Escaping From Christian Fundamentalism

Escaping From Christian Fundamentalism

MY STORY

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

     Hi and welcome to my blog.

     The focus of this blog is not primarily to discuss the practical consequences of leaving a Christian fundamentalist church but more to relate something of the profound effects that such a faith can have on one’s make up – especially when subjected to it from a very early age – and, more so, the subconscious harm it can induce.
     Since leaving the church, my journey has been one of on going psychological recovery coupled with a developing sense of self-awareness. It has not been an easy path but it is certainly one along which I have felt compelled.
     There is little point penning this blog if I cannot be open and truthful about my experiences. Some things I am a little embarrassed to discuss, others are very personal but because I am primarily writing in the hope that this may engender healing for others as well as for my self I want to be as open as I can.
     I would like to begin with a poem which I wrote some years ago.

SOMETIMES

Sometimes our lives take paths we do not understand
But Love in Her wisdom knows.
Sometimes our faith begins to show the cracks,
But something new is being born.
Sometimes the day is as black as the night,
But angels are all around
In a verse, or a friend, or some kindly word or deed.

Sometimes our hearts collapse, we’re frail.
But Love will never fail
Sometimes, oh sometimes, we scream in pain,
Our lives will never be the same.
All hell’s let loose, we’re torn apart,
But from some recess in our heart
New life takes hold, we learn to know
That through the torment we can grow
To something different, hallowed, true.

Let go and rest.

Undying Love, the centre of all being,
The One who fashions, shapes and forms,
The One in whom knowing, knowing begins.
Trust in this, that Love will never fail
Trust in this, that Love will bring you through.

‘My peace I give to you’
The peace of Love.
‘God is Love’
Love is eternal
Love is God.

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EARLY YEARS

YES...THIS IS REALLY ME AT A TENDER AGE -
AND I STILL HAVE MY TEDDY BEAR!!!!

     For the first twenty eight years of my life I was deep in the influence of Christian fundamentalism. I have spent many years since trying to come to terms with the hugely damaging effect that this influence has had on me.
     Now, I have arrived at a place where I feel I would like to share my ongoing personal journey through the medium of the internet in the hope that it may offer some encouragement to others who may be experiencing similar issues to those I have had to faced – and continue to face – and because I believe that such an exercise provides its own form of therapy.

     When I was born my parents were fervent Christians attending a Brethren church but by the time I was two years old, after a sudden and explosive ‘Baptism in the Spirit’, they had become very involved with Assemblies of God Pentecostalism.
     My mother and father had both attended bible college before my birth (my father had studied at an Holiness college) and were intent on becoming missionaries in the Far East. As things turned out this was not to be. Instead they cemented their commitment to their Pentecostal beliefs through keen church attendance; evening waiting meetings in their own home; general witnessing and, later, Sunday school and young people’s work. In time, my father was to become a deacon and then an elder in our church. Eventually, their passion for their faith led my parents to pioneering a Pentecostal church in a village local to where we lived.
     I can recall being taken to Sunday school at the tender age of two, being deposited in a small hall with lots of other children while my father joined the men’s bible study elsewhere in the church complex. In time, I was made to attend evening services on Saturdays, Tuesdays and Thursdays; a youth group on Wednesday evenings; Communion on Sunday mornings; Sunday school in the afternoons and the Full Gospel service in the evenings. Accompanying all this was the regular pattern of personal prayer and bible reading at home – ‘quiet times’ – and a general sense of doing the will of God in my ‘Bible centred’ everyday life. This was the pattern of things for many years until I was nineteen and attending university.

UNIVERSITY

     As you can imagine, long before I went off to university I had been well and truly grounded in the ‘faith’, firmly moulded into being ‘an upstanding young Christian’. I was clued up about the Scriptures and knew my doctrine. My sins were forgiven and I was very confident and absolute in my faith. I remember being quite awestruck at just how lucky I was to have been born into such a Christian home and having such a wonderful access to this amazing salvation. But it wasn’t to be too long before the first line of the above poem would begin to take effect.

