PRAYER ALIGNMENT

 

The last major topic I’d like to discuss in this chapter has to do with a principle related to prayer that I like to refer to as alignment. This simply means keeping your intentions aligned in a sense with your prayers. We will actually go over this topic again in chapter 10 in a much deeper metaphysical way. For now however, we will discuss this topic in a more simplified intuitive way. To understand this concept of alignment, let’s say that I pray to God one day to ask for his help to find a new job so that I am able to support my family. This is certainly a genuine request that is truly for a good cause and therefore should be quite easy to ask of God while also meeting the helpful prayer conditions mentioned earlier. Presumably, when I do ask this of God, he will start putting into motion a series of magical events that will eventually help me to land a job and allow me to support my family. But let’s say that I suddenly change in my enthusiasm about going through the work of actually finding a job. For example let’s say that I pray to God sincerely one day and then start applying everywhere I can for a job. This is day one of my search.

          On the next day however, day two, I decide that I don’t feel like looking for a job anymore and that I’d rather play video games and watch tv instead. Although I was very sincere in my request to God on day one, my attitude in finding a job has clearly changed by day two. In a sense, I’m now rejecting that idea of looking for a job because I want to hang out and have fun more. Furthermore I am expressing this new choice through my intention and free will. An interesting question to ask then is which expression of intent does God follow when it comes to helping me find a job? Does he go with the consent provided to him in the prayer I made on the first day or does he respect my intent to no longer look for a job in favor of playing video games on day two? This is important because it was mentioned earlier that you must give God explicit permission to act in your life and not expect him to act on random stray thoughts. But then does this rule change if you change your mind about a previous prayer or does God ignore your change of heart until you express it in a clear and explicit manner such as in prayer?

          Obviously I cant really know this answer for sure but I choose to believe that, in general, God will respond to your change of heart. I believe that prayer, at its core, is really more than a simple expression of words and is really more of a complex expression of consent that occurs at a subconscious level. To maintain this expression of consent, you must keep your intentions, in a sense, “aligned” with your prayer. This means you want to regularly focus on achieving some goal related to your prayer, at least if a continuous effort in this fashion applies to your prayer. If it doesn’t, then you’ll at least want to avoid producing intentions that are not aligned with your prayer. For example these would be intentions that express in some way that you no longer want the thing that you prayed to God for. Some people find that praying for something regularly, maybe everyday or every few days, tends to enhance the clarity of the response to their prayer.

          An important aspect of this principle of alignment is actually one that I mentioned earlier. Namely in some cases, God will not simply “answer” your prayer in one shot. In these cases, the Holy Spirit may guide you toward a particular place or to meet a particular person and will then indicate to you that some additional action is required from you to move forward with your prayer. In other words, it will be your job to make a specific choice to get what you were asking for in the prayer. Sometimes this can involve a series of choices and sometimes these choices may require you to get out of your comfort zone a little bit. This is where the principles of faith, trust and alignment are very important. As an example, I remember one day I found that I wanted to find a new church community to be a part of and ended up praying to God to help me find this. I grew up Catholic and went to the same church around where I live for many years. My dad initially brought me to this church when I was a kid and I ended up continuing to go there for most of my life so far. There were periods or intervals of time though where I stopped going to church altogether, sometimes for months and other times for years. But usually when I decided that I was ready to go back to church, I would end up going back to this same church that grew up going to.

          However, the last time this hiatus occurred and I decided that I was ready to go back to church, I felt that I no longer wanted to go back to this particular Catholic church. It had changed from what I remembered and I decided that I wanted to find a new church. Being relatively uncertain about where to even begin in looking for a new church, I decided to ask God to help me find this new church. I had preferred one this time that had more of a community feeling to it than the one I’d been going to previously. Well not long after that prayer, I found myself going to the store to shop for groceries as I normally would and suddenly this missionary came up to me and told me about a church that they work at which wasn’t far from where I lived. They gave me a card with the church’s address and asked me to come there sometime. At first I ignored this as I felt I was too busy at the time to go exploring whether or not this new church was for me, this of course is in spite of praying for this only a few days before that. Well at a later point I decided again that I was ready to go back to church and I decided to pray again for God’s help to find this new church. I decided that this time, I would actually follow through with my prayer. And interestingly enough, shortly after that I ended up going back to the same store that I usually go to for groceries and once again I saw another missionary from the same church in the parking lot again.

