This page is devoted to my thoughts and experiences over a period of time. To me, they mark stages that I have gone through on my continuing spiritual Journey. I offer them to you hoping that they may be of interest. Reiki effects the Reiki Practitioner by developing what is already within. We don't all develop the same way. All healers are encouraged, prodded or even pushed down their spiritual path. The relative speed of this journey seems related to the amount of healing the practitioner is involved in.

1. 21st May 2000 - Searching for a Spiritual Path?
2. 30th July 2000 - A Brush with death.
3. 12th August 2001 - My God.
4. 10th February 2002 - The Next Step?
5. 6th June 2002 - Soul Thoughts
6. 24th August 2003 - About Angels
7. 18th January 2004 - The Meaning of a November Experience
8. 20th February 2005 - Spirituality and the Kingdom of Heaven
9. 11th September 2005 - Moving toward Oneness with God
10. 18th September 2005 - The Path of the Spirit
11. 14th May 2006 - The Illusion of Reality
12. 24th December 2006 - A Meaning for the Birth of Jesus
13. 29th July 2007 - Inner Ears and Eyes
14. 26th August 2007 - What Blackpool Unitarian Church stands for
15. 30th September 2007 - The Holy Spirit
16. 25th November 2007 - Doing The Holy Spirit
17. 30th December 2007 - Abundance and Spirituality

21st May 2000 - Searching for a Spiritual Path
I am on a spiritual path! I am on a spiritual path. I am on a spiritual path?
These are the thoughts that are and have been relevant to me this year.

And I have struggled with them. Is there such a thing as a spiritual path? What does this spiritual path consist of? Is it real? How would I recognise it if I saw it? Am I on such a path? Do I want to be on it? Do Have I have a choice about it anyway? What direction am I going, progressing or regressing? I have been feeling very confused.

I feel like Poo Bear, with very little brain Thinking Thingish Things.

This morning I am risking other people looking at my Thingish Things and perhaps my confusions in the hope that some slight thought or word may trigger a Thingish response with someone ...
Anyone.

Jalal al-Din Rumi (MASNAVI Vol 5: Verses 1733-1734) suggests that we have an inbuilt need to search. It is however difficult to search without at least making a path even if we are not following a pre-existing path, road, or motorway. Rumi (MASNAVI Vol 3: Verses 978-980) also suggests that we should actively apply ourselves to such a search and, importantly, we will (with certainty) find that for which we search. Now that's a thought isn't it? The corollary to this is that if we do not search, we will find that for which we look, that is nothing.

The idea of being on a journey or path during life is not new. Our own literature is full of it with the Robert Frost poem (The Road Not Taken) being just one example.
What appeals to me is the idea that taking the 'path less travelled' makes a difference. Perhaps this effects the quality of the progression and what is perceived and learned along the path.
To me it is the act of choice which is important and specially that there is not necessarily a pre-ordained, pre- determined and way marked route.

Richard Wilkins thoughts contained within his 'the path to follow' (10/10 The Yellow Book: final page) also interests me. Is it really true that whatever path we take it is always the right one for us? Is it the journey that is important rather than the journey's end?

All these thoughts interest me but can I make sense of them? What do they mean for Me? Do questions have any importance to myself? How should I test them to find out their truth?

On reflection there is only one way. Reading and listening to others is interesting, thought provoking but of itself can give no certainty. So where can I look for the answers to my questions about the spiritual path? The answer is simple. I should look at what I think I know most about. I should look at myself. I think that we have lived together, me and myself, long enough now to know a little of each other. To do this I intend to apply the best, the most effective tool that I have, hindsight. It is a wonderful tool if used 'with truth' and with unclouded vision, though I am not sure I have that totally sorted out yet. Hindsight can be very unkind! So, I have a question, I have a tool to apply and I have myself on which to apply it.

So what can my own life tell me about the existence, direction, or perhaps the quality of my possible spiritual path? What do I look at but who I am, What I was, What I have become and then perhaps chart this forward. Is this too easy? Would this answer any of the questions or does the very framing of the process of WAS, NOW and NEXT bare with it an automatic answer of PATH, just like any three dots not in a straight line, when joined will always form a triangle.
Probably, but I am not sure how to escape this thinking.

For what it is, I feel that I have changed during my life, or have I developed. I started out as a very shy, introverted, emotionally insecure child with limited social skills and a poor memory.
What have I become but a shy, introverted, somewhat insecure adult who brazens out public appearances but normally verges on the uncommunicative and anti-social and guess what, still having a poor memory. Doesn't sound like much progress or development does it? Well perhaps I have understated the lack of development just a fraction. My life has taught me, however, the value of what and who I am. Personal success has been important in the development but more importantly have been my failures. These have taught me to empathise with others. My life has forced me to look at myself and to see me as I am not as I would like to be. It has created a need in me to help others, though whether this is only normal growth and flowering of a pre-existing disposition is open to debate.

What does this mean? I am beginning to understand myself and this allows me to guess at an understanding of others. Is this the spiritual path for which I search? I think not, though perhaps an understanding of myself may have predisposed me to ask the questions about a spiritual path, I see nothing spiritual in this.

And that suggests another question, perhaps the most important question. Has there been anything spiritual at all in my life so far? Memory of my childhood and early youth is now fragmentary to my mind, and although there were experiences and lessons learned I cannot say that they were particularly spiritual. In this period I grew up within a Unitarian family (my father having been a minister) and I attended a Unitarian church. The 'free thinking' that I was exposed to demanded of me a number of things. Ask questions. Look beyond the surface. Serve others. Work hard. Strive for what is good. I suspect these attitudes were inculcated within me during this period. Are these spiritual? No I don't think so, not in themselves, no matter how laudable.

Did the next period of my life have anything spiritual? I found love, married and helped (however little) to bring up two children. I strived for academic and professional standing. I was driven to learn and not just in an academic sense. Interesting? Yes. Necessary? Yes.
Spiritual? No I think not, unless I have misunderstood what spiritual is, and that is entirely possible. Perhaps 'spiritual' cannot be really understood before you have experienced and created an understanding of life, living and responsibility.

Has anything spiritual happened in my life that I can poke a finger at?
Anything at all? Well perhaps. My problem is that I am certainly a 'doubting Thomas'. I have to bump into things. I have to have things spelled out. I am after all very slow to understand the obvious. No doubt my 'life-acquired' pre-disposition to be an 'Eeyore' gets in the way. Lynn, my wife, certainly thinks I have this ability to look hard at life and find the worst possible outcome to worry about. I think I am preparing myself for the 'brick-bats' of life which need to avoided or at least survived.

Today, now, I will not do this. I will be a 'Tigger'. Well perhaps that is going too far. So perhaps I will settle for being 'Poo Bear'.

So, has anything spiritual happened in my life that might answer my original questions? Yes, I think I have had a slight glimmer, a peak, a smidgen, enough to acquire a slight inkling about the answer(?) to my questions. And in my 'Poo-bearish' way I will expose my thingish things to you, and hope that they don't become less thingish.

Within the last 10 years, it has come to me to ask the question, is there a God? This thought has come repeatedly to me, without me asking for it. It popped, fully formed into my head and often when I was working my hardest at something difficult but definitely non-spiritual. So far I have never been able to answer the question.

About 4 years ago I decided to stand this question on its head. I would apply the 'null Hypothesis', beloved by researchers and statisticians, to my original question. I will say that there is no God. Can I say that there is no God? I found after many attempts to reflect and answer this that when it came down to it I could not really say, and believe, that there was no God. This knowing was not at a conscious level though my arguments definitely were.

Not long after accepting my thoughts concerning God I heard about Reiki healing and I could not believe that such healing could work. It must be just a money-spinner. Yet within months, despite my objections to the idea of the idea I knew that I would be trained and that I would go all the way to master level in this healing form. No conscious decision was made. The knowledge just appeared, fully formed within me. Two years ago I found out that my eldest brother was a healer within his church, and though too late, he warned me that the effect of becoming a healer was to travel down the spiritual path faster, almost to be driven down it. He said that it was not possible to heal and not make spiritual progress.

In the last 2 years I have noticed with an increasing frequency that friends and acquaintances are offering books of a spiritual nature that I feel the need to read and sometimes buy.

Just over a year ago I knew that I had to come to the church I now attend. Knew. No discussion. No pondering. And when I did not do it I found that the need within me grew until I could no longer ignore it. When I arrived what did I find? I found others also deeply interested in spiritual matters and healing. To my limited knowledge, unheard of in a Unitarian church.

Today, to some extent I find myself increasingly driven by unconscious decisions that 'feel right' rather than are thought through. This 'feel right' factor has, for me, become important. It is forcing me to recognise that within me is a source of knowledge as well as a sense of peace and well being which is worth pursuing.

Have my original questions been answered? I think partly but not in the way that I was thinking that they would be. I think that I can see a spiritual development within me. To some extent it embarrasses me to say so. If I accept what has and was happening to me then it can be said that I am on a spiritual path. Perhaps I have always been on it. Perhaps my progress along this path is in-built within me. Perhaps it does not matter, but to me the recognition of a line of development or pathway is important. I am happy to be there, or here wherever it might be. I am happy to be travelling. I am happy to have taken the path less travelled. I am interested, even excited, to know this. I look forward with interest to further steps along the path into what to me is unknown land. Most of all I am happy that I sometimes find a Thing which is very 'Thingish' within me and hope that you, who find an interest in such 'Thingish Things' will treasure them.

I wish to thank you all for listening and for the chance to speak. Not because I like speaking in public but I feel that the process, thought to paper to mouth has been important to me so that I could pin down some of my thoughts. Thank you.

Winnie is dead. She died earlier this month. I knew Winnie for just 6 weeks, her daughter, with Winnie's agreement had asked me to be involved as a Reiki practitioner. As usual I was the point of last resort.

Winnie was old. She had had a full active life, but since last summer had suffered from the progressive degenerative condition. When I first met Winnie she was in inner turmoil, her condition having progressed so that she could only speak and partially move her head. She was finding breathing increasingly difficult. She had no other control and her hands were locked solid, fingers turned in and the growing nails cutting the palms.

Her passing was, frankly, not unexpected, so what was it about Winnie's death that I knew that I would talk about it here. Well, it was the manner of her death, linked to other things that prompted me to feel that here, in her death, was something to be learned something that I was meant to learn, something worth passing on.

What were these things, other than Winnie's death that caught my attention enough to respond to them. Thoughts, like daydreams and muses are always passing through my awareness yet certain poems seemed increasingly to show themselves as fragments, the odd phrase, a line, and the ideas inherent behind certain poems. There was nothing unusual about the poems and every one of them was one that I use with my Special Needs children as a discussion starter or just to experience. I am a believer in the importance and value of language, even beyond the apparent ability level. I am frequently surprised by the quality of response from my pupils - but that is not why I am up here today! I do get such poem fragments from time to time floating through my brain, that seems normal. But poetry doesn't normally bombard me. Nor do the books that contain these poems, which I haven't used for at least 2 years, at home, seem to attract my attention from among the hundreds of similar books on the shelves at home. By itself I would have ignored this and said that it was because I was working with Winnie that was causing my brain to dig out related thoughts etc.