     As for many young people leaving school, university was my first time away from home. I was looking forward to my Theological studies and was not going to be easily dissuaded of my faith by the modernists and biblical critics, about whom I had been warned by stalwarts in my church. Unbeknown to me though at that time was the fact that a very lonely young man who knew far less about his real self than he thought was stepping out towards the unknown.

     University was a fascinating experience which I very much enjoyed. I lapped up the academic life and generally felt reasonably confident in the positions I adopted when in discourse with others. I found a good Pentecostal church which I visited as often as I could, regularly cycling the ten or twelve miles on Sundays and on week nights, sometimes in the cold and rain, to go to the services. Life was good. I was saved and right with God and that, so I thought, was pretty much all that mattered. God had a plan for my life which he would make plain as I continued to serve him with all my heart.
     Little did I realise at that time, however, was that the real me, somehow managing to cling on beneath years of indoctrination and suppression, was an incredibly lonely and helpless little child.

RELATIONSHIP ISSUES

     Despite the outward expressions of confidence and happiness, developed over twenty years of learning to be someone that I was not, subconsciously, I was lonely and depressed. In addition, out of the contorted conditions of my up bringing irrational fears had developed along with their particular defence mechanisms which were to cause me problems in my relationships with others, primarily with young women.
     One particular problem was both subtle and profound and it was not until late in my twenties that I became properly conscious of it. It has taken many hours of therapy since then to weed out its causes and purpose but it took the form of looking for physical perfection when considering a possible relationship with members of the opposite sex.
     I would meet attractive young women (many of them Christians) but would always very quickly find some imperfection about them, often relating to very minor details. It was as if a scanner, over which I had no control, activated automatically to search out physical and character flaws, encouraging me to avoid potential relationships thinking it better to wait until I met a more perfect woman with whom to fall in love. Of course, I now see the futility and absurdity of this behaviour but that is how it was.
     My hope was that I would meet a lovely Christian girl at university and have a college romance to beat all others – no sex, mind you, this was strictly for when we would be married. God, I believed, had someone special for me and University was the likely place where I would meet her. There were indeed many lovely young ladies and one in particular I found to be very attractive but the self-defeating mechanism by which I considered all eligible young women (and the incredible naivety of my approach to relationships in general born out of my suppressed up bringing – over which I cringe now when looking back) meant that the hope would always remain a fantasy.
     One consequence of this behaviour was loneliness and another frustration which, in turn reinforced the hidden loneliness. It wasn’t long before things took a significant change for the worse.

'ALL HELL'S LET LOOSE'

     I’d only ever had one 'serious' girl friend before going to university and, initially, I was very much in love with her. One morning, however, I awoke with a real sense of fear and foreboding and a keen urgency to get out of the relationship. The love and affection I had for her had gone only to be replaced with panic and dread.
     It was in my second year at university that I was to experience something like this foreboding again but this time to a far more intense degree.

     If I am to be perfectly honest, the loneliness that I was feeling in not being able to find the warmth of a close relationship led me, in a moment of temptation, to purchase a girlie magazine. Not a great transgression really and one which I have come to see as being of no great consequence now but a transgression which at that particular time in my life triggered a massive depression the likes of which I had never experienced before. In my world view I had committed a serious sin and the guilt and sense of falling were palpable. I needed to ask for God’s forgiveness and be cleansed. Somehow, in my mind sexual sins had taken on a gravity way beyond their real significance and the apparent guilt was unbearable.
     Initially, I had real feelings of suicide. The bottom had completely fallen out of my world. The despair was terrifying. Utterly strange and menacing feelings tormented me. Relief was seldom and short-lived and only in sleep could I find some escape. I cannot emphasise strongly enough just how scared I felt! The happy, optimistic person that I was, at least on the surface, had gone and in place of the positive feelings poured in the severest black depression.
     Totally confused by this awful experience and very perplexed by its failure to disappear completely after tearful repentance and prayer, I became very concerned that I may have become demon possessed. My parents assured me otherwise but this seemed to be the only way I could explain what was happening to me and it was something I could not get out of my head. My mind was in turmoil. I was petrified at the thought that this could be the reason for my dilemma and yet, to all around me I managed to maintain my regular façade.