          This was interesting because I go to that same store pretty much every week and had been there for several weeks and had not seen any missionaries. And yet when I prayed for God’s help to find a new church again, suddenly here they were again. I felt then that this was God’s answer to my prayer and that he wanted me to go to this church that the missionary was directing others toward. I was still a bit reluctant to go to this church as it seemed very unfamiliar to me but I decided to have faith and trust in God and go this church to see what it was about. In other words, I had to take this additional action to, in a sense, make the prayer work – even if I was hesitant to do so. And when I did visit this church, sure enough I found that I really liked it and that I wanted to keep going to this church. I noticed that this church had a much stronger community feel to it than the church I was originally going to, which was exactly what I was looking for. In fact this church did a few other things in mass differently that I really liked as well. At the time I thought that all churches had relatively the same style of mass and didn’t know that they could be different.

          I mention this experience to demonstrate that God will sometimes give you a slight nudge to take an additional step, or a series of steps, in order to get you to the thing that you requested in your prayer. It won’t always be the case that you can just sit around doing nothing and the answer to your prayers will suddenly pop up out of nowhere. In fact, continuing to seek out the thing you prayed for will keep your intentions aligned with your prayer and will not create a circumstance where you’re inadvertently expressing that you’re no longer interested in the thing you prayed for anymore. This phenomenon is where I believe the saying “God helps those who help themselves” comes from.

          I’d like to also note that this experience shows us that the Holy Spirit can actually guide us all in a way that, not only helps us to find the answer to our own prayers, but also to be the answer for the prayers of others. When we charge spiritual energy and build our connection to God and allow him to work through us, the Holy Spirit is able to orchestrate events in a manner that is similar to what was described for the law of attraction in chapter 1. It is able to give us a slight subconscious nudge, which we may not even be aware of on a conscious level, to be in a certain place on a certain day and at a certain time to interact with someone else in a way that fits in with God’s plan. You could also experience a sudden urge, out of nowhere, to think about something and then end up sharing these thoughts with someone later. And this would all occur through the influence and planning of the Holy Spirit.

 

 

HAVING A RELATIONSHIP AND CONVERSATION WITH GOD

 

In this section I'd like to now talk more directly about what it means to actually have a relationship with God. Although I have been using this phrase a good amount already, we have not really discussed what this truly means. I remember when I first learned how to pray, many years ago from the time of this writing, I would usually only pray to God when I needed something and not otherwise. Although I'd still think about God often during this time, I did not necessarily show that in, what we Christians would call, my "prayer life". Because I only prayed to God when I truly needed something for a good cause, I just ended up rarely ever praying to God. Although this was the case, I did still know how to charge spiritual energy and would do so occasionally. I did not charge this energy as often as I'd like to because I was not quite ready to stop engaging in sinful behaviors. Particularly, I wasn't quite ready to stop watching pornography. Although I always knew deep down that watching porn was wrong, I learned very quickly that it's pretty much impossible to reach high levels of spiritual charge while still watching it regularly. I always to had to completely stop watching porn in order to charge spiritual energy to really high levels. And when I went back to porn, my spiritual energy would drop again.

          Well when I was I finally ready to make an effort give up porn for good, I started charging spiritual energy more regularly. This made me feel close to God but I found that I also felt close to God when praying too. As a result, I just started praying to God more regularly without actually asking for anything. I would often pray to Jesus and pretty much just talk to him about whatever was on my mind. More than anything I was really just sharing with him my most recent thoughts, concerns, desires and goals. I'd talk to him about things like a new theory I had been considering, thoughts about certain people in my life, my feelings about spiritual concerns or spiritual experiences that I had, feelings about upcoming events, experiences I hope to have one day, even thoughts about actions that I'm ashamed of, my failures and successes in life and so on. There wasn't really any particular goal I was trying to reach or any specific piece of information I was trying to get across in prayer. Mostly I was just sharing what was on my mind with Jesus. As I did this day after day, I found that I really did like it because it made me feel even closer to God. I then realized that even regularly praying like this helped me to charge more spiritual energy. In fact it was this increase in spiritual energy that was causing me to feel more joy and fullness from the simple act of praying more often. Remember that spiritual energy is not the same as a subconscious frequency.