My church had a 'Treasured Memory' coffee morning earlier this month. I knew beforehand that I would choose one of Mother's letters but not which one. Out of 4 full, lever arch files that contain these letters, the 1st file that I opened at random opened at the beginning of the letter that I read earlier. This letter was to the man who would eventually become my father, concerning the death of his first wife. A coincidence? My life is full of coincidence.

Just this last Monday a friend lent me a book and suggested a particular passage as being suitable for this service. Yes she knew it would be about death but not what slant I would take.
Her offering fitted exactly with my thoughts framed prior to day. Another coincidence and one that I will share with you later.

After a long preamble, what is it that I have learned? Let's take things in order. 1st the poetry, then my experiences with Winnie and finally my friend's offering.

Language, any language is difficult, full of contradictions, slippery concepts that change with spacing, punctuation and word grouping but more often responding to prior experience of the reader/listener. It is for this reason that as I have become older I have been drawn more and more to poetry. Two simple modern examples are "Private? No!" by Willard R. Espy and then "London Airport" by Christopher Logue.

I like poetry and I am going to share, with you, the poems that my thought fragments came from. It doesn't really matter what meaning anyone else says that they have but what it means to me based on my own experience of life, intellectual and emotional.

Horace, who died in 8BC wrote in Odes, book 3, verse 29:-

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair or foul or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

Like the Lao - Tzu poem "All things pass", as a view of death it seems, not wrongful but limited.
They deal with life on the basis of here, I've done this or that and life moves on. Which of course it does and it ends, which of course it does. All things do pass. It is just a reminder of the inevitable.

Roger McGough wrote "Let me Die a Young Man's Death" This is a young persons response to death. Let it be quick. Let it be a long way off. Very understandable but like the previous two poems does not deal with death, the issue or the event in any real way. This is like Mothers "Pull yourself together" advice , but it doesn't deal with the issue.
Though in fairness that was not all that she said which was of value as there were all sorts of undercurrents of real meaningful support. In a sense these passages are a rejection of death.

Poetry is full of authors' responses to death. Death in war. Death of friends. Death of relatives but perhaps it is the poetry that has been written when the poet knows that they are dieing that is most useful to my experience of Winnie They include Christine Rossetti "Remember" who died in 1894; Raymond Carver "Fragment", who died in 1998; Sasha Moorson "Body" who died in 1993; Juan Ramone Jimenez "I Am Not I".who died in 1958 and an unknown poet. This last "Do not stand At My Grave and Weep" came, I understand, to light in a sealed envelope left on his dresser prior to starting a tour of duty in Northern Ireland in which he died. This young soldier died in 1994.

Christina Rosetti in "Remember" has recognised, if not having totally accepted, the inevitable, but was concerned for those left behind. This concern for those remaining seems to me to be the real driving thrust of her thoughts, rather than the dieing.

In Late "Fragment", Raymond Carver has a turned inwards to reflect on life. Asking and observing. What have I really got out of life? What have I learned?
What has been really important?

Sash Moorson's "Body" recognises the beginning of, at least, an intellectual separation of the self and body. That perhaps the ills of the body don't matter after all as there is something else more important.

This recognition of and separation of the essential self from the body is continued in Juan Ramone Jimenez' "I Am Not I".

Steven Cummins' message "Do not stand At My Grave and Weep" to his parents before he was killed in 1994 takes the idea of the separate self to be a continuing self - the immortal self. In a sense this poem turns full circle suggesting that this last idea should be of comfort to those left behind.

These poems , in my mind form a progression, a development of thought.
First is the 'Rejection' the closing of the mind to the inevitable outcome. This is followed by the 'Concern' not so much for self but for others who are close who are to be left behind. After that is the 'Purpose' the encapsulated idea that there is a purpose to life, something to experience, something to learn. Coming next is the 'Separation' of self from body, perhaps initially as an intellectual or emotional recognition of the forthcoming reality. Finally the 'Immortality' that there is no end to self, just a moving on.

Winnie is dead and I was privileged to be with her enough to begin to understand, in however a limited way, what death is. I had not understood anything really of my fathers death in 1952. I was only 7. Though it did effect me. Before this point I was a normal child with the normal childhood illnesses of childhood. After, I was an asthmatic with interrupted schooling from that time on. Obviously a physical/psychological response but one of which I have little understanding, for I have no memories of my father.

Mothers death in 1987 left me feeling relieved, for her as well as myself. Her condition had robbed her if the ability to communicate. Her continued frustration was quite obvious. Her death did not really make me sad, though I felt a sense of loss - a place inside that had become empty. To some extent this feeling is repeated even now when I think of her. Is this the 'selfish side of death', the side that concentrates on how it effects me, that Mother's letter refers to. Well ... I don't know. I only know what I feel.

So what of Winnie? When first I met her, she wanted the miracle cure - to walk again. She was in inner turmoil, trying to cope with the indignity of no control over her own body. Her daughter was also finding it very difficult to cope with as well.
Winnie was in a state of rejection.
A closing of the mind to what was likely to be the inevitable. By the end of my second week she was showing a concern, not for herself but for her daughter. At this point I was spending time with both Winnie and her daughter. Her condition also began to improve with easier breathing and hands more relaxed. The fourth week saw Winnie confidently, though weakly taking with her daughter about her life. Trying in her own way to help her daughter. By this time she knew what she really wanted though by now there were periods when all of her body relaxed. Winnie no longer wanted the miracle cure, but to move on, to follow her husband who had died 18 months earlier. The change in Winnie, the sense of peace, was quite noticeable and still she was trying to make it easier for her daughter. How do I know? Well, I asked her, when her daughter was not there. The next visit, a week later she had begun the separation of self from body. No matter the twitching, the quiet moans or irregular breath, that only seemed to be the body, not Winnie. As I left at the end of my session, Winnie mouthed thank you. It was enough. Her daughter never saw it. But I knew. Winnie died 5 minutes before my next session. She went peacefully. I came away, for I felt that my place was not there.
I had done what I had to do. I had helped in the healing process necessary for a quiet, peaceful death. A passing on. I was not sad but happy.

With this experience Winnie has taught me about the process of dying and I now have a better understanding of the term healing.

My friend's offering to me. Let me read it to you. It comes from a book called 'Handle with Prayer' by Alan Cohen. Page 175 is headed Truth and Appearances ...

"I had the pleasure of meeting Albert Aguas, a handsome Brazilian shaman with the gift of healing. I saw Alberto lay hands on several patients, to the accompaniment of classical music. I felt honoured to watch this dedicated healer move intuitively, his hands and entire body guided by some unseen yet obvious force.

During class, Alberto told us, "I performed two of my most powerful healings on patients who passed on not long afterward."
"How can that be?" a student asked.
"The purpose of healing is not necessarily to bring about a certain physical condition," Alberto explained. "Sometimes its purpose is to bring a soul to peace. The patients I have just described had, on a deeper level, chosen to leave this world. In the process they needed to find resolution and freedom within themselves. I can tell when a patient receives healing; I experience a kind of psychic 'clicking' during which tumblers fall into place. I felt that sense of deep resolution with these patients; the fact that they passed on is secondary to the fact that they found inner peace."

The clicking of psychic tumblers I am not sure of but the inner peace I have seen.

Thank you.

For many years I have known that despite my upbringing in a predominately Christian country, I could not accept an image of God continually being depicted as an old, or young, white man in an elevated position, or a throne. For me, this is a cultural stereotype of the worst kind. I found it sexist, recognising the pre-eminence of men. I found it racist, as it portrayed a perceived superiority of a particular race. For me, the elevated figure or enthroned figure represented power and control. This sort of God would want to dominate or demand, and would never appreciate any who question. Whether benevolent or not I found these images of God at the least distasteful and at the worst, insidious and actively dangerous.
For myself, this image was totally at odds with what I had thought of as Christianity. Of course I blame my upbringing within a non-conformist, searching, intellectually demanding Unitarian family, and church. There was no hope for me was there? I was lost. Eventually I was going to ask questions and demand sensible answers. But I was obviously tainted from the start. A lost cause. To 'real' Christians I am already dammed forever. I have to tell you that on this basis I have already been refused goods and services necessary for my healing activities, but that is another story.

In my search for understanding, in this area, I had some years ago looked at the other still active major religions and their spiritual power base or God that they described. At this time I thought that it might prove useful. Now I am one of those unfortunates that has always had a poor memory and so everything, every idea has to be pared down to its bare bones, its essential concept. To aid the conceptualising process I decided to encapsulate such thoughts on God into no more than one sentence per religion. Grossly unfair, of course, to the religions concerned as well as their God. Why did I do this? Well I thought that the intellectual process involved in producing such a brief resume would provide the meat for the 'inner me' to respond to and the sense of 'rightness' that I get. In the last analysis that is all I have got to aid me, as I find that just an intellectual process often leaves me at the edge of decisions rather than carrying me through them to a conclusion.

So what did I find for all the brain energy expended? At the first attempt I seemed to find nothing. I found that the task that I had set myself was not easy. I found a mismatch of related ideas and concepts. To aid the data processing I established the information in date order of when the religions had sprung up and with that the beginning of a pattern started to emerge. Not enough to base any judgements on though. So I went back and started again. The problem that I found was that the practices of various religious groups seemed to get in the way of understanding their God. In some cases I had misunderstood, or more often than not, misinterpreted what I had been seeing, hearing or reading. It was just too easy as an outsider to make suspect conclusions. For example, if in ignorance you wandered into a catholic church you could be forgiven if you thought that there was a whole panoply of little gods or 'godlets' called saints. Or that along with other Christian churches was practiced an institutionalised and sanitised form of cannibalism called communion. All religions are open to this sort of misinterpretation. Sometimes what the public say, or church's public practice, or its public face does not seem to match what the thinkers within the church are saying about the religion. It was also all too easy to bring my own preconceptions to the task at hand.

So it was back to the drawing board. I can't think why I did not give up, except that if I wanted spiritual clarity of my own I should at least look for it in others.

So, after re-evaluating my data I came up with this. Initially the religious gods of those religions important now, came in two broad forms. On one hand there were those where the spiritual power, or god centre resided within the environment in total including people. These included the 'earlier' religions, the earliest starting before 3500BC to the last one starting at 500BC and included in this were the shamanistic folk religions (for want of a better way of putting it), Hinduism, Shinto, Jainism, Taoism(Dowism), Buddism (though they don't really ascribe to a named God) and Confucianism. On the other hand were those who looked to an identifiable single deity. The earliest of these was in existence by 2200BC and the last by 1800AD and included Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism and Baha'ism. Although I was not totally happy with either of these two positions I found to my surprise that my 'feel rightness' was nudging me more towards the earlier religious Gods rather than the later ones.

