Reminded by the sight of the snow falling outside of just how close he had come to death in the mountains, a shiver ran down his spine.
"Either I find the purpose of my life now or I never will," he thought to himself, as he opened the book. "Time is running out. I'm 50. Who knows what will happen tomorrow?"
He flicked through the pages, and found the first chapter.
“Does God really exist? Or is talk of God really just a fairy tale? That's what I need to figure out. If God exists, then finding him is the most important thing anyone can to do. If He does exist, then it's in my own best interest to align my thoughts and actions to his values and principles. If God exists, and if there is an after life like the New Testament says and like the Buddhists and Hindus also believe, then it's in my own best interests to get to those more blissful regions or "heaven" by doing the right kind of things. If that requires reflection and self discipline, faith and love while I'm here on earth, then it'll be worth it. After all, I'll be dead for a long time. If I'm spending that time in region of bliss all the better. I don't want to go to the darker regions. No thanks! If God doesn't exist, on the other hand, if it's all just a figment of imagination, an illusion, then I just have to accept that human lives are empty, brutal, short and nasty. But even if God doesn't exist, it might still be worthwhile trying to develop a disciplined and virtuous character simply because I've realised selfishness and lack of discipline opens the door to depression and misery of all kinds. Anyway, I’ve reached a low point in my life. It can’t get much worse than this. And nothing I've tried has worked so far. I might as well give this prayer Cormac was talking about a try. I don't know why but I never had a direct experience of God in all my years there. Who knows? Maybe learning this prayer will bring me to God through another, more subtle path? Maybe it'll bring me peace? That'd be something.”
Tim focussed and read the first sentence.
"By God’s grace, I am a Christian; by my own actions, a great sinner; by profession, a homeless pilgrim belonging to the lowest class, who roams around from one place to the other.”"Gee, that sounds pretty much like me," Tim thought to himself. "I'm more or less homeless pilgrim right now having to stay up here in this mountain cabin and I also belong to the lowest, most despised class of a lying, hypocrite of a pastor..."
Tim’s eyes flew down the page as he read about the Russian Pilgrim who had set out to find God so many years before him and in such a different country. One day, the pilgrim went to a mass and was taken by surprise by something he heard..."…I heard the words “Pray without ceasing,” These words made a deep impression on me, and I began to wonder how anyone can pray without ever making a break when everyone has to do so many other things just to stay alive. I opened my Bible and saw with my own eyes, written there, the very words I'd just heard ….
Tim read how the pilgrim went in search of someone to explain how anyone could ever prayer without ceasing, and how he finally found a spiritual guide.
…."He was silent for a moment, then turned his searching eyes on me, and said: "A prayer spoken without a break in the interior of a human being is an expression of the human spirit and its infinite desire to be united with God at all times and in all places. To make any progress in this delightful activity, you need to pray to God and ask him to teach you how to learn to pray without ever stopping. Pray more and more, and with ever greater intensity; the prayer itself will reveal to you just how to say it without stopping; everything comes in its own good time."
Tim became so absorbed in the story of the Russian pilgrim’s search for God as he criss-crossed the length and breadth of Russia asking different people, thinking about what he'd heard and what he read, encountering all kinds of obstacles and setbacks that he didn’t notice the fire burning down.
“It seems simple enough. Child’s play!” he thought to himself, elated, when he finally finished reading the book around midday. “I mean, all I have to do is keep repeating the same prayer over and over, right? I can do that, no problem! Easy as pie! I just need to focus on my heart and make sure I feel general vibes of compassion and love for all of humankind. That’s all, isn’t? Well, if it brings me anything like the same peace of mind as that pilgrim, it’ll be worth it. I’m just so sick and tired of feeling so down all the time ….”
Tim threw a few logs more onto the fire. Then, he leaned forward on his stool and began to say the words: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us, sinners".