          There are certain behaviors and actions that must be taken in order to reach the highest levels of spiritual energy charge. I learned that praying regularly is one of those actions. I started praying for a few minutes each day but then decided to cut it back to at least once every two days. It's not good to try to force too many rules on how often you pray because this will cause you to start doing it out of a feeling of obligation and not because you really want to. Doing it from a place of obligation will completely mess up how your subconscious is expressing itself during prayer and thus will prevent you from praying with the ideal conditions mentioned earlier. You will also begin to start thinking of prayer in a type of transactional quid-pro-quo kind of way. As in if you pray to God this often, then God owes you such and such because you sacrificed your time by praying to him X amount of times. Notice the the complete lack of sincerity in this line of thinking. In such a circumstance, it would more than likely be the case that I do not truly wish to pray to God in my heart, I'm just going through the motions and doing it anyway so that he will favor me later. In other words, it's dishonest. I hoping he favors me for my pretense rather than a genuine desire to speak to him.

          To avoid this way of thinking, it is best to pray on a schedule that you feel comfortable with. If that is once a day, once a week or once a month, then do that. By praying in a way that you're comfortable with, you'll always be able to pray honestly to God, which is far more meaningful than how often you do it. And if you wish to pray more, then pray more to him. For me, praying once every two days or so is the sweet spot. Rarely do I ever feel obligated or forced to do so on this schedule. I should also note that there is no specific time frame for how long I pray either. Sometimes I only feel the need to pray for a minute or two and other times I can end up talking to God for about 10 minutes and have to stop myself from going on and on. There are simply times where I have so many things on my mind that I have a lot more to say to God than usual and than there will be other times where I don't have much. However I still pray during these times because again it makes me feel close to God. I should also note that, by praying every other day, usually around the same time, my subconscious has actually charged up relative to this activity. By this I mean that I can actually feel that I'm praying in a very transcendental way without going out my way to make an effort to express as much emotion as possible. I just feel heightened levels of emotion without trying.

          When I started praying to God in this more regular manner and began charging spiritual energy more regularly as well, I could feel a spiritual change happening that was really quite amazing. I felt that I finally understood what it truly meant to have a relationship with God. It was hard for me to believe that such a relationship was not my primary focus for most of my life. There is much more to say about this phenomenon because it is quite metaphysical in nature. However, I will talk more about this experience and what I was going through during that time in my life in chapters 9 and chapter 10 where I go discuss metaphysics in more detail. The main thing I wanted to talk about this in section though was the importance of having a relationship with God. To me, having a relationship with God means talking to him regularly, avoiding behaviors that push spiritual energy away, seeking behaviors that bring spiritual energy in and making your desire to be closer to God your number one priority. As you draw nearer to God, your subconscious will compel you to behave in a way that is more and more aligned with God's nature. And, in my experience, this causes you to just start to naturally desire to have a relationship with God in a way that matches the tenets of behavior mentioned earlier. When people don't feel the need to behave in these ways, it's precisely because they have not transcendentally connected to God very much. I believe that anyone who has a very strong connection to God, will start behaving in a similar manner – it's actually hard not to. Of course becoming more like God can be quite difficult at first as we must become more pure and essentially give up our sinful nature. I remember when I started to praying to God more and experiencing this desire to become more like him, I would occasionally fail in my efforts by engaging in some behavior I knew to be wrong and I could feel push my spiritual energy away. During these times, I would often feel too ashamed to pray to God as I felt like hypocrite. I would often pray to God and express how much I'd wanted him in my life but then I'd go ahead and do things that I knew pushed him away. This caused me to try to avoid God and not pray to him for a while. However, the thought occurred to me at a later time that this was not the right way to do things. I realized that whenever I fail to live up to the spiritual ideals I've set for myself, I should try to pray to God more and not less. I wanted to mention this here because I believe that it is important to always pray to God honestly, even when you believe you've failed him in some way. As long as you're honest, seek his forgiveness and desire to try again, you should keep praying to God no matter what.