This was a bit disturbing to me. What was it about the earlier religious gods which called me to them. What was it that was putting me off the more modern Gods.
Whatever it was something was holding me back from making a decision one way or the other. There seemed no basis for making a firm decision, irrevocable or not. So I looked at the data again.

At the simplest level the earlier religions talked about their spiritual power or God force, (though sometimes showing different facets of itself as smaller deity's of different sexes or none) as being timeless, being everywhere, being in everything. They said that this spiritual power or God force was responsible for everything from creation to the end of time. They talked about this spiritual power or God force, being available to all who looked for it, both within the environment and within themselves. The spiritual power or God force was described more often as supporting, helping, guiding, caring, loving, the source of good. Now I really could accept that. This has a very high 'feel right' response from within me. So what was wrong with the other religious Gods, because to me as mentioned last year I felt there was a god and only one. So I returned to my studies.

The other religions, what did they say? They said that there was only one God or spiritual power. Getting behind the trappings of these religions, their power structures and the public voices, the symbols, their separateness, their hates, their pettiness, their blinkered single mindedness of purpose. What else did they say!

All these religions had followers who thought deeply, explored, discussed and didn't just accept what was said about their religion and their God even if they tended to be kept out of sight from the general public and sometimes persecuted. What did these people actually say. None of these when you finally got down to it actually believed in the public stereotypes, the public face of their religions, the public face of their God. Nor did they think that their original spiritual leaders or prophets really say these things when viewed within the context of their own times.
The same thing seemed to have happened to them all. It did not matter who you looked at Abraham and the others, Zarathustra, Jesus, Mohammad, Nanak or Baha'ullah, the message had been altered, skewed, changed and hedged about by and for the purposes of others. They did not say exactly the same thing but were obviously talking about the same things.

What did they say? They said that there was only one God which was all powerful. That God had created, is creating us and our universe. That God was beyond time, was everywhere, was in everything and is available to us now at an individual level. God is more often described as compassionate, supporting, helping, guiding, loving and good. God is described as having both male and female attributes or none. Now haven't I heard this all before? The earlier religions were and are saying this about their spiritual power base, their God.

In general then, behind the people driven public face and power structures of the religions there seems to be little or no difference between one description of God or another. This, for me does have a pronounced 'feel right' factor. It seems to me then, that what is wrong is not the original religious concepts of God but the interpretations, the semantic twists, the word games, that some have applied to those concepts of God, to manipulate and twist them to and for their own ends. The problem to me seems not with God but with man who often seems only able to see God in his own image.

So where has my inbuilt 'feel right' factor led me? The me that is here now, this minute. Well ... for me there is only one spiritual source, power ... call it God if you will. The names and semantics do not bother me for it is all one in the end. It is everywhere; in everything; within and beyond time and beyond space (wherever that is). It is the source of life, the universe ... everything. This is so far beyond me that I cannot conceptualise it except by what I know and experience and this has been the trap of the priests and clergy over the ages and one I do not want to fall into. For me God is unknowable and that does not worry me one jot for if God was knowable it would be limited and therefore not God.
For me God has no limits but importantly God is available on an individual and personal level, for it is the source of all. It is the force for life, for good.

So how does this God concept affect, dictate even, my relationship with my God?

Well my God by being in everything is a part of me and not separate at all. I therefore, whether I recognise it or not, must be a part of God because we are not separate, but so must everybody and everything else be. This therefore should rule how I relate to others and the world as a whole. This God of mine by being within and a part of me is instantly and always available to me (reprobate though I am), as it is to everyone. Because of the nature of my God concept and the semantic manipulation I have carried out within that concept, despite falling to some extent into what I call the 'priest trap' I am left with the following. God is available to me on an individual and personal level and as such does not need an interpreter. All I need to do is to learn how to listen.

Thank you.

Over the last year or two I have read a number of books about spirituality. What comes over, very strongly, is that spirituality and religious belief are not synonymous with each other. Most people, whether religious or not are not spiritual. I have met one or two people who I would describe as spiritual but I am sure that none of them would agree that they were. Spirituality is a slippery concept recognisable perhaps only in others and never recognised in ourselves. That makes it very difficult pin down.

The underlying common theme in all books on spirituality is the word love. In Jesus asks us to love God and to love our neighbour as ourselves. This theme underpins much of what Jesus and his disciples say and it echoes across the New Testament in various forms. To make a stab at the original question I will therefore have to explore in some way what is meant by the word love.

So what is this love that is being demanded of us? Our western thinking is bound up in the largely classical tradition of Eros, and Agape and often seen as a continuum stretching from the sexual through family to a more generalised brotherly love. I am left uneasy in using these definitions of love though I believe that they are generally true. In our history and our culture they have been twisted too many times to justify all sorts of beliefs and practices. I will therefore use another culture and tradition to cast light on the concept love.

In the Tibetan tradition there are said to be seven types of love. Three of these belong to man and the remaining four to the Gods. The first love and the most primitive form is sheer magnetic attraction. It is a surface thing often mistaken as 'true' love but it is transient. When it is gone husband and wives can wake up one morning and realise that they are wedded to a stranger in whom they have no interest. This seems a common problem in our society. I do not think that this is the love that Jesus refers to.

The second form of love is when a lasting friendship and commitment arises between couples and which extends and reinforces and extends the narrow sexual attraction of the first love. This second love is the love that binds and supports couples across the years no matter what is thrown at them by life. But this love is often an exclusive love. It focuses usually on one other person or a small group and tends to exclude all others and the world outside the relationship. This love invariably looks through 'rose tinted' glasses, never quite seeing the world or partner as they really are. It is seen as a functional love, which on the death of the partner leaves the survivor totally bereft and unable to cope. This, it seems to me is the basis of most successful marriages within our culture but I do not think that this is the love that Jesus refers to.

The third level of love in the Tibetan tradition is said to approach the ways of Gods and is generally seen as difficult for man to attain. This love is said to be all embracing for everyone and everything. This love recognises reality and others as they really are and still loves. This is the love that is often seen as 'spiritual'. This form of love has to be learned. This, to me, seems to be the love that Jesus was referring to. Certainly it is the love that Paul refers in 1 Corinthians as being patient, kind, unselfish, generous, full of humility, courteous, outgoing, simple, slow to think the worst, excludes wrong, hopes for the best, and endures regardless.

This also seems to be what the books on spirituality are referring to. Love in this context seems to be a much enlarged capacity for love. It is focused on everybody and everything, in a way that is not pushy, nor threatening nor manipulative. It does not retreat from life or even be in an acceptance of it but is totally involved with it. Love In these books always starts with self, not others. In fact it seems to work out from self to encompass others in an understanding derived from an understanding of self. Like in the second part of the first reading when the lover could only gain entrance to his beloved by becoming at one with the beloved. 'Love your neighbour as yourself' comes to mind or the corollary of this - 'love your neighbours as themselves'. Self, self, self, again there is that commonality between Jesus and modern spiritual texts.

So where does this leave us with the original question and questioner. It leaves me looking at myself. What do I see. Well I see in myself a certain lack of control, persistence, direction, understanding, compassion, a mixture of pent up emotions responding to reality in a way that sometimes shocks me. Not much going for me there is there? Perhaps though I am just like everybody else? I am left with the feeling that if I have made any spiritual development at all then I am still more like the chicken-eagle in our first reading except that perhaps, like the original questioner I now know that I can be something else. We all can. I am left with the view that somehow we should extend our capacity to love ever outwards to encompass all, in a fully accepting and non-judgemental fashion. Not easy that. Not only do we have to do this but that this can only really be achieved by being a part of the world as it is and not retreating from it.

So what advice is given as to how to achieve this level of love. I have to say that I have found the bible although giving some clues about what needs to be done is a bit sparse about how to go about doing it in practical terms. The spiritual texts on the other hand seem full of helpful and sometimes very different and conflicting advice about how to go about making spiritual progress. However I have achieved something already. I have recognized the importance of the question. I have done some reading and some thinking. I have some experiences, no matter how limited they are which might be of help. I have at least one tool. I listen to the thoughts and prods that come from within and I tend to act on the basis of what I call my 'feel right' factor. I recognise that this process has already started and probably started some time ago. All I have to do is to continue down this path, difficult though it is. But what path? Do I see one leading out in front of me? No I don't. But I do think that I should use what I have within me, my 'God given abilities'(?) to take the next steps.

The next few steps that I see, however simple or difficult, seem to be placed in front of me. My 'feel right' factor tells me this. It keeps telling me this. Some of these steps I am taking now. Some steps I have taken already, more than once sometimes and no doubt I will revisit many of these steps again in the years to come for it seems that these steps are not linear. They sometimes don't even seem to be heading the same direction. When I think of it, like in the healing I do in which time and distance don't seem to matter, perhaps direction doesn't either.
These steps when put together seem to be cyclic, even though I jump steps occasionally. Perhaps that is because I can't see the spiral that is taking me towards my goal. Perhaps even the concept of goal is incorrect. Perhaps this is only a mirage to reach for, or a carrot to encourage, so that I will strive. Whatever is the reality, I will share my few steps with you in the hope that these will be of use to you on your own spiritual journey.

Most spiritual texts largely focus on encouraging us into viewing ourselves. They talk in terms of the 'I' watching the 'me'. This seems to be a pedantic way of explaining that you are observing yourself. I am not sure that the 'I' can be separated from the 'me' in any real sense without being classified as schizophrenic. What does Jesus say ... 'The kingdom of God is within you.' That seems a good starting point. I will turn my thoughts and actions inward.

On reflection there seem to be three steps incorporating a number of actions to be taken. I am not sure that the order of these steps matters, nor even their separateness, except for the person taking them. In some ways the order is a convenient generalization. What I need to do is to strip myself down to the real me so that I can recognise it on the rare occasion that it pokes its head up and looks at me. A bit like peeling an onion and perhaps just as uncomfortable.

My first step is to trace how I have become the me that is now. I want to look at what seem to be key points in my life. Not so that I can beat myself with my perceived failings but so that I can gain some understanding of the who I was. I need to accept me. I need to accept what has happened in my life that has influenced and moulded me? More importantly I need to recognise the layers of me that have been imposed upon me by myself and others such as parents, family, friends church, school, state etc. I need to begin to question myself and search for answers so that I can get a glimpse of the real me hidden away behind this facade. I am there somewhere. We all are. For I am neither the role I play nor the label that categorizes me which I have either accepted or has been thrust unto me by others. Perhaps we are all hidden inside our 'me onion'. If I can begin to know and accept the 'me' that I was, complete with mistakes and hang ups then I can begin to accept the 'me' that others are.

The next step is to pin down who the real me is now. Is the real me different from the 'me' of the past. I need to observe what I am doing now. I need to begin to recognise and understand how I react, question what I do. I need to strip away the irrelevancies, the unthinking - ness, the controlling factors that limit me and cause me to lose sight of who I really am. I need to accept that I make a 'pig's ear' of things sometimes. If I don't recognise my own frailties how can I accept them in others. In this process I need to caste off the irrelevant roles that I play and the labels I give myself and reject those that have been thrust unto me by others. I am neither the role I play nor the label I might aspire to.

