The following article is offered for free use in your ezine, print publication or on your web site, so long as
author resource box at end is included, with hyperlinks. Notification of publication would be appreciated.Title: Do You Experience God? Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D. E-mail: mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com Copyright: © 2004 by Margaret Paul Web Address: http://www.innerbonding.com Word Count: 800 Category: Spiritual Growth, Spirituality
DO YOU EXPERIENCE GOD? Margaret Paul, Ph.D.
Connor, a man in his late 40’s, has achieved everything he ever thought he needed to feel happy and secure. He owns a successful business, has a wonderful wife and two children, and a beautiful home. Yet when you look at him, he doesn’t look happy. He looks empty, with no sense of vibrancy about him.
His wife, Brianna. also has everything she ever wanted – a husband, children, financial security, successful work and a beautiful home. When you look at her, you see a person filled with aliveness and vitality, friendliness and joy.
What is difference? Why are these two people, each who have same outer things, so very different in their energy? The answer is that Brianna has a strong connection with God while Connor has no spiritual connection at all.
The longer I’ve worked as a counselor, easier it has become for me to tell difference between people who know and experience God and people who don’t. It is difference between Connor and Brianna. It is difference between being full from inside or inwardly empty.
It’s not that Connor doesn’t want to experience God. He says he really wants to. He sees difference between him and Brianna and he says he wants what she has. He sees his parents as empty and he says he doesn’t want to end up like them, with no sense of passion or purpose in their lives.
Yet Connor does not experience God, and reason is simple: he places a higher priority on having control over money, employees, what people think of him, his wife, and his children than on being a loving human being. He says he wants to be loving, and times he is loving he feels great, but it never lasts because his desire to control is greater than his desire to be loving. He is afraid if he is loving to himself and others his business will suffer, he will have less money, he will lose friends. His ego wounded self tells him that if he is open and loving, he will be taken advantage of, and that is last thing he wants. So his primary intention is to protect against what he fears rather than to be loving.