          Another thing I learned about from having a relationship with God is how to actually have a dialogue with him. Most people think that God is some mysterious far away being whom they have no direct ability to contact or speak to. This ends up causing them to think that they are on their own in this world, left to figure everything out for themselves. But I have since learned that this could not be further from the truth. What most people get wrong is their idea of how a conversation works. They think that just because God does not speak to them verbally like other people do, he must not be speaking to them. But God is far too creative, intelligent and powerful to be confined to such a limited form of speaking. We may be stuck in that kind of realm of communication but God is not. And once I actually started to have a real relationship with God, I began to actually sense this. I started to realize that I was able to actually hold a back and forth dialogue with God. Or, put another way, I learned how to have a conversation with God. I began to see past the limitations of verbal communication and began to get comfortable conversing with God in the more non-verbal way that he usually prefers communicate in.   We spoke earlier about some of the different non-verbal forms of communication God uses in the section on how God answers prayers.

          I now no longer feel alone or limited in terms of my ability to talk to God. If I have a question, I know that I can just ask him. And I honestly wish that more people, if not all people, simply understood that they too can speak to God in this manner. He is always with us and is available to help us with any problem we're going through. The most complex problems our society faces are nothing for him. He could help us solve these problems easily and in a way that is still aligned with his nature of goodness. But most people just assume that because God does not speak to them verbally, he does not speak to them at all and that they're therefore unable to receive answers from him. Because of this belief they don't ask for his help with anything and end up being left to their own devices to try to solve impossible problems. I believe that learning how to hold a conversation with God is one of the most meaningful things you can do in this life time. And once you have begun this divine dialogue, it never ends. It is not like a conversation with your friend or co-worker. A conversation with God will continue for the rest of your life and presumably even after death. Till this day, I still speak to God regularly and believe he speaks back to me. Now to be clear, I believe that God is and has always been speaking to us on a subconscious level whether we're consciously aware of it or not. The goal I am suggesting here to become involved in this conversation on a conscious level as well. In this sense, I recommend that everyone on the planet begin, what I like to call, their "eternal conversation" with God. There is more to say about this phenomenon and about much of what I learned in my conversations with God but I will talk more about this later in the b

 

 

MY VISION OF HELL

 

For the curious reader, I’d like to now briefly talk about a vision I had that wasn’t particularly pleasing to experience. Recall from the previous chapter that it was mentioned that you may start getting visions as a result of charging spiritual energy and increasing your connection to God. I have found that this is much more likely to occur if you simply pray to God and ask for them. However, you may still get them even if you don’t. I’ve had many visions over the years that were mostly just messages about things I’ve asked of God and that were going on in my life at the time. However, one day I’d gotten a particularly unique vision out of nowhere that I didn’t ask for and did not expect.

          I remember I was working on writing on this book at the time and then found myself feeling a bit tired and decided that I would take a power nap as a break. I then laid down and rested my eyes, intending to simply relax for about 20 minutes or so and then go back to working. I ended up falling into a deep sleep during this nap and then began dreaming as I normally would. However, all of a sudden I then found myself on this football field where a large group of people had gathered. Everyone seemed extremely distressed and were frantically searching for their loved ones. It seemed that some catastrophic event was going on around the world but I wasn’t aware of what it actually was. I only knew that there was some kind of intense evil that was threatening the world. A few other strange things then occurred as the dream went on.

          First I remember suddenly being in a news room with others where we were discussing printing an article related to something about aliens. I understood that there was something incredibly dark and evil about these aliens. And then after that, the environment changes and I’m suddenly in this new place hearing a conversation related to a particular loved one of mine that seemed to be occurring in heaven before they were actually born. The conversation seemed to be about a concern that this loved one would eventually face during their life time that was related to this evil around the world – I now interpret this as a kind of warning related to their future. And as strange as all of that was, I remember the environment suddenly changing again and then finding myself in this dark and dingy cave like dwelling. It wasn’t a very colorful place and everything seemed to be very dim in nature. I could mostly only see dim orange colors around this rocky like cavern, kind of like what you might imagine the inside of a volcano looks like.

          I also wasn’t alone in this cavern either. I sensed that there was also this emotionally negative wraith looking entity there who seemed not to be paying too much attention to me but I did get the impression that they wanted to target a loved one of mine. The vision then ended shortly after this and I woke up. It was a very strange vision but there were a few interesting take aways from it that I understood after waking up even though they weren’t necessarily clear to me during the vision. The first is that I came to believe that this dark and dank cavern like place that I suddenly found myself in was actually the same place that we colloquially refer to as hell or at least some alternate version of it. There wasn’t exactly a sign that said “welcome to hell” or anything like that but after waking up, I felt like that must have been hell. Another interesting thing that occurred was that I was shocked to actually be waking up again. That may seem like a strange thing to say, given that we all go to sleep and wake up everyday.