Then there is 'me' and the 'others'. It is no good sitting in my own safe place and thinking only about myself. That by itself is a dead end. I need to reach out to others. I need to interact. I need to share. I need to relate. I need to observe, especially myself for this is as much about me learning about 'me' and understanding and accepting the 'me' as it is about knowing 'others'. I do need to understand and accept 'others' as I find them. I need to encompass others on their own ground to in order to extend my awareness of me. I feel this is very important for without this how will I recognise the 'me' in them or their 'otherness' in me.

All this is great it sounds like a frenetic search with eagle eyed observation. I don't believe that it is like that nor should it be. No process should of itself take over and steamroller forward. This process of waking myself up or finding me should be slow and steady with places for rest and recuperation. Of necessity there needs to be time for working, for dreaming, for creating, for reflection and meditation, for meeting and being with people, for being with the world, for being alone, for enjoying myself. Breathing space is important. Time to recap. Time to reassess. Time to recognise the progress that has been made. Time to become aware. Time to just be still. Time to ask for guidance. Time to listen. Time to listen to that inner voice. Time to recognise the next step. But most of all, time to just be me.

Thank you.

For a long time I have viewed meditation as very useful to me. A life saver in fact. One which has made it possible to continue my day job, teaching that is, a lot longer than I ever would have expected,. When my meditation goes well I feel comfortable, warm and a feeling of being nurtured. Time does not seem to matter and my frustrations diminish or disappear and I am left with a sense of peace. I have used a meditation, not unlike that suggested by John Donohue, called the 'light body' meditation for a long time but recently I have found myself changing and extending its scope. In this meditation, starting at a point within, I visualise my body slowly being filled with light. Now when I meditate, this light grows until it extends beyond the body. It can extend a few feet, fill the room, the building, the district etc. I am left with the feeling that I have not made that which I see. I am just illuminating it, allowing myself to see what is already there. Is this purely a mind induced visualisation or is it, as John Donohue suggests, contact with the soul? When doing this meditation I have such a sense of 'rightness' that I feel that there is something here that I have to take notice of, to learn. The question is, what is soul?

Soul. An airy fairy term. A word that has a place in world religions and spiritual practices down the millennia. A word that we cannot agree amongst ourselves as to what it means leaving a dictionary with a range of suggestions. A clutching at straws. Immaterial, vital principle, animating, essential are the words that are used to describe soul. Something which is here and not here. Something which we cannot be without. The part of us that exists beyond death. The part of us which is eternal. Is that right? 'The part of us' Or is it that we are a part of it as Meister Eckhart, John Donaghue and others would suggest. For my part I feel that this last is right. My 'feel right' factor tells me so but I have no proof. Just little hints.

Over the past fifty or so years, the understanding of reality has changed. Physicists and mathematicians now view our world through different ideas. Yes this is the mind stretching part but please bare with me. I am not going to go back to Planck's idea of quanta, even if at sub atomic level, matter and energy are as one, are each the other and are interchangeable. I'll start with David Bohm. He postulated the hologram and the idea that the whole is implicit within each of the parts. That is what is special about any hologram. Take a small piece of it and you have an image of the whole. He also said that because of this 'whole to part linkage, each of the parts would also be interconnected in some way. This was substantiated mathematically by J.S. Bell who went on to show that this connection of the parts transcended time and space.

Great! Now we know that we are connected at a sub atomic level. In fact everything in some way is connected or interconnected. But how does that affect me? I seem to be of a higher order of size. On the back of Bell's work Rupert Sheldrake postulated the presence of Morphographic fields. To you and me that means 'invisible organising fields'. These fields seem to have no energy in the normal sense because their effect reaches across time and space in a way that energy cannot. These fields have the same strength no matter what the distance. Does this matter, I say to myself. Well it seems that if right, it does, or at least it might. Sheldrake went on to suggest that these fields form the basic blueprint for organising both form and behaviour. This, as far as I understand has not been substantiated yet.

So before we get totally bogged down let us recap. The image of the whole is in a sense held within each part. All the parts are interconnected in a way that transcends time and space. This last means that it cannot be in our dimension. Now, in our world, reality or dimension any good idea is used, by nature, over and over again in lots of different ways and at different levels of complexity. Can this be true? Can we actually see some evidence for this at other than at sub atomic levels?

The answer would seem to be yes. We heard about some of them earlier. At the more molecular level is the glycerine event in which glycerine across the world seemed to learn how to crystallise itself even when it was sealed in airtight containers.

At the cellular level, an experiment in Russia with a tissue culture showed that when split in two and held within separate sealed containers, the poison induced death of one tissue sample somehow caused the other to die within twelve hours and with identical symptoms.

At the specie level, Lyall Watson described the 'hundredth monkey' principle in which a group of monkeys learned a new behaviour. Other monkeys, often separated by great distance and geographical barriers, learned the self same new behaviour. Other species have exhibited similar abilities, for example the Blue tits. Some of the more mature amongst us will remember the introduction of foil caps in 1952, for milk bottles, replacing the then traditional card inserts. The London Blue tits learned quickly, they're a sharp lot down there, that they could acquire breakfast by pecking through the foil cap. This ability spread in a manner which was seen to be unusual. Birds separated by great distance and geographical barrier suddenly acquired this breakfast habit as the ability spread across the U.K. and Europe.

There are hundreds of specie experiments which suggest that individuals are interconnected and that this interconnectedness involves abilities seemingly to break the normal time and distance barriers. This is true of very large shoals of fish and flocks of birds. Here, direction changes of the group, are instigated by a single individual. Those on the edge the shoal or flock who are often out of sight of the change instigator also change direction appropriately. However the speed at which they respond is shorter than it would take a visual or mechanical signal to work outwards away from the instigator to the periphery. Normal time and distance has somehow been transcended.

For humans, it seems that there is an enormous amount of information transferred between people. This ranges from feelings formed, for or against, about someone only glimpsed across the room, sometimes at distance. 'Mind messages' between separated family members at times of stress or trauma, breaking the normal time and distance barriers are not unknown. This, to such an extent that it would seem that at times we all have the ability to somehow step out of our normal reality.

But what of our ability to perceive the whole from the part? It is not unknown for authors and composers to suddenly glimpse the complete, fully fleshed out story, poem tune or symphony before the basis for such was hardly conceived. The one sometimes triggers the other. The part triggers the whole or is somehow the whole encapsulated within the part. Major scientific leaps have often been seen to be this type of event. Here, from a few isolated ideas and a strong underpinning of knowledge, a whole unified idea or concept have generated in one leap, leaving the researcher only to fill in the holes. It is based on this type of evidence and more, that Karl Pibram postulated that our brain structures our senses in a holographical way. Our brains are always taking a piece and generating the whole even if the whole has to be adapted later in light of experience.

So where does this leave us? Well it seems that we can operate, at least sometimes, outside linear time or three dimensional space. Somehow we seem to tap into another dimension. How do we do this? What is this other dimension where linear time and three dimensional space do not exist. It seems that it would not be a place of no time and no space but rather where all time is now, and all places are here. This dimension could justifiably be referred to as eternity where everything is eternally accessible.

If our physical body has this connection built into it as a facet of the physical body surely that part would have in some measure an aspect of the eternal. That is, it could not die. To my knowledge, even though different parts of the body die at different times, no part of the physical body seems to be eternal. It all dies and much of the apparent weight loss at death has been put down to continued respiration of these parts of the physical body that don't die straight away.

Is then the connection with the eternal to be found within our body's energy systems? Increasingly modern science is showing that all living things are surrounded by energy fields. Spiritual tradition across the world have said this for millennia. Yes there is some research to suggest that our energy field around us is multi layered both filling our physical body and extending outwards in layers. Seven layers, each more tenuous than the last one nearer the physical body. A part of this energy system even seems capable of travel away from the physical body for periods. In general though, the body's energy system seems focused on the physical body which in some way supports. There is a little research that suggests that at least one level, 'healers' increase the energy vibrational rate of a recipient's energy field in order to start the body to promote healing. At death though, this energy system, aura or bioplasm, call it what you will, just fades away in proportion to the death of the body as a whole. Even the travelling part stays near to the 'dead' person, usually fading over a period of two to three days after death. There is not even a tradition that this energy, or any part of it outlasts the physical body for long. This gives no indication of any possible eternity.

The world's spiritual tradition does, however, give one particular aspect of our selves some attributes of the eternal. It is described to us as the soul. This is the part deemed eternal. If this is true then the soul must indeed have the attributes of eternity. That is, it should not be bound by either linear time or three dimensional space. All time must be available to it and all places. In this sense therefore it would by definition extend beyond the confines of our physical body rather than being encompassed by it. Perhaps the soul is just attached to or focused on our physical body. If this is true then perhaps it is through contact with our soul that we access the effect of the eternal. It is here where we can be in touch with any time and any place.

How do we do this? Well, pray with words or particularly with silence. Spiritual tradition says that we quieten ourselves down and turn our attention inward and ask. Reiki uses just this technique for it's distant healing. Didn't Jesus say that the kingdom of God was within? When we pray for someone not with us or even when we pray for a number of people spread across the globe at the same time, and have a positive effect, haven't we distorted our normal time and space in some way? The effect is detectable by those aware and prepared to receive the healing prayer. It is immediate. It can be anywhere. Neither past, present or future seems to be a barrier. Now does this not seem to have aspects of the eternal?

It is said that at death when the soul finally separates from the body, the essence of the person you have known, is suddenly gone leaving only a dieing physical shell and a fading energy system. Onlookers watching this process describe just this. That the person they knew is suddenly gone and what is left is somehow no longer the person they knew. Surely this means that the person they knew was perhaps more likely a product of the soul and not just of the body.

For me this makes the soul important and trying to be in conscious contact with it a worthwhile activity. I believe that it is through this contact that I will begin to understand perhaps even love myself through that sense of peace and nurture mentioned earlier. Perhaps, as my soul is larger than myself it must impinge in some way on other souls. Is this the way that I gain understanding of others? Soul connected to soul. If 'part' interconnectivity seems to work this way at our physical level is it not likely that the same system occurs at the soul level? This would mean that I can get an understanding of others by opening myself to my soul. I can learn through soul experience to love my enemy. Now where have I heard this before?

If the scientists are correct about the universe having holographic features the part that is me may yet get a glimpse of the whole, meet God and be surprised.

Angels are however, not new. Comments about them are to be found deeply entrenched in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions and teachings. Peake's Commentary on the Bible has 224 angel references. The Analytical Concordance to the Bible has 280 angelic references. Even in this Unitarian church, of the 476 hymns in the hymn book, 26 have an angel reference in the text. In my Unitarian childhood and for many today, angels seemed to be relegated to textual or story props for significant biblical events and as such are viewed almost entirely as myths. Angels were considered to be of little or no consequence, not relevant or an historic religious anomaly which sooner or later would fade away entirely.