He felt the scorching heat of the flames on his cheek as he closed his eyes and lowered his head so that his chin touched his chest. All kinds of images immedialtey flitted across his: he saw now Rob Owen, now Arlen Pierce and now Mary O’Driscoll standing in front of him in the Young Life Church. He felt a stab of pain. He took a deep breath, then whispered with a note of fierce determination:
“Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us, sinners.”
More images swamped him: more random thoughts swirled through his mind and the words of the prayer were blown away like bits of wood by a hurricane.
He lifted his head.
“It’s useless,” he thought to himself, staring at the wall. “Even if there is a God, I’m never going to find him. I’m too far gone. Why bother anyway?”
But the thought of a continuing with his old existence, full of so much anguish filled him with so much dread that he decided to give it another go. He closed his eyes again. The only thing he could hear was the sound of fir branches brushing against the window. Next, the noise stopped. The cabin seemed deathly quiet like a tomb. Or was it he who was dead? He wondered. He might as well have be dead, he thought to himself. His head bowed and his eyes shut, he saw nothing. He heard nothing. He was conscious of nothing except his heart beating rapidly and the dryness of his mouth and the tension in the muscles of his neck. He focussed on his breathing.
"Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us,” he began, but was startled by a voice.
"Hi Tim! Want some meth?"
Tim looked up and saw Rob Owen! He was standing there just a few feet away. He was dressed in a blue short sleeved t-shirt, jeans and flip flops. He was smiling. What a smile! His eyes shone with the glorious light of laughter.
For a split second, Tim was back in Rob Owen's apartment with the Iggy Pop poster on the wall and the packet of half eaten chocolate biscuits on the table. Next second, Rob Owen vanished into thin air. Tim found himself staring at the wall of the cabin, choking back his disappointment.
“I must be crazy! What on earth am doing up here in the mountains?” he muttered, running his hand through his hair. “The real action is down there in Denver. That’s were Owen and all the rest are having fun right now, I bet. Why don’t I go back down? Why don’t I go and score some meth and hang out in some bar? Life is short, too short, to waste it up here in the middle of nowhere, saying some quaint old prayer....Maybe Owen misses me? I wonder what Owen’s doing now! Does he regret the way he betrayed me? Is he sorry that he never sees me? And what about Arlen Pierce? What does he think about my lying to him like that? I bet he’s still furious! And Cindy? Why did I ever try to lie to her? How despicable I am!"
Old feelings of disappointment, anger and abandonment stirred in him, and Tim shifted uneasily on the stool. He drew a sharp breath. Next, he became aware of his own turmoil and restlessness.
“This is ridiculous!” he thought, shaking his head from side to side. “Why don’t I ever learn? Why can’t I see Owen isn’t the way to happiness? It was always an up and a down. Now I want real happiness, lasting happiness, real peace. If the prayer brings me that peace, I should stick at it. I need to give it a proper try. What's the matter with me? Why can’t I say a simple prayer for ten minutes? Am I really such a feeb? My mind's all over the place. As for going back to Denver right now, I don’t want that again. I’m not going to get caught up in the same spiral of highs followed by lows. I must try harder. The Jesus Prayer worked for Cormac, so it might work for me,” Tim thought as he picked up a stick.
He prodded the logs. They exploded into life. The flames blazed up.
"Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us,” he said.
"Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us."
"Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us."
The thoughts about Rob Owen and meth that had obsessed him, circling him, like vultures, retreated like the wild sea from a shore as he repeated the prayer over and over again.
"Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us."
"Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us."
Somewhere inside him a light went on. A stream of energy started to flow through the center of his being. Inside the vault to his heart, a door creaked open and sunlight flooded inside. It was only a split second but it was enough to send his spirits soaring and motivate him to persevere the next time he became distracted with thoughts about Cindy, Seth Wright and the Young Life Church.
He noticed the more he concentrated on the prayer, the stronger this energy flowed through him while the more he succumbed to the temptation to think about other subjects, the feebler the stream of energy was.
