Have you ever wondered what it would be like to meet God face-to-face, or heart-to-heart? I have. Until recently, I felt I had. Then just last month, I had the honor of coming to that initial meeting place. After many years of working on restoring my own heart, I finally reached a place where I could just be in heart. It was July 23. I was home sick with an intestinal flu. I have never enjoyed being sick in bed because sitting or lying in one place was always uncomfortable for me. So here I lay. This time I felt my heart wanted to rest. And rest it did. It rested in the heart of God. Bringing my awareness upward, I felt the presence of Heavenly Father. His consciousness was there with me, waiting for me to recognize Him. As my consciousness was finally there, I did. I spoke to Him in heart and mind and He spoke back. As this was our first face to face meeting, I was shy. I felt on one hand like it was a father meeting his daughter, but on the other, I felt like a bride meeting her bridegroom for the first time.

As I allowed myself to become familiar with His vibration of heart, I began to realize that I have contacted this heart vibration before in my everyday life. It was then that I realized that God is ever present. His presence is felt in the void between all other consciousnesses in the universe. This is why in Eastern thought and discipline, one comes to experience God in the void, as through meditation. This is the purpose behind the Zen paradoxes like "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" It is to create a void in our busy mind (physical mind) where we can then meet God. (I actually answered this question to my satisfaction: "It is the sound of the tears of the hand yearning for the other one.") Heart is in that space. It is here where we meet the heart of God. It is here that we create a place where we can receive His heart, His presence. The quieting of the physical mind, the mind of survival, the mind of self-purpose.

I caught sight of this place of peace back in 1985. I remember so clearly observing my black cat, Abigail, one sunny spring day sitting in the meadow behind my house. There she sat with her nose raised upward blissfully sniffing the air. I caught her peacefulness and absolute harmony with the world around her. I saw her in her God "catness". I remember catching the vibration of this space or void she was in outside of her usual daily routine of hunting, eating, sleeping, playing. My heart yearned for that peacefulness and oneness with the world around me.

That morning in bed, I reflected back to catching this consciousness when looking into the eyes of a cow or deer. While staring into a cow's eye, sensing its consciousness or being, I would all of a sudden sense this incredible vulnerability, purity, openness of consciousness in the eyes. Then the "cowness" would come back again. Back in forth in waves of consciousness, I would experience being with the animal and then with this other awareness.

Thinking that it must have something to do only with animals which were passive, non-hunters, I didn't make much of the experience. However, after this experience in my room, I realized that this God consciousness was also in my cat's eyes, and not just gentle, plant- eating animals. Between the cat's aggressive, survival consciousness lay this receptive, gentle gaze coming back to me, opening to me, trusting me. I realize that this is why people like to look into the eyes of newborn babies. It is here that we can experience this gaze of God so clearly and for a long period of time.

This is the place where I met God that first day. I realize that I can go to this place any time I want. That He is there waiting for me. What pulls me away from Him is the realization that this tenderness, this vulnerability is what was hurt at the time of the Fall, and continuing to be hurt. This pain is what pulls me away. I have not reached the point in my own heart development to be able to remain with Him in the fullness of His pain. It is my pain, too. And I have not learned how to be with my pain, and so find I am unable to be with God in His. This fear of being in my pain keeps me in the fight and flight survival mode of my physical mind. But now that I realize what I am striving for in my relationship with Him, I am more focused on accomplishing this. I want to be there for Him in His pain. I only pray that I can become strong enough soon.

Sun Myung Moon, "The Safe Settlement of True Parents of the Completed Testament Age," Seoul, Korea, January 1, 1994: "Do your body and soul no longer fight with each other? Do you have an eternal foundation for peace, a perfect dwelling place in the center of your self, where you can receive God and True Parents? As long as your mind and body are fighting, you have nothing to do with the Kingdom of Heaven. In order to unite mind and body, you have to overcome the desire to eat, the desire to sleep and sexual desire. Without that victory, it is impossible to unite mind and body. If mind and body are not one, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

Download entire page and pages related to it in ZIP format
Table of Contents
Copyright Information