          However, that’s not really what happened this time. When I woke up, the first thought and feeling that popped into my mind was the utter shock at being back in the “world of the living” again. I know that sounds like a really strange thing to say but that was ultimately the first thought I had immediately after waking up. I couldn't believe that I still had a life and body and that I was still physically alive. In fact I actually I didn’t believe it at first and thought that I was still in some other version of hell that simply resembled my life on earth. I then started to recall all of the memories of this life and started to realize that it never actually had a clear ending, so I most likely must still be alive. I actually had to convince myself that I was still living after only being asleep for what must have been about 30 minutes or so.

          But then why did I have this really strange feeling of not being alive anymore and why did I believe that I somehow took a trip to hell during this dream? Well this will all make a bit more sense once we talk about the nature of gaining information about reality through your psychic abilities in chapter 9. However, the short answer is that I believe that – during the vision – my subconscious actually ended up transcendentally connecting to the environment that I was in and this ended up causing me to intuitively understand certain things about this environment and think like a person who was native to that environment. And after waking up, I still had a connection to hell at the subconscious level. I believe it actually took about a day or two for this connection to significantly weaken to the point that it was no longer affecting me anymore. However, one of the consequences of that connection was the intuitive knowing that this cavern like place I was in either was hell or some place like it.

          Another consequence of this connection was that I ended up thinking of the physical world that we all exists in, in the same way that people and beings in that environment must – which is to think of this place as the “world of the living”. I intuitively understood that to be the kind of label there that’s given to this world. On top of this understanding I had, I also remember feeling a rather peculiar sense of the way time works there. This place, that I believe was hell, had such an eternal feel to it that was very different from the way we perceive time here. It’s a bit hard to describe in detail but it’s like, every second there is no different from any other second. It’s not like you have to wait for the next week or the next month or the next year for some special event to happen so that you can move forward with some set of plans you have. That’s how it is here in this world. But in that place, any thing that you’re capable of doing one moment, is the same thing you’re capable of doing at any other moment – whether it be one minute, one year or one thousand years from now. It’s all the same, nothing ever really changes.

          I think our perception of time in this world is different in part because our physical bodies actually charge our subconscious to perceive time in a very unique way. This may be related to what is commonly called our “circadian rhythm”. But in hell, you don’t have a physical body and your subconscious is simply connected to the environment. This not only affects the way you perceive the passage of time but also the context of it. Because I understood that there wasn’t really anything meaningful or important that I could do in hell and that there never would be, this seemed to make time feel non-existent. What was interesting though is that this perception of time also carried over into the real world a little after I’d woken up – presumably because my subconscious was still connected to hell. When thinking about the nature of time in the context of life itself, I remember thinking just how short my life seemed, even though it hadn’t actually yet ended. Compared to the eternal time that I sensed in hell, life just seemed like a short detour that you might take when walking through a hallway to get to a destination you want to go to. This was part of why it was so hard for me even believe that I was still alive. Life seemed so short that it was easy to believe that I no longer had it anymore and that it had gone in a flash.

          The next thing I understood about hell was the emotional and mental consequence of being connected to it in the way that I was. Even though I didn’t actually see any other people there and only saw one of the entities there, I was aware that everyones thoughts and feelings are naturally connected there. This includes the negative entities that dwell there as well. In this world, when you’re around people who are extremely angry or hateful and have intense feelings of malevolence, you can’t actually feel it yourself. You can only speculate on how these people are feeling and if their intentions are malevolent in nature. This is actually a good thing because it means that other peoples negative thoughts and feelings won’t cause you to also have negative thoughts and feelings as a result. In hell however, things work in the opposite way. Not only can you sense everyones negative thoughts and feelings there, you actually have to. You can’t turn this perception off. This means that you’re constantly being bombarded with everyones negative thoughts and feelings, such as those of hate and despair, all the time. It’s basically in your face 24/7 and you can’t get away from it. When someone else has a hateful thought and emotion, it’s like you’re having it too. In fact the whole reality, even the walls, are filled with negative emotion and you feel connected to all of it. It’s like an emotional weight that holds you down non-stop and makes it impossible to feel good.