He became aware with a certainty he could not account for that he was in the presence of a higher force that was radiating good will towards him, communicating with him through some intuitive faculty buried in his soul.
“It’s God!” Tim thought to himself, amazed. “Or is it? What is it?”
His senses were on heightened alert. Some outside force was definitely making himself felt in his spirit as peace, energy and insight. He looked up and, all of a sudden, the cabin seemed completely different. The flames seemed brighter, warmer. The same cabin which had seemed so inhospitable before, now seemed cosy; the solitude which had seemed like desolation, now seemed like an oasis of freedom.
With a shock, he realised that what he had always taken for an objective reality actually depended on the state of his own consciousness. He really was a kind of creator and ruler of the universe around him in the sense that the way he saw the world depended on the state of his own consciousness.
At the thought that there really was a God, with whom he could make contact, and who took a personal interest in his well being, he felt incredulity and also a gratitude that he had not been left alone and abandoned in a cold, hostile universe without rhyme or reason, after all.
“I wonder whey I have never thought of doing this kind of thing before!” he wondered. “It all seems so simple and straightforward, almost childishly naïve! But it works. It works much better than all those group prayer sessions at the church and those Bible study groups. By saying this prayer, I feel I really could have the power to break the habits of thinking that have dominated my life for all these years, causing me so much misery.”
"Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us."
"Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us."
The superstructure of fixed concepts, dogmatic beliefs that had been drummed into him from the earliest childhood dissolved. The entire edifice of and compartmentalised “facts” and theories that had been programmed into him in school and college, indoctrinating systematically with a world view that was like a weapon turned against him,, destroying and denying his innermost person, his soul, began to shake.
He had accepted without questioning like everyone else that he was a cog in a machine, a slave in a vast prison, where the corporations, banks, and government were the slave holders.
He had accepted without questioning a life of permanent stress, worry and fear of punishment and hope of reward.
He had accepted like everyone else the sophisticated mind control techniques and brainwashing that had created in him automatic thought patterns that were not his own but had been implaneted in him because it helped the financial cult that ran the western world to use him to increase their power and the money through war, drugs, oil, colonisation, mass exploitation.
"Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us."
"Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us."
He said and the prison door swung open.
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.”
From very small beginnings, like a little stream, the energy inside him increased. At firt the stream was just shallow, and then it became deeperm broader and swifter. The further the river went, the fuller it became. Glitteringlike a river in the light of the morning, it shone more and more.
"Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us." "Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us."
The prayer swept him along, carried him forwards. He felt it was good to follow these waters, and go along with them. He followed the stream as it ran down around the mountain, down into the valley, and set off eastwards, pressing forwards...
The endless of images of terrorist attacks, war, torture, genocide and chaos that played across the TV screens, day and night, dissolved. The entire electronically-generated illusion or media generated Hologram that trapped him in a false reality parading an attack against the World Trade Centers that never happened cracked. The movie show that ran constantly generating negative fear, depression, hatred, confusion ended. What a hellish place. It was an infernal place. A surreal, bizarre place he had been living in! A place of darkness, chaos, and mindless violence. Horror and horror. Lies and lies!
"Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us." "Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us."
The cabin, fire, horizon and the whole world disappeared, dissolved. He followed the stream on down a stretch that was full of darkness, formless and void, with no land in sight, entering a new element, a place below consciousness. He was swept along as the river ran on, ever changing, pushing forward, churning, forthing, now cold, now hot, moving through zones, from the ol world to a new world.
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us," he said, clinging to the prayer like a sailor clinging to wreckage.
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.”
The river rushed on flowing more peacefully into a new world.
He followed the glittering waters into a magical sphere, a new reality, a new land with banks, villages, boats and trees where everything shone radiantly in the light of the absolute truth.