Is this right? Are angels only figments of imagination or are they real? Should our thinking and experience take note of them? What is it that, at this time, has brought angels to the fore in at least a significant section of the public consciousness? Are angels just a fad of the moment to revel in and to make money out of? Mmm. Lots of questions.

So what is said about what are angels? In the Christian Testament these celestial beings are divided up into seven orders called angels, archangels, principalities, powers, virtues, dominions and thrones. These are added to the two orders of cherubim and seraphim of the Jewish Testament. Later Christian theological thought regrouped these nine 'choirs of angels' into three orders. Whichever system you follow the word angel is used in both a generic sense as well as to identify a specific angelic group. This hierarchical and organisational structure, to my mind smacks of human rather than the divine, as it seems to reflect societal power structures. Does, therefore, the angelic hierarchy reflect a true reality or is it the desire of early church to bolster a rigid societal power structure? Was this done on the basis of... 'well if the angels are organised like this then it must be all right for us to be organised this way'? This must have been very useful for popes, kings, princes and all the other levels below them, except perhaps for those at the bottom of course.

So, personally, I am not keen on the way that angels are structured. But what do angels actually do? What is seen as their function? Nearest to God, in the first division so to speak, are the seraphim whose role is to make music and to pass on God's 'love and light' down to the lesser ranks. The cherubim are there to make sure that the universal law of divine love is kept. While the thrones are responsible for seeing that divine justice is done in all situations in order to keep cosmic harmony.

The second division includes the dominions whose job is to supervise the duties and actions of the lower angels. The virtues organise miracles and bestow grace and courage on those of us who need it. The powers bestow the strength to stand up for ourselves.

The lower division is made up of the principalities who are like guardian angels for our planet or parts of it while the seven archangels have specific tasks for which they are responsible. These include helping us to oppose evil, that's Michael, bringing us good news (Gabriel) or helping people to be creative and to pass such knowledge on (Uriel). Haniel is the guardian of all the kinds of love while Metatron helps us to bridge the gap between us and the divine. Auriel is the general protector of Earth and night and lastly Raziel is the guardian of inner knowledge and mysteries. The lowest of the angelic ranks are called angels. These look after us on an individual basis, our own guardian angels.

I find that the more I read about the angelic host the more I become muddled and confused. The angelic system seems very complex with all sorts of overlapping inter-relationships, roles and sub roles of which I have referred to only in a limited way. In a sense the first division oversees the law, the second division make sure the law is carried out and the third division are the day to day workers. To a large extent I am left further from understanding than I thought I was at the beginning. This information, to me, reinforces the humanness rather than the divineness of the structure. It seems almost pantheistic like Hinduism with its myriads of god lets each with their own roles and uses. Is that what angels are all about? Are angels only the remnants of an earlier and more primitive religious belief structure which has been passed down to us? I rather think that this may be true but I also think that there may be actual, practical and down to earth reasons why the concept or the reality of angels has survived.

The concept of angels I believe would probably disappear unless there is something happening which keeps it alive. Initially, and for many centuries, the idea of angels was kept alive by the Christian church and during this period angels spread throughout our folklore. Over at least the last two hundred years, however, Christianity, under the influence of science, has slowly moved to marginalise angels within its teachings. After this period of time there should be little left of angels within the public consciousness. But there isn't. It seems to be or it wouldn't be possible for publishers to give it so much prominence in their drive to make money. Angels therefore must be very firmly bedded into our culture and beliefs. A surprising thing considering how the established church and science has been doing its best to 'pooh-pooh' them. It seems likely therefore, that angel belief must, at some level, be related to the real experience of our population as a whole as little else would account for its survival following sustained suppression. What I mean is that people are actually experiencing angels.

Interest in angels has been growing in this country for the last ten years or so. A useful product of this more public acceptance has been a raised profile of angels as being an acceptable area of academic research. Yes, some people have actually been doing research about angels. The one I am going to quote today is Emma Heathcote-James who has been working on angels for some time and at the time of publishing her book -Seeing Angels- last year was putting together her doctoral thesis on this subject. Her book gives lots of examples and useful statistics.

In over 800 accounts received from all parts of the U.K., from different religious backgrounds and across all ages, one thing was common to all. Those involved were absolutely certain that their experiences were of an angelic nature. No ifs, no buts, just certainty. Most had been the butt of or feared ridicule and yet still believed that their experience was true and not an hallucination.

These accounts showed a number of common patterns. Nearly a third involved seeing the traditional angel form i.e. a figure dressed in white with wings. Other experiences involved a human form or scent, light, sound, physical, internal or other sensations. The importance of the experiences was seen to be that there had been a positive after effect. In this context comfort and reassurance was the most common experience. This was followed by direct protective and often physical intervention including life saving act by the angel. The next most common was delivering of meaningful messages. Closely following this was the more general comfort and hope received in the midst of death or illness.

What seems clear is that a small part of the population in this country is actually having an angel encounter. If this is true now then there is no reason to believe that it wasn't true in the past. Perhaps there have always been some who have had angelic encounters. It is likely that such ongoing experiences are actually responsible for the continued acceptance of the idea of angels. This is so in spite of the efforts of science and religion to marginalize this issue.

The question is however, are angels really real? Those who experience them are absolutely certain. Can those of us who have not had an angelic experience find a basis for the acceptance of such experiences. The first thing I have to say is that I have always been a bit of a 'doubting Thomas' which in my case makes it more difficult to accept someone else's reality. But I will try.

My first thought is to ask myself if I have had any unusual experiences in my life, which I have not put down to angelic influence but which another person might. Like many people I have to admit that I have. For example, when out rock climbing many years ago, without thought and before I was aware of what I was doing, I lifted up my climbing partner and pulled him to one side and safety with only my left hand, when a section of the quarry face of some tons in weight broke free. It was done immediately. Such unexpected strength in an emergency is not unknown in this world and personally I look on this event as being more likely to be untapped bodily ability rather than divine or angelic intervention.

At another time and place I heard a voice. Now I often hear a voice in my head but it is my own voice and it goes on most of the time. There is always some general background noise. That I believe is fairly normal. On this day I had been driving down south from my home very early in the morning after having had little sleep the night before. I was tired but the journey was over and I was relaxing with a book. I was finding the book hard going and had to keep stopping and thinking about what I had just read. In one of these reading pauses my ongoing 'brain noise' stopped, tuned out like a pre digital radio coming onto station. I then heard three words in a calm quiet masculine voice, well predominately masculine. It said "Well done Joe". After a slight pause my 'brain noise' started up again. I was flabbergasted. It took a moment or two to realise what had happened. What was interesting was that for the rest of that day I felt I was on a high, everything around me looked new and shiny ... special. At the time I thought it might have been God but I didn't 'know'. Since then I realise it could equally be put down perhaps to a personal spiritual guide or helper. Not once did I think angel. I understand, however, that an angel believer would immediately brand that experience as being angelic.

In the third event or events I had allowed myself to get into potentially difficult, perhaps life threatening, situations. As each situation developed I found that I had an overwhelming desire to stop, to go, to get away, to get out. I was filled with the feeling that all was not right and I must do something.... now, which I did. This has happened three times on three different occasions. What was interesting was that what I felt seemed to come from outside rather than within myself. But I did not once think angel.

The fourth series of events arose from my Reiki. When in healing mode, during these years my perception, has changed slowly and subtly to incorporate a physical feeling of another's energy field or aura, the hearing of words in my own voice indicating where hands should be placed, a system in which I can ask questions (and receive answers) and an element of 'guided ness'. This last takes the form of either showing me where I need to be next or by direct intervention where my hands are taken over and do, sometimes, things about which I have no prior training or knowledge. When I ask for this last to happen I get the distinct impression that it is not me that is using my hands while always retaining the control of stopping the process at all times. Although I accept the reality of 'guided ness', never once have I thought that angels were involved.

Recently I had my 'between lives' events, sparked off by regression and later meditation on the death process. Even here, during these experiences, faced by a white human-like shape I did not think angel. Though I am sure that others would.

So where does that leave me in trying to make sense of this angel thing. A lot of things are said about angels and what they do but I have no real basis for accepting or rejecting any of them. They have a long history within a number of different cultures. Quite a few people believe angels exist. Some people have had meaningful angelic experiences from which they cannot be persuaded. I, like many others have had some unusual experiences that angel believers would call angelic episodes but I am not convinced because they could quite easily be classed as higher self, spirit guide, or spiritual helper involvement, if you are in to that sort of thing.

Does science have anything to add that could help? I suppose the medical profession, when commenting on the strength event, would say that I was tapping into my body's reserve of strength in some way. This has been noted on a number of occasions where danger is to yourself or another. People have lifted cars to save children etc. They may even be right but as far as I know, no one has come up with where the extra energy is and how it is accessed. Perhaps in the third of my experiences someone is bound so say that my experience is somehow tied into a basic fight or flight response in response to high stress levels caused by perceived danger.

In the second, third and fourth events psychologists would say that I was giving advice to myself. They might even draw in such concepts as conscience, the subconscious, higher consciousness or higher self or psyche that are all ways of saying that the experience is what we call 'mind' based in some way. It would be said that one part of the mind was talking or influencing another part. There are lots of explanations but no basic proof and perhaps, it could be argued, such are just ways of excluding or ignoring the possibility of outside intervention by guides or angels.

Where does that leave us? With the idea that such experiences might by induced by my body and mind, in response to certain situations. So what else is there. Well Emma Heathcote-James' research also pointed out that the majority of the angel experiences occurred when either the person was actually in danger, highly stressed or in what she called the 'twilight' state which occurs in meditation, prayer or just before sleep. But what is special about these states of mind?

Brain activity is measured by an EEG which measures the speed at which brain neurons fire in cycles per second. In the normal healthy relaxed person's brain, governed by the thalamic pacemaker, neurons will be firing off at between 7 and 12HZ (cycles per second). This is called the alpha state. In the twilight or theta state the brain neurons are working at a much slower rate, that of 4 to 7HZ. This state is seen as that which we go through on the way to deep restorative sleep. In this state we seem to open the gateway to learning and memory, our visual imagery is more acute. It is in this state that our intuitive abilities open up. It is also the state we go to when we employ relaxation techniques, meditation, hypnosis and deep silent prayer where the presence of God is felt. This is the state that many receivers of Reiki describe as 'not awake but not asleep'. This is the state that many angelic experiences are seen to probably occur, but not all of them. Not the angelic experiences during times of immediate danger when the brain is in the beta state (13-40Hz) associated with peak performance, concentration, heightened alertness and visual acuity.

So some angelic experiences are involved with a specific brain function. Some would therefore say that because of this link, it is likely that all such occurrences are brought about by our own brains. But this is not necessarily so. It would be a mistake to assume that because the physical brain is involved in angelic occurrences it therefore means that it is necessarily the brain that controls them. That is not at all certain. It is like a child looking at the arrival of mail through the letterbox of a solid door saying that the letterbox is somehow controlling the arrival of the mail. I suspect it may be much more complicated and we haven't even begun to understand what is really going on.