          The last thing I understood about hell is probably a bit obvious but was nonetheless very surreal to perceive in such a perspicacious way. This was the understanding that there are no police or anything like a hero or savior to protect you in hell. It’s a completely lawless environment there and negative entities, who have an incomprehensible level of negative emotion, are free to abuse and bully you as much they want to. They’ll never have their fill of it and there will never be anyone to step in and tell them to stop or to feel sorry enough for you to try to help you. There are no set of rules or regulations that can be adhered to in order to protect the weak. And although I didn’t actually see anyone suffering, I understood just how utterly terrible a fate this was. Sometimes people have a fear in this world of demons attacking them or harassing them in some way and look for ways to try to avoid this. This is especially true of people who get involved in witchcraft and certain demonic new age practices as they often end up getting harassed by a negative entity – we will talk more about this in the next chapter. In these circumstances, the individual is constantly hoping to avoid going to sleep as the negative entity might harass them in their dreams.

          They often assume that the negative entity, in all of their malevolence, is trying their absolute damndest to harass and terrorize them. But I’ve come to understand that this is actually not entirely accurate. These entities know they are on a tight leash in this world and are practically harmless – unless you go seeking them out – to us here. What they’re really working toward and waiting for is for you to die and go to hell. It is there that they’re able to really let loose and antagonize you without end or interruption. I should note that some people see burning fires and people screaming in hell and things like that but I didn’t see any of that. I only saw a dark dank dim cave like dwelling and a single wraith like negative entity there. However, I believe that my subconscious connected to this hellish dimension or reality and allowed me to intuitively understand certain truths about reality there. And one other thing I understood, on top of what has been mentioned so far, is that I’d only seen a tip of the iceberg. Although I could ask God to see more if wanted to, I’ve never actually done this and don’t think I ever will.

 

 

HEALING THROUGH THE HOLY SPIRIT

 

After having had a chance to sit with the experience of this vision and process it for a while, I actually started to experience something of a psychological crisis as a result. I don’t know if it was simply because my subconscious was still connected to this hellish reality and made it so that I couldn't help but to think in the hopeless and despaired way that is customary there, but I noticed that I too began to feel a great sense of despair and anguish. I suddenly kept thinking, practically non-stop, about how much I absolutely did not want to end up in this place myself. I remember being so terrified even of the possibility of going to that place that it was hard to focus on anything else. In fact, I started to think about this in a loop so much that I actually started to think that I might be going crazy. I started to feel that absolutely nothing else in life even mattered until I could be 100% sure that I’d done enough to not go there. This is not withstanding the acknowledgment that I might never be sure that I’ve done enough until I’ve passed on to the next world.

          Eventually I started to obsess over not going to hell so much that I suppose one could say that I had developed a case of “hadephobia”, which is a phobia associated with the intense fear of hell. No matter what I did, I just couldn’t stop thinking about how there was a chance that I might go there and how I needed to live my life in a way to make sure that I didn’t. Nothing else in life mattered if it didn’t seem to actively help me to avoid hell in some way. As I went on like this for about a day or two, I began to realize just how mentally unstable I was becoming and needed to remind myself that this surely was not the purpose of the vision that God had given me. I doubt that God actually wanted my mind to unravel in the way that it was starting to and was pleased with this outcome overall. I then decided to turn to God and ask for his help in dealing with this intense fear that started plaguing my mind. I wanted his guidance in knowing how to move forward with this newfound awareness of hell as I didn’t know how to do this on my own at the time.

          After making this prayer to God, I then went to sleep as I normally would and had even momentarily forgotten about my prayer. What happened next that was rather amazing wasn’t so much about what was occurring while I was dreaming, but rather what had occurred when I had woken up. I remember being in this half asleep and half awake state, immediately after waking, when suddenly the thought of Jesus just sort of popped up into my mind. As this occurred, I could then feel this intense wave of love and purity that didn’t seem to actually be coming from me at that the subconscious level. It was a feeling that I’d recognized a little and reminded me of what it feels like when I charge spiritual energy and am being guided by the Holy Spirit. However, this experience was more intense than usual. I’d felt enveloped by an extremely loving and pure feeling that I also noticed seemed to have this tangible and perceivable quality of “infinite” to it.