He saw a new a new sun and a new mountains and flowers, and new people, new men and women and children, all fresh, vibrant; a timeless place where everyone lived in peace and friendship and yet all the people looked like they were the height of their powers, fully alive, youthful, full of energy, each point that reflected back the infinite goodness and vitality and power of God. There were new cities, new gold, new riches, new gardens, new vineyards and orchards, and in all these things there was God. The light was purer, the air was clearer. A place of freedom and truthfulness!
"Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us." "Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us."
A new world had been discovered, a relatively new to him, though it had been inside him all the tim. He had not traversed the inner streams of energy, flowed along on the pure river of the water of life to this place where there was perpetual summer, a mild, warm climate fertile, full of all kinds of fruit and watered by plentiful streams, a place where all the glory and happiness of life could be found.
The sky grew black outside, but Tim didn’t notice. The bliss in his heart spread through his whole body and he trembled all over, amazed, as he sat and stared into the fire and realised that what he had always been looking for all his life had always been inside himself.
Like a lost country, it was now emerging bit by bit as the flood waters receded. That beautiful country had been hidden from all his life by the dark water of his ego and its desires for thrills, power and money: he had spent most of his waking day calculating, planning how to satisfy those desires constantly sea-sawing between hope and frustrations, obscuring the light shining inside him.
Finally, TIm got to his feet. He opened the door and walked out into the freezing night. He walked down the steps, stopped, and stood motionless on the snow.
He threw back his head and looked up at the stars that wandered at a great height through the clear night sky. He heard the wind rustling through the pine trees. He saw the moon shimmering, and his feeling of awe and wonder increased to the point where he felt his heart was about to burst with joy, sheer joy at the intensity of the feeling of being alive, for the gift of life, for the gift of being alive and able to stand with two feet on the ground under the sky and observe the majesty of the stars and feel the presence of God all around him, feel himself to be in connection with a more beautiful world.
Everything was a dream, a dram of God.
He no longer feared the darkness. He no longer feared the solitude. He knew with a certainty he could not explain that God was there, tenderly looking after him, protecting him all the hours of the day, like a father protects his child, and the dignity and freedom of human being is that as an individual they can feel the infinite goodness and participate in it.How amazing that loving intelligence was! God had created the heavens and the earth, and sustained creation every minute with his energy, and yet God also had time to bend down to him and fill his soul with love and inspiration when he was exhausted and dead inside.
The infinite world around him was also inside him. The depths and heights of the sky were inside him. He had disappeared and a new power had appeared inside him. The divine energy and intelligent power pervading everything with inexhaustible inspiration, energy and goodness, was also in him.
God had lavished him with love when he had not deserved that love. He had come to his rescue when he had not done anything to deserve that rescue. He had looked down from the heights of heaven onto the earth and felt compassion for him, wiped away the stains on his spirit, and filled him with fresh energy and hope.
"How amazing to think this is the same sky and the same forest I was so scared of just a few days ago!" he thought to himself.
He rubbed his eyes: he half expected to see the stars had vanished when he opened his eyes again. But the stars were still there. They shone down at him from their mysterious heights, abundant and beautiful.
There are moments in life when everything on earth seems unreal.
Everything vanishes and we feel the presence of something greater, something so beautiful, so true, so full of substance compared to which everything else is nothing. The flesh and body fades; our worries and our hopes fade and we become spirit, communicating with the other world of spirit. The exaltation, the joy we feel changes us forever. That moment might only last a second, but a second is enough, Tim thought to himself as he looked up at the pitch black sky far above him.
To be sure, what he had experienced was beyond his reason or comprehension and could not be proved by abstract concepts or intellectual arguments or measured by instruments designed to observe the outward world of matter. It was a fact, nevertheless, of his inner experience, and he accepted it on that basis. It was a fact with an emotional force that was real enough. It was a fact that he felt he was communicating with a living force and drawing strength from it. It was a fact that this force seemed to know him intimately, better than he did himself, and wanted the best for him. It was a fact.
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