But it certainly leaves me with a quandary. For some, angelic experiences really happen, as do experiences of being communicated to by a spirit guide or spiritual helper. What I do think is that there is something going on that we have not explained. To some extent it is a problem of language... angel... spirit guide... spiritual helper... personal guide. Are these just words for explaining the same experience. Are we more likely to see angels if we are from a Jewish, Christian or Islamic background and if we are from the East are we more likely to see our personal guide. I think that is likely. I think that when we undergo an experience of this kind our brains try to make sense of it. That is what brains do. That is their function. But there is a problem with this. Our brains can only do this on the basis of pre existing experience and knowledge. Pictorial illusions show that the brain works in this way. A black and white picture of a black ornate wine glass may switch to a picture of two white outline faces turned inwards. Our understanding of such a picture can switch backwards and forwards at random. Our brain trying to create an understanding of reality. So an angel experienced by one, could be the guide experienced by another. However, the understanding that their brain creates might still not be the truth. Perhaps the reality of such experiences is something different again.

Does this destroy the validity of angel or guides. No it doesn't. That experience is reality for that person. Help is still received. Prayers are answered. Healing occurs. God is experienced. Yes this might still be an untapped function of the brain or mind. But at the moment I don't think so.... And does it matter anyway?

What happens works. Danger is averted or survived. Information received is understood. Comfort is experienced. It is useful. Angelic experiences are seen as a touch of the divine. For that person it is reality, a part of their belief system and a part of their religion perhaps. Such people do not sway from that belief no matter what. They are secure. Guide experiences tend to be kept separate from religion in a separate compartment. I wonder which is the better way and what as a church should we do about it?

It is now more than a month and the incident is still alive and crystal clear in my mind when many experiences have already merged into the background.

It was just dark and the evening was moist with the potential for mist or rain. It could go either way. The traffic was light and I put relaxing music on the radio. It was a normal evening and I was going home to some extent on 'auto pilot' after dropping our grand daughter off at her own home in time for bedtime. I approached the traffic lights still some two hundred metres away, having slowed down to go past the speed camera I noticed a difference. At first it was it was only faint but as I progressed towards the traffic light so the feeling became stronger. The feeling is difficult to describe. It was not 'a brightness'. Time didn't stand still. I was able handle the car as usual. What I felt was an increasing 'special-ness'. A feeling that encompassed my surroundings and included the car and myself.

As I drew to a halt at the traffic lights, unable to turn to the right because of the stream of traffic coming towards the junction, the feeling was very strong. It was the feeling of being a part of the whole. I felt totally connected to everything around me. In fact it was as if everything was a part of me and I a part of everything. There was no feeling of separateness at all and yet I was still an individual in my own right able to operate the car and watchful of the chance to make the right turn. An individual bound to all the other individualities that made up my reality at this time, where living and non-living were bound together. At some level I felt I was everything. I felt at peace. I felt supported. I felt loved.

I was stationary for two to three minutes and then the chance to turn right came and I drove away from the junction. As I drove away from the junction, towards home, so the intensity of my experience began to wane until it disappeared some 200 metres away from the traffic lights. It was as if I had travelled through a static bubble of a different reality. I was a bit stunned yet had no desire to turn around. The experience seemed complete in itself. I drove on without any feeling of a sense of loss. I had experienced what I had known about for a long time and I had already come to, intellectually, know. The reality of one-ness. Experiencing this reality is so much better. It was so fulfilling, this experience of God at the traffic lights.

Experiences like mine are far from being rare and have been a source of interest to a number of noted psychologists. For example, Maslow, refers to them as 'peak experiences' and Jung, calls them transcendent experiences. No matter what they are called all seem to agree that such events seem to trigger a broadening of personal perception and understanding in at least one way, as if the person has tapped into a 'greater' reality. In the population at large these are seen as spiritual experiences. Such experiences generally offer the recipient an insight into some aspect of their life and the basis of their reality.

Within the bible the level of importance of this type of experience is markedly raised and within the Christian testament seems to be of prime importance. It is now generally accepted that over the centuries the content and phrasing of the Christian testament has been altered. Despite this degree of tinkering with the biblical text we can get glimpses of what is generally referred to as the Kingdom of God or just the Kingdom.

The Kingdom, as written of by mainly the disciples Matthew and Luke, is seen as being of prime importance for Jesus. This is the main central and core idea. However most references to the Kingdom are buried in parables and they have to interpreted and the hidden secret teased out. Jesus prompts his listeners to think further by ending many parables with the words 'those who have ears to hear let them hear' or the other version when it is 'eyes and seeing'.

Jesus says many things about the Kingdom. The place of the Kingdom is always 'at hand' or 'near'. So this place perhaps is not just in a heaven above, or just a post death state or experience but rather it is available to us here and now. It is both within and around each of us. To gain access to the Kingdom we have to change, be 'born again', by being as little children. We can work towards being in the Kingdom if we 'try' or 'are ready' to do it. It is available to all regardless of social or other position though, some high positions in society and power structures are recognised as making it more difficult to achieve contact with the Kingdom. The way to make contact with the Kingdom is by turning inward and not outward in any open display.

The more recently found Gospel of Thomas reiterates the biblical hints about the Kingdom in shorter but often more cryptic form saying much the same things.

To my mind this suggests a relationship between what I have experienced and what the Gospels were talking about. My experience was directly to do with the outward and inward reality. I do not think that my reality change at the traffic lights would have been seen or felt by any other person there. Why, because it was generated from within me. However this directly raises the question, was I experiencing what in the bible is called the Kingdom or some facet of the Kingdom? For myself I think that there are too many indicators that suggest that this was the case.

Now all this is interesting and raises many questions for myself. Not the least being that if everything is 'as one' and is 'as one with God' then the acceptance of this will have far reaching consequences on how I run my life. It will affect how I will relate to others. It will affect how I will relate to my environment. In fact everything is thrown up into the air and I have now to cope with a new ball game. The effects of this could be far reaching and profound. It is obviously special for me but why do I think that it may be special for others.

For myself it is not as if I have not had other experiences. I have had other experiences in my life before November and some since so what made this experience special? My initial reaction to this question was to immediately recognise that this experience was different from other experiences that I have had. It was longer, it was much more intense and it took place while I was actually doing something, that is, driving. All my other experiences that I would call spiritual in nature have been when I was stationary and not doing something potentially dangerous. It directly reinforces, in me, the my idea that anyone who is spiritually changed can be so and be within the world as it is. You do not necessarily need to withdraw from it.

On closer examination of all my experiences I was able to identify a trend ranging from the almost mundane to a recognisably increased spiritual level. The progression, over the years prior to last November included an intensification of my normal senses. At all these times I had the feeling that somehow I had moved towards a different reality from that which I lived in. When looking at an object it became more beautiful, an event taking place became more humorous, a place became more peaceful, another seemed to shine with a special-ness that I could not define and when in yet another place I felt that I could stay forever and which I have been drawn back to over the years again and again because it makes me feel so good when I am there. With hindsight I have come to recognise that with each incident came a slow intensification of experience leading me to that November sense of one-ness.

But it has not stopped there I have had other experiences since which have given me that same sense of oneness and each was at a different physical time or place. They had the same intensity but shorter in duration. It is almost as if I am being shown something, being prompted, reminded to take notice and that my nose is being rubbed in it until I do do something about it.

But how and why can my experiences be of importance and useful to others? I looked again and I saw that although my spiritual experiences span about 25 years, the vast majority of them are within the last five or six years. So why? Have I needed special support over this period? No I don't think so I didn't get dumped on in a big way by life until quite recently. Were any of these other experiences life changing? No not at all. They were certainly interesting but individually not life changing. At the most they were just nudges. Am I, somebody special, to be held up as a specific example to others? I shouldn't think so, I hope not. What a frightening thought. I feel quite ordinary and definitely not special, well no more than anyone else. So is it something that I have been doing during the last five or six years that I wasn't doing before?

Well, this period is notable to me as being a time when I started doing a number of things. Not all at the same time I hasten to add. I started doing healing. I started going to church. I started meditating. I started reading and discussing spiritual texts wit others. For me these stand out. Each of these activities didn't start through random choice. I was not interested in Reiki but woke up one morning and knew I had to do it. The same happened about going back to church after many years of non attendance, only this time I put off the doing it for six months during which the feeling that I should go to church became stronger and stronger until I eventually started attending. I started meditating because it felt the right activity to do and it made the healing time easier on me. The feeling was very strong. As for the books to do with spirituality, they almost jumped off shelves to get into my hands. They were thrust upon me as gifts from others, some new and some that were passed on to me and some which I had to save from some future skip. Some were so strongly recommended that I just had to find out why. So, in brief, I started healing, meditating and became increasingly focused upon my own spirituality.

Are these activities important? Yes I think that they are. Research carried out in the last twenty years suggests that involvement in these and other activities connected with spirituality, whether religious or secular, have a positive spin-off. Those who are involved in such activities on more than two days each week become healthier, withstand stress better and live longer than those who do not do this. On reflection I feel that these physical gains, though easier to measure, may be only half of the story. What if there is a spiritual bonus as well. On the face it, for myself, more spiritual activity seems to mean an increased quality and frequency of spiritual experience.

Now, despite feeling that I have been pushed or guided into doing these things that I do, I feel quite strongly that it is the act of doing the spiritual activity which is of most importance. Spiritual texts read and discussed help only to put the experiences and the thoughts and ideas they generate into context. Though that is useful what makes the actual difference is doing the spiritual activity. Socialising and enjoying yourself is not important in this context. Nor does the activity have to be done in a group. It is, however, easier in a group of like minded individuals and being in a group makes it easier to sustain any activity over time and therefore should not be dismissed. But spiritual growth is an individual journey. We don't all move at the same pace or even in the same direction at times, because we are different. We have different skills and aptitudes, our lives and experiences are different. How can we expect to be exactly the same as another person. Yes, there will be times when you will feel frustrated and jealous of others and what you see as their progress in comparison with your own. Fine, these feelings can all be overcome. But continue doing the spiritual thing anyway

Are spiritual activities important? Yes I think that they are. What my experience has and is telling me is that I have, during the last five or six years, changed and that I am now not the person that I was five or six years ago. I see myself as still being me but changed. Perhaps what you see today is the real me but more likely it is that I am progressing towards the real, real me. Perhaps you are now seeing a birth or a re-birth of that real me. Perhaps this is what being 'born again' is all about. Perhaps it isn't an instant thing but a process, and we can all do it.

Are you doing the spiritual thing or just thinking about it? Remember, it is the doing that makes the difference. Perhaps we need to raise the profile of spiritual activity within our lives. To re-label one or more of the golf balls (of the 1st reading), perhaps getting rid of some sand and then act upon this different reality. And yes I still like the 'two beers'.