          It’s hard to describe it but it didn’t feel like the same kind of infinite that we normally feel whenever we think of the word during the casual everyday use of it. It felt like a different kind of infinite. As strange as it might sound, it actually kind of reminded me of what happens whenever you put two mirrors in parallel to each other and have them face each other. Both mirrors will try to reflect each other endlessly in an infinite kind of way. I don’t know why but that was the sense of infinite that I got from this presence. It was clear that it had a never ending nature to it that seemed to have no obvious beginning and no clear end.

          When this was happening, I got the sense that Jesus was connecting to me directly and in that moment, as I experienced that intense love and purity, I began to understand something that I think Jesus was trying to tell me through subconscious influence. There were no words of course but rather just a clear understanding that I had gained during this interaction which actually ended up taking away this fear of hell of that had been plaguing my mind. In other words, I had been healed from the psychological effects of this vision, which was exactly what I had prayed for. Although I was only able to feel the presence of this intense love and purity for a few seconds before it went away, that was enough for me to obtain a relatively extraordinary level of clarity about the nature of God. In that moment, I understood how much God loves us and just how pure his spirit is. It didn’t really seem possible that he could even send us to hell or even create a place like that altogether. Although I still didn’t fully understand what hell was or why it was there, I did understand that hell, for all intents and purposes, didn’t really exist inside of a relationship with God.

          The best way to describe this concept is to think for a moment about being married to someone that you love very much. Now imagine if you were thinking everyday about not cheating on that person and decided to constantly remind yourself over and over again every few minutes to remain faithful to your spouse. You tell yourself that the reason you’re doing all of this is because you love them and don’t want to hurt them. Therefore, out of love, you’re motivated to spend almost every waking second, expending all of your mental energy to do everything you possibly can not to cheat on them. But then if you have to really give that much effort just to not cheat on this person, can you truly say that you love them? After all not cheating on them is not necessarily the same thing as loving them. If you truly loved this person, then it should be rather easy not to cheat on them. The thought really shouldn’t ever even cross your mine. It shouldn’t be the hardest thing in the world for you to not do.

          I realized that this was kind of what I was doing with God when it came to the goal of trying to avoid hell. By concentrating so much on just not going to hell, I had actually stopped focusing on developing a relationship with God and increasing my connection to him. In fact, focusing on hell so much actually caused me to charge negative emotional frequencies which served to push God away rather than bring me closer to him. It was clear to me that the goal of “avoiding hell” isn’t necessarily the same thing as “loving God”. I understood that I shouldn’t so much be thinking about not going to hell but rather simply focusing on God’s love and choosing to seek it out. By doing this and having it as a goal, I will eventually end up in some place that is very close to God’s spirit. There is no actual need to ever think about hell or anything related to it in this goal. In fact, I don’t even really need to define its existence with this approach. This is actually very similar to what we discussed about intentional NOT statements in chapter 12 of book I. In a sense, it’s impossible to express an intention to not go to hell. Instead, I should just avoid thinking about it and only express the intent to be one with God.

          This was basically the understanding that I had gained from this experience with the presence that I believed to be Jesus. And with this understanding, my fear of hell pretty much disappeared. At the very least, it has never been anywhere near what it was during those one or two days that I thought I might be going crazy. Although I still don’t know for sure what hell is or why or if people go there, I did at least understand that I didn’t really need to ever even think about it. As long as I was genuinely focused on seeking out God, and Jesus Christ for my beliefs, then I was on the right path.

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Footnotes

 

1. How can I know what electrocution feels like? Well unfortunately as a kid, I had this rather stupid habit of turning on this lamp in my house and then sticking my finger in the socket to feel the sensation of electrical shock. There was no permanent damage luckily but to this day, I still remember what that felt like. If you’ve never experienced this feeling, I’d describe it as a very fast and highly localized vibrating feel. The vibration is so fast that it feels uncomfortable and like it’s damaging your skin. But it’s still a bit macroscopic in nature so it’s not quite the same feeling as being burned.

 

2. Actually, I believe that there's a degree to which God will operate in your life whether you want him to or not. I believe this is due to the fact that we currently exist in a state of grace that permits him this authority regardless of what your wishes are. However I believe he will only operate in your life to a very limited degree if solely on the basis of grace alone. When you seek him and ask him to come in to your life, then he operates in your life in a much fuller and complete way.

 

3. To be clear, when I mention non-verbal here I am actually referring to God speaking to us using his own voice directly. I am aware that God can still speak to us through another person's voice