     For the following three to four years I grappled with the depression and the possession issues on an almost daily basis. Eager to convince myself that I was actually forgiven and that there were no evil spirits tormenting my soul I took every opportunity to test the matter always seeking for reassurance. Consequently, I became more and more involved in the pioneer work that my parents had begun.
     Eventually, experience, time and reason began to procure a remedy but it was not until much later that I discovered what had really been going on for me during what were the most frightening years of my life.
     Strangely, I never at any time interpreted how I was feeling then as being a medical condition and neither did my parents. I could have received help through drugs or counselling or both and yet my automatic response (formulated through years of programming from a very early age) had been to see the whole issue as something spiritual.

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MY MOTHER'S DEATH

      After completing my degree I did some postgraduate studies, began a career in teaching and got on with the usual things that one does. I became a youth leader and deacon in the pioneer church, led services and did some preaching and outreach work. Time went on and yet still I remained single without even an attempt at a relationship, much of the time believing that perhaps it was not quite God’s time for me to meet my intended partner.
     When I was twenty-six, my mother died. She had been suffering for a long time with a serious illness and in the last few days leading up to her death I had time to nurse and care for her. I knew her death was imminent. I was grief-stricken at the thought that she would be taken away from me. It felt so wrong to enjoy sleep while she was suffering. When I was not looking after her I was on my knees praying for her recovery. But this was not to be and she passed away at home. What I am about to relate now may appear callous to some but at the very moment at which she died I experienced a momentary and much unexpected sense of relief.
     Years of being in an all-encompassing Christian fundamentalist environment reinforced from the pulpit – and from the kitchen table – have caused enormous unconscious damage. The grip of one of these ‘controllers’ had slipped and something inside me felt the release.
     I believed that I loved my mother with all my heart and that I would have done anything to prevent her untimely passing but I did experience that fleeting moment of relief and – more significantly –  never, to this day, have I been able to bereave her passing!

     I am what I am but what I am is not who I am. Those of you reading this blog who have passed this way will know what I mean.

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BEGINNING TO DOUBT

      My post-graduate studies leading up to and during this period focused on the science and religion debate in Victorian England and particularly, of course, on Darwinism. By my mid twenties I was already making the intellectual leap away from literalism and creationism (beliefs which I once held very dear) in favour of a more pro-evolution approach. I didn’t feel that this compromised my faith in Christ and the central doctrines of Christianity but it was, of course, part of an emerging and gradual shift away from fundamentalism.
     At the same time, my involvement in the pioneer church as a deacon and the closer access this office allowed me to the various pastors with whom I was involved and to the general workings of the AOG had in fact spawned in me a sense of disillusionment with the whole system which I came to consider as being shallow and inept.
     When my mother died, one thing I was not expecting was the almost total lack of any meaningful sympathy and support through the subsequent weeks and months from the members of the very church she had founded with my father. Given how my mother had always been there for others, this was something I found very hard to accept.
     With all these factors pressing in it was not surprising that very soon after my mother’s passing I left Pentecostalism for good. It was not the place for me any more. I felt I had out grown it.
     Partly in search of a church with some credibility where my faith could have room to develop but mostly, I must admit, in search of the beautiful (mythical) Christian girl friend, I spent the next few months visiting Protestant churches of all denominations. This was an enriching time in many ways but eventually I settled with my local Anglican church.
     By now I was twenty-eight; I was attending a friendly Anglican fellowship; I had a good job, good health and my post-graduate studies were progressing. What was about to occur next threw me into real turmoil as the excruciating throes of a contorted inner self screamed out for recognition.

