I don't know how old I was, but I can remember sitting cross-legged on the polished wooden floor at school listening to the curate from the local church. He was talking about Jesus and emphasized that Jesus was a son of God, as though that was something special. I remember being quite cross and muttering that we are all sons and daughters of God, and so it was the state for all of us. I don't know why I was so convinced - maybe someone had told me this or maybe it was simply something I had absorbed from going to both a Catholic church with my father and the Church of England church with my school. But this was one of those things I simply knew with a heart-knowing, not something I was intellectually convinced of in my head.When you have experienced the difference between knowing something intellectually and being persuaded of it, and knowing something with your heart, you have a powerful tool at your disposal. It's the difference between knowing that you should love or be loved by your parents and actually feeling that you are. No amount of intellectualizing will persuade you that you are, if you feel that you aren't. No amount of argument will persuade you that you aren't if you feel that you are. You simply know with your heart.
I have sought after wisdom all my life, and although I like to be comforable and able to afford nice things, books and wisdom have been far more important to me than riches in the material world. I want to understand how thing work, why they should be one way rather than another, how things fit together. I find the modern idea of science one-dimensional and dissatisfying. While finding six impossible things for breakfast on the one hand (quantum effects, the fact that observation changes the results of scientific experiments) scientists today seem to be rabidly anti-spiritual - anything that can't be seen, touched, subjected to a double-blind experiment, is under suspicion because science can't prove it exists. Personal experience, even if repeatedly experienced by hundreds of people, is dismissed as "anecdotal" amd rejected as though that means it didn't happen.
Some scientists reject ideas as impossible before any experimentation can begin and thus refuse to look at things they are not able to open their minds to look at, like telepathy, mediumship, channelling, and regard anyone who has an open mind to them as a gullible idiot. But who can use a double-blind experiment to show me love?
I am happy to state that my mind is open to the wisdom I can find - new light, wherever I may find it. My life as a Quaker has shown me that people may be insane or obsessed with things I don't believe but it is still possible to be led to some personal truth by them, or find some kernel of truth in their words. The only way to spot it is to learn to listen openly and non-judgmentally. I've recently become aware that I should be writing about my experiences and beliefs, not in an attempt to persuade anyone that what I believe is what they should believe, but in the hope that for the right people, my experiences may light the path for them in some way.
