop chakra awareness, right? Those older topics on meditation seem far away from the more profound realisations and concepts I’ve shared with you over the last few years, but those older ones were vital steps from there to here, at least for me. I’d like you to be really honest. Do you find it comfortable to listen to topics like meditation, auras and chakras, whereas talking about God puts you off or makes you uneasy? If so then I totally get it and please understand that I was once a bit like that too, just like many others. Back then even I would have been surprised to learn that my future self would be talking about God and Jesus. I wasn’t looking for God, rather I desired truth and this made me overcome my own fears and limiting beliefs.

I know from my own experience that like most people who are resistant to the idea of God, it is rooted in some negative experience in the past such as being forced to go to church as a child; an overbearing family member or partner forcing their beliefs on you; people around you making fun of people who spoke from the heart; or a general fear of ridicule.

Whatever the reason it means that most people who are strongly resistant to, or have a strong reaction upon hearing the words “God” or “Jesus” are living according to a strong belief system, and one that is most often grounded in fear. It’s not necessarily their fault and they may not even be aware of it or understand the reason, it’s just how they have learnt to react. Whether you can personally relate to this or not I’d like you to contemplate two simple things:

Firstly please listen to these three statements and notice how they make you feel, how you react, really:

“Behind all that is good is God.”
“God is what gives us life.”
“God guides us.”

Now, notice what changes in your reaction when we substitute the word “God” for something different?:

“Behind all that is good is Love”.
“Love is what gives us life”.
“Love guides us”.

Now this may seem like a bit of word play fun, but if you reacted negatively to “God” compared to “Love” then it demonstrates that you are responding according to conditioned beliefs. If you are without prejudiced beliefs then the response would be identical irrespective of the words used. Interesting.

So secondly: Do you realise that “There is absolutely no physical proof for the existence of God”. But “There is absolutely no physical proof that God does not exist”. Therefore coming from pure logic rather than prejudice, a rational, neutral and wise person would take the stance of “I am open to the possibility that God exists and desire to know the truth by my own experience”, or words to that effect. How would you phrase it for you?

Interestingly, being open to possibility and desiring to know the truth based on personal experience rather than just accepting a belief, one way or the other, is a pretty good definition of being spiritual. In order to be rational and inquisitive you need to be consciously present rather than habitual in your thinking and also more receptive to the subtle and non-physical, which are amazing qualities for any person to develop, irrespective of the reason why.

So if someone has a strong negative reaction to the word God, then it could indicate that they are not being logical, rational or neutral but rather are strongly grounded in an anti-God belief, which for a variety of reasons is most likely motivated by either fear or ego derived from other people’s ideas.

Even if this discussion doesn’t relate to you directly it’s important to be able to have compassion and understanding of why some people may be strongly polarised in their opinions and at least from me, there’s no judgment since I’ve been on both sides of the line. Having put truth first then the more recent podcasts tell of an unfolding exploration into the nature of our relationship with God and Jesus in a spiritual, experienced based, non-religious, non-belief oriented way. I started discovering this from within the stillness of meditation, and though I reached the end of the meditation journey and no longer meditate, the spiritual journey is still unfolding, how amazing is that! What I originally thought was the goal, enlightenment, was just the means to discover something far greater.

But now I want to turn our focus back to us, to you, and make sense of these higher revelations from the perspective of our everyday lives. So let us explore three topics which may seem unrelated at first but are tightly interwoven and together are three important pillars of a spiritual life. What are they? They are Free Will, Health & Healing, and Being Holistic.

These topics aren’t just going to help us to live more gracefully, increasing in spirituality, and becoming closer to God, they’re also going to answer some important questions like “Why doesn’t healing work for some people?”, “Why manifesting and the law of attraction may actually be spiritually counter productive?” and “Why are some spiritual people struggling so much?”
Once we understand these three things better we should find more ease in life. I know that’s a pretty big claim, so let’s find out how this all unfolds.

Spiritual growth has very little to do with deep intellectual understanding and philosophy, rather it comes from the heart, so lets make it easy for ourselves. Take a deep breath and simply intend to be in your heart. Think of it as that’s where your spirit is and so it is the seat of your higher self. Wouldn’t it be wise to deliberately include your higher self? More love, less thinking. More being, less doing…