Our bookshops are full of books on 'spirituality' that are all offering advice on what to do to become spiritual. There are two main forms. The first type list things that you have to do. The second type tell you about how the author became spiritual on the basis that if they became spiritual this way then you could do it as well. All you have to do is follow my example. Failure for you, of course, is not contemplated but if you do fail it is because you haven't been doing what you were told to do, you gave up too soon, you must try harder because the spiritual path is hard. So the underlying idea of course is that the lack of progress is your fault and not the fault of the author who of course has made it and is by any definition a 'perfect being'. Now that doesn't seem to be very spiritual does it.

I may be just a bit jaundiced but isn't an important purpose of writing a book concerned with making money, hopefully lots of it, so that the author can live in the style that they would like to be accustomed? Certainly that is what bookshops are all about - making money. Are these people really doing this spirituality stuff out of the kindness of their hearts - to help us to make spiritual progress or is it just an ego trip based on the author having 'made it'? Doesn't all this seem to point to perhaps limited spiritual progress or a lack of spirituality somewhere?

Despite such misgivings however, I have spent a good deal of time reading such books, trying to make sense of what they say, trying to find common themes and suggestions. Some of these books I bought, some I borrowed but a surprising number were given to me because it was thought that the particular book was worth reading. Perhaps some were passed on to me to create shelf-room. Whatever the reason for giving I have dutifully read, and inwardly digested, quite a wide range of books on spirituality that I have felt drawn to read. Yes that does mean that I have some books that I have not read yet because I don't feel drawn to them.

So what sense have I made of these 'spiritual' books? There does seem to be some commonality in what is provided for us though it is a rare book that touches on all aspects. In general it seems that virtually all of their teachings can be summed up in the famous phrase, reputed to have been carved on the gates of Delphi, - 'Know thyself'.

Books on spirituality talk about finding out who you have been in the past. They talk about searching for who we really are, not who we would like to be or even who others would like us to be. Finding the real me is seen to be really important. In this context many talk about achieving balance in all aspects of your life. A development from that progress is the growing understanding that there is more to me than just the me of this physical body. In effect a world-view change is expected even demanded and that can be a real put down when you are reading at home and although you understand the context you don't see that you have changed. On the back of this world-view change is the growing importance of finding that 'inner voice', that direct and personal contact with God the experience of which can be life changing.

One thing that books on spirituality seem to be saying, to me, when taken on mass, is that there is no one path to spirituality. There are many ways to spirituality and all the people who do it do it in different ways. Perhaps that is because we are all different and the 'trick', if trick it is, is to find our way, the way that works for us.

All very laudable and I am not pooh-poohing any of these ideas especially as they have been and still are important to me in my attempt to become more spiritual. However what we have mentioned so far is a sort of intellectual way of looking at yourself. But there are things that you can actually do which seem to have the effect of helping the development of spirituality. What are they? Well spending time actually doing a spiritual activity. What we are talking about is practicing such things as Tai' Chi, yoga and meditation for example, practices from the Eastern tradition and contemplation and prayer from the Western tradition but it does take a lot of practice and time. This range of activities seem to help create what the books on spirituality are searching for. It seems that doing a spiritual activity makes you more spiritual.

However, there is one activity or practice that virtually all the books on spirituality do not mention and that is healing. For me the practice of healing has been life changing and has been and still is the single most important thing that I have been doing. The odd thing is that anyone can 'learn' to do it. The ability is within us all. It just needs to be triggered off. What a waste that so many people seem to turn away from the very idea of healing assuming that you have to be a 'special' person to do it. What rubbish. It is not even something that you have to do but rather something that you have to allow to happen.

Now I ask myself, who else thought that healing was important? Well, Jesus did. It was so important to him that when someone was brought to him to be healed because his disciples had not been able to do so, Jesus was not happy, he was miffed and rebuked the person for being a part of an "unbelieving and perverted generation". He then went on to heal the man. In private he accused his disciples of 'littleness of faith'. Does all this seem a bit strong? The sick man had been preventing his own healing? Well this does happen even today and I have experience of it. Obviously Jesus felt that the disciples lacked faith in their own ability to heal. Perhaps this is where the "do it in my name" comes from. Just a crutch to help his disciples heal when they couldn't believe that they are capable of doing it. Modern Reiki gives crutches until the practitioners don't need them any more. For me healing has become not something that I do but something that I allow to happen. Its continuous success has produced a 'knowing' in me that it will work. This seems to allow the healing process to take place.

So Jesus and myself seem to agree on the importance and the way healing works. Is there, then, anything about who Jesus was and what he was saying that might impinge upon the topic of spirituality and spiritual progress. Is this what Jesus is all about?

In my understanding of the Christian testament, apart from healing, Jesus' main thrust was to point out that it was important to move to be in the 'Kingdom of Heaven'. He didn't talk about enlightenment which is an eastern concept but he does say that the Kingdom of Heaven is a state that is achievable in this life because it is in us and around us already. Perhaps it is only achievable in this life. Moreover, he says that we all can achieve this goal or state. This sounds a bit like the modern books on spirituality. He certainly said that he had already achieved this state, he 'was of the Kingdom'. He demanded that his disciples achieve this state and recommended that everyone else should be like him i.e. in the Kingdom. So, what was Jesus like? Was he perfect, God like?

What little we know of Jesus comes largely from the Christian testament despite the tinkering and the variety of translations. We don't actually know for certain who wrote the four gospels because they were unattributed and it was the early church elders who decided that the gospels were those by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Despite this I think that there are more than enough hints about Jesus the man and what he thought was important. To this end I referred to the most recent translation of the scriptures, the New American Standard Bible

Just by looking at Matthew we can see times when Jesus responded, at least in part, emotionally. When he finds his mother and brothers demanding to see him he dismisses them with the words, "Who are my mother and brothers?" This at least partly sounds like exasperation though it is used as a teaching point. He was human enough to be stressed by constant crowds demanding words and healing. At these points he withdraws, for example, to the mountains and talks to his disciples while he recovers. He pours scorn on the scribes, priests and Pharisees for not doing what they should be doing i.e. helping people towards the Kingdom. He became upset when people would not accept his teachings. He was showing anger when clearing the temple in Jerusalem. He was compassionate when he fed the 5000 and 4000 and when healing. He was dismissive in the parable of the fig tree when he kills the tree that bore no fruit. He showed fear just before being arrested and when on the cross he exhibited doubt. In general terms however, Jesus is described as being gentle, humble and loving.

Why is it important for Jesus to be human? Because being a human being who had attained the special state of 'the Kingdom', reinforces the idea that we to can achieve this state. We can do it in this life. We should do it and do it now.

In the bible Jesus often gives the details of who are most likely to achieve the state of the Kingdom of Heaven. These are those at the bottom of the social heap. It's the 'lost sheep'; the weary; the children or the child like; the tax collectors and the prostitutes. However, there are other criteria for entry as well. You should be orientated towards seeking the Kingdom, ready and prepared for this state. There is a definite reminder that having achieved this state you mustn't change what you do or you will slip out of Kingdom of Heaven again.

Those who would not get into the Kingdom are those people who are focussed on money and societal positions. Jesus particularly puts scribes, priests and Pharisees and church elders into this bracket. Though he recognises that if a scribe became a disciple that man could have high standing in the Kingdom. So, he doesn't say that it is impossible for you to have money or position in society but it will certainly make the move to the kingdom much more difficult if you had these.

There are certain things that are important to do that Jesus mentions. These are important for attempting to attain the state of the Kingdom of Heaven. You must actively be engaged in seeking for and working towards the Kingdom and believe that you can do it. God must be your focus and not the physical things of the world. This does not mean that you can't have things but they mustn't be an important focus. In this context he reinforces the value of rules to live by. The rules he comments on are the 10 commandments and he sums these up in loving god with heart, soul and mind and loving others as you love yourself. Loving yourself is particularly important, and not easy, and it is unlikely that you can do this without understanding and accepting yourself, a common theme in spiritual texts.

In terms of characteristics to be acquired, Jesus comments on truthfulness, compassion, forgiveness, being non-judgemental, shrewd, and being of clear mind, the ideal 'good' person. Definite no-no's are gloominess, worry. Especially worry about tomorrow and yesterday for he wanted a focus on today. Deeds matter whether they be actions or words as these can either promote or inhibit progress. In summation, you should try to do the right thing.

Two further activities that Jesus seems to see as important, are prayer and healing. Asking is very important in both of these. However, neither are about show. I believe that both prayer and healing can be transformational tools that push forward personal development and awareness in the direction of the Kingdom of Heaven.

It seems to me that what Jesus talks about is the same as most of today's books on spirituality talk about. The context might be different but the spirit of it is the same. It is not about actively changing who you are it is about finding out who you really are. It is about altering your view about what is important. This is not about others, it is wholly about your self. The path to the Kingdom is very much a spiritual path.

If this is to be the primary focus of your life then how will we know when we have achieved it? It is not about losing your human emotions or humanity - Jesus didn't and neither did those people who I have met, heard or read about who are in the Kingdom today. How do I recognise this state? It is from Paul's comments of the 'fruit of the Spirit' seen in people. When someone feels the spirit, feels love, experiences joy and, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and exhibits patience and self control as a normal function of who they are, these will be in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Some get to the Kingdom by going through horrendous times, some with illness and some with other problems. They talk about reaching rock bottom and then asking for help. Help they say was forthcoming. At this point their life was turned totally around. Immediately they felt different. Sometimes this state was lost again and sometimes many times. Some people are in the Kingdom from birth. Some believe everyone is in the Kingdom from birth and that most of us lose it. For us lesser mortals it is possible to achieve the Kingdom but it often goes unnoticed because the progress has been so slow and the incremental changes small. It is often others who see the change when viewed over time. This is the frustration and, I believe, that this is the path that most people are on.

If you are in the presence of someone in the Kingdom it is possible to feel a difference. They can give us a sense of peace and healing when we are in their presence. They themselves often don't recognise that they are in the Kingdom. Some don't even know about the kingdom anyway. These are all very special people and I think that the more special they are the further they are into the Kingdom.

Just as Jesus said "Some are eunuchs who are born that way from their mothers womb; and there are eunuchs who are made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it."

For myself this statement is not about eunuchs but about gaining the Kingdom of Heaven. Let it be so. It is never too late to start or continue on your own spiritual path. Have a good journey. It is surely time for us to fly like the eagle and not die as the chicken.
Amen

There are a number of times in the bible when Jesus referred to becoming as a little child as the prerequisite for entering the kingdom of heaven. He often referred to ‘the kingdom’ as being a really important goal to be attained. Why was it important? It was important because ‘the kingdom’ was something that was attainable here and now, in this life. To my mind this is what an important part of the ministry of Jesus was about. It makes sense, therefore, that his disciples asked him "If we are infants will we enter the Kingdom?"

