Meeting The Father for the First Time
26 July 1998 15:54
Meeting The Father for the First Time by J. Nectarios
A very special experience happened to me during the prayer service at the 1998 TLIG International meeting in Jerusalem. Vassula has prayed over me with a relic from the cross 3 or 4 times over the past 18 months. I usually fell backwards as a gesture of cooperation and to show a real desire and willingness to allow the holy spirit access to me .
This time as I approached my turn to be prayed over I wasn’t going to fall back unless the Spirit guided me to do so. Vassula applied no pressure to my forehead, only the slightest feather touch. I felt a sort of release, a physical aaahhhh as I gently fell back, immediately.
I had pain in my stomach off and on for two years. As I was laying on the floor I began to feel a definite, distinct sensation of heat, like a warm caress on both sides of my stomach where the pain had been, even that day.
As the heat intensified in a way that felt very good and relieving. I heard a voice and it said;
“What do you think –you appeared from nowhere, You are a created being…”
I heard the voice with my whole body not with my physical ears. Gentle waves of joy and happiness washed over me and I had the sensation that the Father was cupping me in his hands and that I was a teeny tiny baby. Then it felt like we were swaying together like two blades of grass in a gentle breeze. The word that most accurately describes this visit the Creator bestowed on me was intimate. What I mean by this was, it wasn’t like I saw a famous person up on a stage- the experience wasn’t “out there” somewhere. It was a tender meeting like you would have with a loved one; where you both knew each of you were in total oneness of feeling, shared experience of being together ,aware of yourself and the other at the same time.
The waves of joy and happiness continued as I had deeper realizations that plastered a huge smile on my face. The realization was this: I had to be a total idiot ;a really really (I would have to write 100 “reallys” to convey this) really really total idiot to miss the fact that I was created by God. This realization was directed at me without any condescension as if it applied to anyone and I just happened to be there. It dawned on me as hilariously funny, I mean really really funny !! !(again 100 “reallys”) that a person (meaning me) could be so completely stupid to miss the overwhelmingly obvious fact that we are created and hence there is a Creator. The grace of this insight was enormously funny.
What exactly was so funny – was that I was a complete fool! to miss a direct awareness of God.
It is like missing the nose on your face! As if one day after 40 years you look in the mirror and exclaim upon seeing for the first time- “Oh my -I have a nose!!!!” This could be funny- funny in that you missed something so obvious for so long. The insight the Creator gave me was funny ,joyful and full of tender , intimate love. The fact that I discovered I was a complete fool and completely asleep to the most important and first fact of my existence, was pure delight!! Sure I believed in God . But I never knew him from personal experience.
He spoke with a gentle Jewish Yiddish accent. If you can imagine a soft Yiddish accent: “Vaahht youuu appeared like a puff of air” and these words breathed into you as if someone said; vaaht you don’t know your head is attached to your shoulders?” In other words-isn’t it silly to think we exist out of nothing . It is like you have a mouthful of ice-cream on your tongue and deep down you never really believed ice cream was cold-and a voice says to you….” vaht ice cream isn’t cold “… and all of a sudden the overwhelmingly obvious fact of what is in your mouth being cold hits you and it is just ridiculous that you didn’t recognize this with such directness before.
The fact that we are created beings and there is hence a Creator is as apparent as our head being attached to our body as apparent as the ice cream in our mouth being cold.We all experience ourselves as self-conscious beings-well where did the self consciousness come from -thin air? Does a rock think and experience itself in self awareness ? It really is overwhelmingly obvious that we are created in His image and we experience this every single second of every day.
I suspect Vassula is such a good friend of the Father that her prayers induce him or other members of the Holy Trinity to bestow blessings and graces .I don’t know, but I am very thankful that this grace was given to me.
After this experience I have begun to think about ; how do I know it was God? The real God. First off I never had to deal with this specific question in my soul before as it never came up. The being I met was not wearing a name tag “GOD”. In fact I did not see anything at all.
So how do I know it really was God? In thinking on this question for a while I thought up an honest analogy that comes close to explaining one aspect of the question.
Suppose a young child is about to go into a swimming pool for the first time. This child is wearing a floatation safety device that the manufacturer claims makes drowning impossible. Attached to the child is a safety cable designed to hold 100 times it’s weight. In the pool is an Olympic Gold Medal winner swimmer whose job it is to keep one hand on the child all the time he is in the water. The child turns and asks -“but how do you know I am not going to drown?”
There is always an element of faith it seems even in knowing. . Do we really believe what we know? How do I know an Archangel didn’t speak to me or the Holy Spirit. How do I know it was The Creator, the Father himself? Maybe, someone might propose the devil was trying to deceive me.
Well , first off in any experience there is always the possibility of doubt afterwards- we are ultimately left free to believe or not believe even what we experience in our soul. This element of freedom rings true with what I have read . The Father , the spiritual world is sublime. Jesus always asks Vassula “allow me” ” may I” and so forth. The Holy Trinity does not impose on our freedom. We can believe or not believe even what we experience in ourselves. More than that, we even have freedom in our will as to what we do with our belief. Even the Pharisees believed on the miracles of Jesus and it was on this belief that they then decided to kill him.
St. Paul talks about those who have fallen asleep. In other words we can experience , believe and still fall out of what we ourselves have experienced and believed. In day to day terms we always do stupid things that we “KNOW” will be no good. The element of doubt about what we know to be true in our hearts-comes from Satan. No doubt he must try to rob us of our graces and blessings.
Another way of looking at the experience and trying to discern if it was really God , is how would I characterize this being who visited me. And does it line up with what other people describe as God. Pure tenderness, the most gentle and sublime love, and complete authority.
By authority I mean, the saying that all the “hairs on our head are counted” is an understatement! One can only re-quote the saying “In him we live and move and have our being”. Okay so the experience rings true inwardly as really being God. Secondly the way I experienced this Personage lines up with other people’s experience that know more than me.
Another aspect in evaluatuing the expereince is this Personage was so loving , so gentle, so tender beyond anything or anybody or any experience I ever had before is there really a way of knowing for sure with my intellect who he was? How can a 3rd grader know the difference between a college undergraduate and a person with a Ph.D. ? All the3rd grader can know is here is somebody way above me. There is in other words an element of mystery. But what is most important is this mystery has a drawing effect on my soul. I want to know God more. I want to go further towards him, this to me is a positive sign.
I spoke with a friend of mine who has been Carmelite nun for over 50 years. I asked her have you ever met God, has God ever spoken to you directly? She said no. She has had other experiences but not this. How come God spoke to me? My religious life, prayer life, inner life, inner effort is really a joke. As the messages say: “Day and Night you stumble along creation chasing the shadows, and not even once have you tried to penetrate into this mystery” (25.9.97) This really applies to me – a shadow chaser. I see this now that I had this experience and did not really identify strongly with this statement before. My soul life was characterized by “…I wish I had….” and all this “wish stuff” was materialistic things and worldly desires. Now I can more clearly see this is all shadows. “This mystery” is the relationship between the Creator and His Creation the mystery of His “Nuptial Chamber”. The Father told Vassula: “I wish to bring every soul close to my Heart and Have it grafted on Me, in the same way I have brought you to be close to My Heart”. 25.9.97 (see also “The Fathers Heart” from Presentations By Vassula True Life in God International Conference in Jerusalem).
Well , based on my experience – He really means it! Something fantastic is happening now in people, due to the Grace of the Father. And if it can happen to me it can happen anybody.