THE TORMENT RETURNS

     There is today, I am so very pleased to report, a really special woman in my life. I owe this lady a very serious debt of gratitude as it was her abiding love for me which helped me so much over what was about to happen. For reasons of anonymity I shall call her Sally.
     Sally had been a friend of mine for some time before I asked her out. Our initial date had been a success and we were both looking forward eagerly to our next time together. It was on the evening of our first date, however, that things started to go badly wrong for me.
     I wasn’t ambivalent about Sally. We were both keen about each other and I knew I wanted to see her again.
     We were entering a restaurant, looking forward to a nice evening meal to round off what had been a really great day when I began to experience a prickly fear rising up the back of my neck and what I can only describe as an acute sense of nausea – which was hard to mask! As you will probably guess, though, having had a lifetime of being someone I was not, I did manage to conceal from Sally the feelings of panic that were emerging with force that night.
     Our next date was the following day and I dully drove the sixty miles or so to Sally’s home, as arranged, to spend the day with her. The previous day I had been so excited. Now I was panicky and full of dread. My stomach was unsettled and there was a distinctly nervous edge to me. Those old feelings of foreboding evidenced ten years before with my first girlfriend had struck again but this time almost immediately on our initial date. Despite my keen anxiety the day went well. Somehow, I managed to hide how I was feeling.
     The feelings I experienced were so intense and emotionally crippling that I knew they were not just a normal sudden change of heart about Sally. I did not want to break off the relationship but the panic attacks, the deep foreboding and the daily sense of anxiety only intensified. I knew that if I did stop seeing Sally the problem would go away (at least until the next relationship) but having experienced something similar before I sensed this time that something was wrong. Of course, I prayed and pleaded with God to help me but my prayers fell on deaf ears and it became evident that the urgency of my need could not wait. It was vital I secured help immediately.  There was a definite sense that if I were to get over this crisis then I had to leave the church.
     Later I realised that the very system I was looking to for help was the very cause of my calamity – no wonder my prayers went unanswered!
     Gritting my teeth and facing the fact full on that there was something about me that needed sorting out, I determined to stand and fight and not to give in and run away.

COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

'DECIPHERING THE CODES IN YOU...'

     To gather some understanding of what the hell was going on (and it was like hell for me – remember the opening poem …’all hell’s let loose, we’re torn apart’), I began to read self-help books – ‘Men Who Can’t Love’, ‘If I’m so wonderful Why an I Still Single’ among many. Some were very useful and enabled me to begin to piece together something of my dilemma. Eventually, my GP referred me for psychotherapy.
     No doubt those of you reading this who share a similar background to me in which Christ is the all-sufficient healer will sense the gravity of the shift represented here. No longer did I believe that my faith had the answers and instead I began to look elsewhere. The edifice that had been my creed was steadily crumbling into dust – and not because of any sustained attack from the outside but simply because when it came to the desperate crunch it failed to provide the answers I needed.

     It is not guaranteed that the first therapist will be the right therapist for anyone’s particular circumstances. The listening therapies rely on far more than technical expertise and a thorough knowledge of the theories to do their work. Intuition and human connection can be significant parts of the professionals' repertoire and so it is not surprising to have to visit more than one such helper in the course of one’s journey if fuller healing is to be attained.
     As it was, my first therapist – an NHS psychologist – asserted that it was ‘as plain as a barn door’ to him that I had an aversion to sex. Of course, for a while I believed him and followed his advice. Unfortunately, (or perhaps fortunately for me – as I later discovered his diagnosis was questionable), he lost his job rather suddenly and I was left in the lurch. Not one to give up easily I contacted Relate to see if they could help. Eventually, I began a weekly series of counselling sessions with a Relate therapist (who, interestingly, was a priest) which were to last for about one year. It was under this man’s skill that I really began to get some insight as to the true nature of my problem.

FACING GOLLUM

     There’s no real need to go into lots of detail about my visits to the Relate counsellor but I would like to describe one pivotal moment. During a particular session the therapist was exploring issues with me when, in my mind’s eye, a distinct picture began to emerge of layers like those of an onion being peeled away. Layer after layer was removed and when all the layers had gone I saw a cage of black iron bars. There was a warm fleshy hue to the scene, as if in a womb, but inside the cage was a black, angry Gollum like figure. He was gripping onto the bars, looking out desiring release. His anger was tangible. I seemed to know instinctively that somehow I was looking at my inner self. For the first time in my life I believe I had in this strange way come face to face with the real me. I was imprisoned and wanted to be free.

     This moment brought enormous realisation. I knew I had to cherish what I had found and from that moment on I held to one belief and one belief only – that my spirit must remain free. Never again would I submit to man-made systems. I travelled home that night with tears running down my face shouting ‘you bastard!’ at the mental picture I was carrying of a pastor perched up high in a pulpit. There was a profound sense of the enforcement, the manipulation, the control, the suppression, the damage that had been going on all my life up to that point – and it really hurt!

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THREE PRAYERS AND THE BEGINNING OF A NEW AWARENESS

     Although I had left the church completely and let go of my faith. I had not become an atheist. Probably my studies in oriental religion at university had allowed me a wider appreciation of the notion of God than perhaps may be available to those with only a purely fundamentalist concept to their experience. I still held to some vague sense of the Divine, a benevolent but nondescript Divine force but that was all. I was not going to begin to place constructs around this. If it were real then it would have to prove itself to me.
     Reading the Bible had become very difficult. All the old indoctrinated teachings that I was brought up with just came flooding into my attempts at new interpretations. I found it easier not to read the Bible at all. Prayer had been so formulated in the past that this too was difficult. But I did make three specific prayers during this time which I feel were answered in remarkable ways.
     By the time I was visiting the Relate counsellor I was living on my own in my own place. This was great as it gave me space to begin exploring who I really was and what it meant to be me. Of course, this was not as easy as it sounds because there had been so much conditioning. It takes time (years in my case) to learn how the conditioning operates on different levels and how to uncouple from it. Anyway, at some point I made the first of those specific prayers. It was a simple prayer but one which threw down the gauntlet. ‘God,’ I said. ‘If you really exist, then you’ve got to show yourself to me. I’m fed up of looking for you!’ That was it, as simple as that. No long build up to the punch line. It was short and pithy. I left it at that.
     Over the weeks and months which followed things began to happen. These were nothing dramatic but quiet, subtle, momentary things often to do with nature and the inter-connectedness of being. These moments occurred occasionally and often carried glimpses into another way of perceiving reality. My intuitive side was beginning to awaken. There was a tangible sense of the oneness of all things. Eventually, it was possible to weave a tentative thread of connectedness between these experiences. Something was coming to birth. A new pathway was opening up, one which I was excited to travel. However, I needed to be sure that I wasn’t just making it all up. This led to my second prayer: ‘God, if all that I am seeing and experiencing is true then please give me some confirmation.’
     Looking back I can see how much the pattern of the fundamentalist was still at work in my approach to prayer. Of course, this would be so as it was all I knew but the heart behind the prayer was changing. Confirmation soon came in the form of a wonderful book which I read with tears of happiness and immense joy. The book was Peter Spinks’ ‘Beyond Belief’ which I very heartily recommend. Every page was a profoundly felt confirmation that I was on the right path.

