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An Agnostic's Encounter With God

By Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT

Page Four of Five Pages

A day or two after that, I was alone in the house and working in my office when I heard a loud noise. It sounded like an object, such as a book, dropped on the floor. Checking it out, I discovered that, in fact, a book had mysteriously been taken off the shelf in the front room and deposited on the floor.

This was not something I could ignore.

That evening when I went to bed I said, "Okay, Spirit Being, or whatever you are that can toss objects around, I'm going to close this medicine cabinet right now (it stays shut with a ball that snaps tightly into an opening). If you are something with non-physical properties that wants to make contact with me—but only if you are benevolent and work for the betterment of the world—open this door tonight. If it's open tomorrow morning, I will believe in the reality of a spiritual dimension."

As you may have guessed, the next morning the medicine cabinet door was open (my husband uses a different bathroom) and I was stuck with my agreement. I'd said I would believe and now I was being forced into it. However, since there wasn't a guidebook for this kind of experience, I'd have to figure out what all this means by myself.

I now put greater effort in the time I set aside for quiet and for meditating. No longer focused on whether or not there was "Spirit," I now focused on how I could respond to this call of the Spirit. I began to place more faith in the very still, very quiet voice of intuition I had first acknowledged years before. For example, now when during meditation I would often suddenly understand the meaning of an old hymn or a familiar bible verse.

And I finally experienced a profound sense of oneness with this Spirit, this transcendent dimension I had not known or acknowledged before. Eventually I decided the word "God" would work for me even if it might mean something different to other people.

Incidentally, if you think it would be great to have strange phenomena occur in your house and assume it would lead to great spiritual insights, let me disuade you of that opinion. There was a lot of frustration in all of this. I'd frequently say, "You know, I get a vague sense you've been waiting a long time for me to realize there's actually something to this spirit and soul business. I'll even agree that it maybe you've come to help me uncover a different my purpose for me life, because I gather you want me to understand something or you wouldn't have gone so far as to create these events, unless, of course, you simply have a strange sense of humor. It's as though you're running one software program and I'm running another. We need a better interface here, guy or guys or gals or whatever you are. A little handwriting on the wall would go a long way."

Unfortunately, no handwriting appeared. But off and on for about a year unusual things continued to happen. Pictures that had been hanging securely on the wall the day before would lie, glass unbroken, on the floor in the morning. And the knocks continued, although they diminished somewhat and are seldom heard anymore.

I'd like you to know that even though I said I accepted the reality of a spiritual dimension when the bathroom cabinet door was opened mysteriously, there were still times when I wondered if perhaps my husband HAD gone into the bathroom and used something in the medicine cabinet that night. I was 99 percent sure he hadn't, but maybe he did and I was basing my belief on false premises. So I could possibly dismiss the idea of spirit except for the little matter of the pinecone in the bathroom and the book in the living room.

Then one day I was in my office and saw a paperback book fly off the shelf, exactly the kind of unnatural phenomena I'd dismissed for years when reported by others. "Well," I said to myself, "of course it came off, I just put that book up there yesterday. I must not have set it on the shelf very carefully and it's gradually been sliding down until it just happened to fall today when I was here." I could have accepted that explanation EXCEPT that the very next day ANOTHER book, one which had been on the shelf for several years, also came flying off!

My intuition responded immediately with something like, "You're a hard nut to crack, Arlene. What more should the force behind the universe do? There IS a spiritual dimension to life and it's time you paid attention."

That event finally broke my last resistance. I couldn't avoid the reality of what I saw. How I interpreted it was up to me and it would take a very long time before I sorted it out enough to make a difference in my life.

CONCLUDED on Page Five

© Copyright 2002, Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT