I saw I

Maybe a good place to start with this blog is to describe the first experience that gave me an eternal perspective on my life and how it changed me forever.

I was about 10 or 11 years old. While trying to sleep my thoughts bounced around to whatever topics are in the mind of a 10 or 11 year old. But suddenly, my thoughts seemed to echo just long enough for me to catch a glimpse of something I had never seen before. I, for the first time, observed the fact that I thought and could think, and that awareness burst into a chain of affirmations that rocked my young mind. I found out, in a profound, earth-shattering way, that I exist.

Needless to say, I continued to have trouble falling asleep. I didn't know how to proceed with this new found knowledge. This awareness became systemic and uncontainable. It spread like wildfire through my psyche. My self-aware mind became a kiln cooking the sand castles of my young consciousness and, in their place, left fortresses of reflective glass; every thought showed me my own mind and reaffirmed my existence.

Two main affirmations sprung forth from my self-realization. First, I am an individual being with free will who can choose to act and think independent of conditioning and, second, that emergent quality will exist forever. I cannot say that these affirmations came about by logic or rational inference, or that they were even completely comprehensible to me at the time, but I can say that they were self-evident in light of my self-awareness. Once I saw my mind the freedom and the eternal quality of it were intuitive and unavoidable.

And so, I was met with an existential dilemma. The prospect of existing forever came flooding in. The concept of eternity daunted me. It was similar to my self-realization but instead of renewing my mind it shed a somber light. Suddenly life was terribly real and almost onerous. I didn't want to live forever. Eternity looked like a purposeless abyss that nothing could fill, an existential black hole. I tried to hold my ideas of God and heaven up to eternity but even that could not assuage. So my spirit that had just been discovered already seemed dismantled. I broke under the weight of my existence, eternity and the bitter reality of it all. I didn't want to exist forever be it in heaven or hell, and so I cried.

For the first time, I cried with my body, my mind and my spirit. As a being standing defenseless on the doorstep of existence peering over the precipice of eternity, I had been broken. I admitted that I had no answers and fear welled up inside drowning me. In the deep unexplored corridors of my being I admitted my total vulnerability and defeat surrendering to whatever lay outside myself.

But that is when God actively stepped in and comforted me. I was not the active agent. I did not conjure up my idea of God and hold it to the harsh reality of existence for protection like before, God was the active agent this time not me. A personal, loving and caring God willingly rescued me. Before, I held onto my idea of God and expected that idol to do my bidding. With my prideful heart and arrogant spirit I thought I could wield God like a weapon and strike down my fear. But, only by a broken spirit and utter humility could I truly cry for God to step into my life, and He did.

I cannot prove it. I cannot completely understand it. But I feel God in the depths of my being in the same way that I know, intuitively, that my mind is free and that it will exist forever.