     (The third prayer, by the way, was answered equally remarkably. While travelling home one day after some success with something, I was thinking about my frustrations with my job and the hopes and plans that I had for the future. Aware of the practical difficulties of leaving my job and becoming self-employed I just offered up a sincere prayer about my future while driving. I didn’t think much more about it but twenty miles down the road I passed a disused armoured vehicle sitting in someone’s back garden close to the road. On the side of this vehicle were painted the words ‘TRUST ME’. The words appeared to me as large as the letters on a car number plate and they were oscillating and seemed in some way alive! I tell no lie. Immediately, I was mindful of the prayer I had made only twenty minutes before. The next time I passed that vehicle I looked to see the words again. They were definitely there but this time at their normal size – which I could hardly read!)

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GETTING MARRIED

     During all this time, my relationship with Sally was continuing though it was very hard for us at times, especially for Sally. One thing in particular which had been a real bar to our future happiness was my pure fear of getting married. I was terrified of the prospect and simply couldn’t do it. Understandably, Sally could take only so much but the thought of her leaving me broke my heart. It really was a catch 22 situation. To alleviate the tension we decided to take a break from each other after which, if I still felt unable to get married, then we would part company. It was at this time when I actually left the church with a real determination and, to my surprise my fear of getting married resolved itself! I believe that in making a definite stand about not going to church any more I had denied so many controlling influences still at work on a sub-conscious level. I had denied that other ‘controller’ and taken hold of the reins of my life. I likened leaving the church to a divorce. U2’s song ‘One’ was in the charts then and the words of that song came to mean a great deal to me.
     Sally and I got back together, made plans to get married and I remained calm. Now, more than two decades on, we are still happily married and have two wonderful adult children.

PROFOUND LONELINESS

     But the road to healing did not stop at getting married. Years of indoctrination and religious abuse were not going to be resolved within fifty hours or so of counselling. I was happier and freer and felt generally much better with myself but all was far from over.
     There were other, shorter sessions with counsellors as new issues arose and old ones continued. More books were read but life went on. One evening, however, Sally and I were reading. I was completing a self-awareness exercise in a particular text which triggered a sudden, intense sensation of acute loneliness. From somewhere really deep within me an overwhelming sense of isolation forced its way out and had me broken and weeping within seconds. It took me completely by surprise. For minutes I wept, sobbing uncontrollably, aware of an desperate sensation of being so vitally alone.
     In my efforts to understand this experience I came across John Bradshaw’s book ‘Homecoming’. What a book! Studying this volume introduced me to the concept of the wounded inner child and how it may be helped towards healing. Bradshaw’s book provided me with an incredible insight into the nature of my problems for which I am profoundly grateful to the author.
It was about this time that I wrote the following poem:

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IMAGE OF A CHILD

Image of a child
Forlorn and still
Denied his ‘self’
By another’s will

Vulnerable, sad expression
Motionless of face
But eyes betray a depth
Others cannot trace

Staring outward, inward
I catch his lonely gaze
Somehow reaching to me
Through time’s haze

Familiarity is there
Though the connection seems lost
Too much over-care
And with it the cost

I pause and in the moment
Something deep awakes
Clarity of knowing
Clear memory forsakes

Solitude and sadness
Filter through the door
Sense of separation
Presses me for more

* * *

Let it flow
Attend to it with care
Expel all the clatter and focus there.
Approach with compassion
Be open to your ‘self’
Embrace the tender child
Emerging from within

Take those little hands in yours
Draw them close to you
Nothing now to bar the way
Accept and be true

Mirror, mirror comes at last
Recognition dawning
Murky ice of years past
Slowly thawing

Disclosing scars and torment
Acknowledging pain
Limping towards loving
Moving to reclaim
That precious thing once lost.