Jesus was not one noted for easy, literal straight-forward answers to questions. In fact there is clear evidence that he knew that perhaps most of his audience at any one time probably would not be able to understand what he was getting at. This is why he used the phrases ‘those who have ears to hear let them hear’ and the equivalent for eyes. His response, in saying 22b of the Gospel of Thomas, is of this sort, difficult and seemingly obtuse. Perhaps he didn’t expect all his disciples to immediately understand what he was getting at. Perhaps he thought that some of his disciples might never get it. Let us therefore revisit this conundrum of a saying.

Jesus said. "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the upper like the lower and the lower like the upper, and thus make the male and the female the same, so that the male isn't male and the female isn't female. When you make an eye to replace an eye, and a hand to replace a hand, and a foot to replace a foot, and an image to replace an image, then you will enter the Kingdom."

Two into one. Inside like outside. Upper like lower. Male like female. Replacing the eye, hand, foot and image. And all necessary before you can enter ‘the kingdom’. Now, to me, this in a somewhat shorthanded way rings a bell. I have come across things like this before. One of these sources may link us directly to Jesus. What is this? It is the Quabalah. Not the modern western Quabalah. Not the Greek Quabalah. But the Jewish Quabalah that can be traced, with documentary evidence that goes back at least as far as Jesus and with hints that it is much, much older.

So what is this Jewish Quabalah? Quite simply it is the Jewish mystical tradition studied predominantly, even today, by mature Jewish men. Within the Jewish community Jewish men who are married, over forty years old, having sired, and preferably raised their children, and who are fully established in whatever trade they have, seem to be expected start this body of study. Single men who have, for whatever reason, not married nor are likely to, I understand, are able to start this study at an earlier age. It seems to me that Jesus knew of the contents of the Quabalah and being unmarried, was likely to have studied it and obliquely referred to this knowledge in saying 22b.

This, however, does not make the understanding of saying 22b any easier to understand. This is not an easy passage is it? But I feel that it is possible to make some sense of this passage and I shall try to give you ‘my sense’ of it this morning. Well it is, after all, the only sense that I have. So let’s look again at the passage pulling it into meaningful pieces.

By stating the goal at the end he underlines the importance of the prior steps to be taken. Jesus was laying it on the line. But this is also a rallying call. He is saying that if you want to become like a little child then you actually have to do these things. He doesn’t say that it is easy but he does say that it can be done. ‘The kingdom’ is achievable by all. Over and over Jesus said to others, in the Christian testament that ‘the kingdom’ is attainable. And that means by us as well.

This saying, for me, is comprised of a list of five important steps that need to be sorted out in order for the goal of entering ‘the kingdom’ to occur. It seems to me that they are listed in a roughly descending order of difficulty, that is with the most difficult first and the least difficult last. Another puzzle, but if the order is reversed then it seems to make more sense to me. This would mean starting with the easiest to achieve and finishing with the most difficult. It is my contention that if we do the easiest first then once we have achieved the easiest part, this in itself makes the achievement of the next more difficult step easier to make. On this basis I shall refer to the fifth and last step first and then work steadily forward to the first.

The fifth part of this Jesus’ saying was "When you make an eye to replace an eye, and a hand to replace a hand, and a foot to replace a foot, and an image to replace an image". Now I do not think for one moment that we are talking about some sort of spiritual plastic surgery. However, he is talking about a total ‘make over’ that must take place before oneness or ‘the kingdom’ can be achieved. In a sense he is talking about being born again and this ‘make over’ concerns our understanding of who we are. We can’t stay the same as we think we are and expect to make progress. He is saying that we have to change. We can’t stay the same as we are now which is a form of self imposed blindness. We must find out and accept who we really are. To some extent each of the five steps takes this ‘makeover’ further but this first step is about looking at the wholeness of ourselves. The effect of taking this step is to make us comfortable, or at peace, with ourselves.

The next step in this reverse reading of this saying is, "and thus", meaning and when you have done all that, "make the male and the female the same, so that the male isn't male and the female isn't female". Now we know from this mornings 2nd reading that males and females are markedly different no matter what ‘political correctness’ in our society has tried to say. But Jesus is not talking about ‘political correctness’. He is commenting on something that can actually be done and had already happened for him. The proof of this is in what we know of Jesus. He is known for his gentleness, caring and healing nature. All of these three aspects are generally seen as feminine traits. He is known for being single minded during his ministry that led to his physical death. This is a male characteristic. It seems apparent that either naturally or through self development Jesus in earlier life had acquired or boosted the feminine aspects of himself in order to achieve a balance as a part of his own developmental process. If we can achieve this state of ‘balance’ this would markedly affect how we interact with the world around us and the people in it. It would give a much wider view and increase the chances of seeing the win-win solutions in life, rather than just the win-lose solutions.

In the second but for us the penultimate piece of this passage we find, "when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside". In this statement Jesus is talking about moving closer towards a direct contact with god by being more aware of the reality of god in our lives. This is also about the lessening of the boundaries between self and others. This takes the idea further that we are greater than our physical body. The boundary between inside and outside would be increasingly irrelevant as the focus moves further and further from the physical body. At this step the interpersonal boundaries tend to diminish and there is an increase in understanding, knowledge and empathy for and of others.

The third step says, "make the upper like the lower and the lower like the upper". This is about a change of focus in what we do. It is about the beginning of the process that will eventually end with us being at one with god. It is about increasingly turning away from the focus on and the need for things. It is about accepting the difference between our wants and our needs. It is about beginning to see beyond the ‘normal’ physical world and developing an awareness of how our reality really seems to work. It is about making god an important focus in our life. It is about further integrating who we are. It is about the beginning of the blurring of the boundaries of physicality. It is about listening more and accepting the possibility of guidance. It is about extending our understanding about how we can relate to god within the context of the world.

In the original, the first part of the saying is "When you make the two into one". This was the last and most important step for Jesus and those who follow him. It can be broken down into three possible aspects. The first aspect is being in or ‘of the spirit’ where you feel enfolded by ‘a supporting warmth’. The second aspect is about largely silencing the ‘me, me, me’ mind concerned with yesterday and tomorrow. This effectively puts the essential ‘I’ in charge. By doing this it is possible to live in the ‘now’. This aspect is about further integration. The third aspect is to become, at some level, as one with god. In this it is as if the final boundary blurs more to give direct god contact. This is not always permanent but is often an intermittent channel or link that is established. This is because having the god contact makes it more difficult to perform in the physical world. A more permanent contact may, I think, come later with practice. If all these steps are achieved and maintained then we will be in ‘the kingdom’. Achievement of any one of the aspects, however, can be enough to land you in ‘the kingdom’. There is no grand fanfare etc you are just there. Some people don’t realise when it has happened, but others recognise that they have changed.

Jesus wanted his disciples to be like him and, like him, to become as one with god. This is particularly clear when considering Jesus’ words in his prayer on Gethsemane. "My father and I are one". I think that he wasn’t talking just to and for his then present disciples but anyone who followed his teachings. This seems to be a particularly important goal. Not just to raise the level of god in our life. Not just to make god our main focus but to take the steps towards becoming as one with god.

This is what I think Jesus’ saying 22b is about. It is all laid out for us - all the steps to take to achieve ‘the kingdom’. Now what are we going to do about it?

He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion.

There is a good deal of confusion about spiritual growth, or put another way, the development of spirituality. However I feel strongly that this is what Paul was talking about in our first reading.

Paul was quite upset with what he had heard about the goings on of the Galatian Christians and he definitely told them to clean up their act. What act? The act of the desires of the sinful nature is what he is talking about. This includes "sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like". Paul says quite definitely that a sinful nature centred on passions, desires, conceit, provocation and envy is not going to do anybody any good. Those who are like this will never get into the ‘kingdom of god’.

What does he say that we should do? He says that we should not just turn away from sin but should live by the spirit. And how do we recognise this spirit? Quite simply, Paul says that it can be seen by its fruits which include love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. Christians today would go further and say it is about being ‘in’ the spirit and not just doing what the spirit tells us. They describe this state of being ‘in the spirit’ as being wrapped in a warm supporting or comforting blanket of energy, or power if you insist. All these ‘fruits’ of the spirit are a product of being in ‘the Kingdom’ that Jesus talks of. Summed up - if you want to get into ‘the kingdom’ then you have to change. You have to change a great deal.

I am not saying that the people in this church are sinful, terrible people. This congregation is not a ‘bad lot’. I say this not because of fear of personal retribution or of losing out on a biscuit and drink at the end of this service. Unless you have kept it quiet no one is like the Galations in Paul’s letter. Anyway if there was anyone here in the depths of despair from over indulging in ‘sinful’ things, then their spiritual path is more likely to be like Eckhart Tolle and others. When things reach rock bottom the process is to admit totally that you can’t save yourself on your own, you ask for help and then just let go, allowing the ‘saving’ to occur.

Being like that and taking that path is not a sinecure and doesn’t seem to work with those in the middle ground, like us in this church, at neither end of the spectrum, it is a much harder task. It is harder for us because we have already made choices that have moved us a short way towards ‘spirit’ and ‘the kingdom’. We have become stuck in the middle ground, this no mans land. We lead normal lives doing what we can to help others. ‘The kingdom’ is no nearer now than it was last year or at the turn of the millennium or any decade before that. Being in this no mans land tends to leave us with few directions or help along the road. We are secure in our world and we make little or no progress.

This lack of progress is what I now feel pushed to address. Overcoming this state of spiritual ‘stuck-ness’ has become increasingly the focus of my life over the past year and a half though the threads of this go back much further. All is not yet in full bloom in my mind, not yet in place but the outline is there. I would like to share this outline with you this morning. Last week I talked about the five major steps to be taken so that ‘the kingdom’ could be attained. This week I think that I should fill in more of the details.

The goal that Jesus, and Paul, talk about is entering ‘the Kingdom’. It is of prime importance. Knowing that is the easiest task. "But what do we have to do", is the often asked question. The un-useful reply often said is that "you don’t have to do anything to enter ‘the kingdom’". "You can’t work your passage to heaven" is another frequently used homily. So is "You can’t get to heaven by being good". I refute these statements not because they aren’t true but they hide more than they illuminate. Anyone who has taken the step of asking what they have to do so that it is possible to enter ‘the kingdom’ needs practical guidance about the options, if options there are.

Yes we don’t have to do anything to give us the right of access to the kingdom because it is there and available and waiting already. It is not about being ‘good’, yet before entry to ‘the kingdom’ you may well be recognised by others as being ‘good’ but by this time ‘good’ would have ceased to be important. You can’t ‘work’ at getting into ‘the kingdom’ because getting into ‘the kingdom’ is not about ‘work’. It is not about of these things to get in but it is about preparation for the step into ‘the kingdom’. It is however, all about removing those things, those aspects of ourselves, that are preventing us from being in ‘the kingdom’. We have to open ourselves up to the possibility of being in ‘the kingdom’. We have to change. We have to transform ourselves. When this is done we will be in ‘the kingdom’. There is no step. There is no passport to present. When our personal transformation is complete we will be in ‘the kingdom’. The spiritual path is a path of self transformation.

So what