By Caron Goode

It was 1960. Jessica was nine years old and Rusty was ten. His family was Baptist and hers was Catholic. When his family moved into the neighborhood, Rusty became the youngest member of the thirteen boys in the neighborhood gang. One Saturday afternoon, the two girls of the neighborhood were walking home from the movie theater. Jessica said goodbye to her friend and headed home to help her mother.

Some of the neighborhood boys grabbed Jessica by the arms, held her, and threw a coarse rope around her neck. It happened so fast, she offered no resistance, and she pushed her hands between the rope and her neck to keep from choking.

The boys pulled her down the alley behind the houses. Jessica was tripping over her own feet, and fell several times, bruising her knees. She dared not cry for fear of what they would do to her. She couldn’t speak; she could barely breathe.

Finally they shoved her into her back yard. They pulled the rope taught until she turned red and tears streamed down her face. Mortified, embarrassed, hurt, and dying to run away, she wondered where her mother was. May be she was looking out a window and would come and rescue her any moment. Mom?  Her mother never came. Jessica knew the utter feeling of helplessness at the hands of these young bullies.

Finally they all ran away. Jessica lay on the grass and looked up at passing clouds until she could quit sobbing and breathe again and her trembling would stop. She felt a hand touch her hand. She looked over and Rusty was sitting cross-legged beside her. He was crying too.

“I am so sorry. I didn’t want to do it. I couldn’t stop it. They are bigger than me, and so mean today. I want to be your friend, and I never want you to hurt again. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it……..” The rest of Rusty’s words were unintelligible through his tears.

Jessica squeezed his hand. She couldn’t say anything yet. And they understood each other. She forgave him, grateful for the offer of friendship.

By Caron Goode
 
Feelings carry us beyond the known dimension of space and time into other worldly experiences. We experience spirit in the wholeness of the brain and body. Spirit, brain and body are inseparable.

Twenty men and women from the United States were in ritual ceremony around a campfire in the Nazca Desert of Peru. Their teacher, a shaman, chanted while the rest of us drummed in a rhythmic movement and entered altered states of consciousness. Deeply relaxed and with chills of energy flowing through my body, I stepped into the imaginary circle around the fire and became an eagle that flew overhead.

Anna was attending a religious service in observance of Christmas. She loved the music, and she sang with an open and passionate heart. The music filled her with such deep peace that she closed her eyes and floated in feeling of rapture.

Joe, an alcoholic, has finally had enough. Drunk and dirty, he fell to his knees on a cold sidewalk in the middle of downtown Baltimore. He didn’t feel the cold because he was too numb. Negative voices named guilt and shame hammered in his head, “You are no good. Give it up. You don’t deserve to live. You’re nothing but a drunken sot….”

“All right!” he cried. “Good Lord, take me out or clean me up. I cannot live like this anymore.” Anyone looking at Joe saw a white cone of Light grow around him and engulf his head. He closed his eyes and sobbed deep heavy pangs of grief. The Light stayed with Joe when he fell asleep on the sidewalk. Many would think he had fallen into a drunken stupor that lasted for hours.

When Joe woke up, he had a clear mind and a single purpose. He walked with confidence into a local church and knelt down. With the deepest humility and gratitude for his life that few of us know, he said, “My Lord, you saved me. I will never take another drink as long as I live. Thank you. For the rest of my life, I will help others like me find you. And he did.

Three different people enter altered states of consciousness and experience rapture, have a peak moment. In pain or prayer, we get there, and these experiences are real and we record them as memories in our brain and body.

We know and experience spirituality through our feelings. Neurobiologists conducted recent experiments using brain imaging technology to record the biochemistry of transcendent experiences. These types of experiences register highest in the limbic system. This part of the brain is associated with emotions, feelings, and motivation.

To recall our experience of spirit, we only need recall these feelings. There is every reason to believe that, to some degree, spirituality is hard-wired into the human nervous system. We are part of something much greater than ourselves, something awe inspiring and humbling; we need spirituality for our spiritual selves much as we need oxygen for our biological selves … to live!