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YOGA AND MEDITATION

     A little later I also began studying some of Eckhart Tolle's works. Two in particular were ‘The Power of Now’ and ‘A New Earth’. Both are excellent books!
     After working through Bradshaw’s book there was a definite compulsion to explore meditation. For a long time I had suffered with lower back issues which I was coming to understand as being related to sub-conscious tensions probably to do with repressed rage. Yoga began to appeal to me as a way of not only gently exercising my back into fitness but also as supplying a means whereby I could begin to explore some of these deeper themes.
     To many Christian fundamentalists yoga is a ‘thing of the devil’. There are numerous Christian fundamentalist web sites warning about opening oneself up to demonic influences when practising yoga. I knew of these notions and, initially, they troubled me but I believed I had to go in that direction. The old programming did make me panic when I decided to do it for real but I persisted. At the time it felt as if I were walking through a wall of fire, but it was essential that I denied those voices of the past and discovered my own voice. The heat was intense but I did not burn.
     I found a very focused and gentle yoga therapist with whom I got on well and worked with on a one to one basis for a number of years. Yoga proved to be a very satisfying experience. The exercises and the philosophy continue to be most valuable but, unfortunately, I simply could not get into the meditation at all. Whenever I tried to meditate I was regularly overwhelmed with intense feelings of uselessness which made me depressed and left my self-esteem feeling at rock bottom.
     As much as I really wanted to move forward with meditation and yoga there came a point where I needed to take some time out. A lot had been learned, however, which has stood me in good stead and I may well return to yoga at a later date. However, the continuing blockages in my make up needed addressing from a different angle.
     With the regular practise of yoga my back had become fairly stable but it was not as well as I should have liked. By this time I had read John Sarno’s books on chronic back pain and its connection with repressed feelings and so the next step was to seek out a counsellor who could help me with this approach.

FURTHER COUNSELLING

     For the last few years I have been privileged to enjoy the wisdom of a very special counsellor who I was very fortunate to find. Healing of the kind dealt with here takes time and patience. There is a process at work within each of us, when we are open to it, which cannot be hurried no matter how impatient we may be for change and development. It is an evolutionary process and being in harmony with the process, as opposed to its outcome, is as much a part of the healing as anything else.
     Since engaging with my current counsellor I have witnessed not only deeper self-awareness but also a drawing together of much of what has gone before. It has been wonderful to sense a thread of connectedness between those initial discoveries when I first left the church; between the insights gained in earlier counselling and reading and in the values learned in yoga. The process never really ends. One can go as far along the path as one wishes. There is always more to be discovered on the road towards wholeness – the return to the centre – and that is really what drives me on.
     Christian fundamentalism did a great deal of damage to a little boy who grew up to be a man under its powerful influence before he became aware that there was any problem at all. Now that man is able to help the little boy who he once was. Becoming acquainted with my wounded inner child has been an enormous step forward toward inner harmony and greater well-being. I will always have further to go but I sense that wonderful feeling of calm and assurance knowing that what ever ‘hell’ breaks out in our individual lives there is a deep abiding presence in all things which, if we open ourselves to it, will nourish and guide us. For me this presence is the presence of Love.

     There is a beautiful text in The Rig Veda which reads:

     “There was not then what is nor what is not. There was no sky, and no heaven beyond the sky. What power was there? Where? Who was that power? Was there an abyss of fathomless waters?
      “There was neither death nor immortality then. No signs were there of night or day. The ONE was breathing by its own power, in deep peace. Only the ONE was: there was nothing beyond.
      “Darkness was hidden in darkness. The all was fluid and formless. Therein in the void, by the fire of fervour arose the ONE.
      “And in the ONE arose love. Love the first seed of the soul. The truth of this the sages found in their hearts: seeking in their hearts with wisdom, the sages found that bond of union between being and non-being.”

                                                                                                         Rig Veda X.129.


     My spiritual journey is unique to me but is at the same time so similar to that of many others. My sincere intention in presenting something of it here is that it may provide help for those harmed by Christian fundamentalism who may be struggling to come to terms with that harm.
     It is also my sincere hope that in being open about my experiences this may allow for a forum for discussion and support. To this end I would welcome comment and enquiry either through the pages of this blog or via e-mail, if preferred. My e-mail address is - returntothecentre@gmail.com
    In addition, I intend to add to this blog as my wider journey continues.

     I look forward to hearing from you.

     Namaste.

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