I started writing this in an attempt to find a way of articulating succinctly my spiritual journey and experience for those friends who sit outside of the traditional religious fold and particularly the Christian church. However, as I began to do so I found that I also wanted my Christian friends to share my journey and so I began to try to write for 2 quite different audiences. Is this wise? The jury is out. At times it has felt as though I am trying to write in 2 different languages. Like an English child educated in France, I had grown up in a Christian environment and learned to speak its language as readily as I spoke the language of ordinary life. But it is a quite different language. Suddenly switching to French in the middle of an English conversation may cause confusion to those who do not speak French. And speaking in plain English to those who have been used to speaking almost entirely in French may cause some difficulties as well. So I am not sure how easily my non-religious friends will understand some of my more ‘Christian’ language or how some of my Christian friends will receive my comfortable use of plain English to describe my spiritual experiences and beliefs.

I should also add that having started to write, the process of writing itself has become very much part of the journey. I quickly discovered that I could not initially articulate much that I felt and I was drawn ever deeper into an exploration of the differences between what I know intuitively, around my ‘belly button’ as I often used to describe it, and what I think in my head. I find I am much clearer about the former than the latter. This journey is far from complete and so what follows will inevitably show signs of lingering confusion between the two. I am half way up the mountain but have not yet come out above the clouds. The slopes are still shrouded in mist. In particular, some of my attempts to square my current inner experience with my Christian models of the universe still feel less than satisfactory. I offer them in the hope that they will be read with a similar spirit of exploration.

Finally, before I start, a note of caution. There is a story of a Russian ballerina who gave a superbly moving performance at the Kirov Ballet, leaving the audience enraptured at what they knew to be a uniquely inspired occasion. Afterwards she was asked, ‘And what did it mean?’ ‘What did it mean?’ she responded, ‘What did it mean? If I could say what it meant I would not have danced it.’

Anyway, here we go!

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“Maybe He knew your house was only small and there wouldn’t be room in it for any more children!”

This was the reply to my earliest remembered question about the meaning of life! My mother had just given birth to a still born child and I was sitting in the dark back room of the council house next door to ours. I had been left in the care of the mother next door while my father visited my mother in hospital and addressed the practicalities. “Why did God let the baby die?!” I asked.

The answer satisfied my 5-year-old mind. But ever since the questions have continued to flow. At the root of my spiritual journey is the desire to make sense of the universe and my place in it.

My parents were devout Christians and brought me up saying my prayers at bed time and attending the local Baptist Church. For 30 years or so I remained fairly content to explore the answers to my questions within the somewhat restricted field of my varying religious experiences but at around 35 I finally left the leadership of the church I attended and set off into the unknown, more of which later.

While I can recall details of my religious experiences throughout my early years I recall little else of what I would call spiritual experience until the age of around 12 when I must have started going to overtly evangelistic crusades. I recall my feelings and response at more than one of these and notice already the dichotomy between what was happening at the level of intuition and what was happening elsewhere in my head and emotions. One reaction to the words and passion of the preacher was an intuitive desire to know God and a hunger for ‘reality’ while at another level altogether I heard a message which drew forth a response of fear; namely that if I was not ‘saved’ I would end up in hell! Both led me to respond to the preaching and so at age 12 I ‘gave my life to God’. Partly out of hunger, partly out of fear.

Over the course of those early years I suspect that other ‘spiritual’ intuitions had been developing because by the time of my mother’s death, and in the period leading up to it, I had a clear inner sense of what I will describe as “all things working together for good,” founded on my reading of the book of Romans in the Bible in particular. Chapter 8 of that epistle had become a firm favourite of mine with its assertion that nothing could separate us from the love of God and that all things worked together for good for those who loved God. These assertions resonated with my inner awareness and have been key aspects of my spiritual map of the world, and I sense the seeds of them can be seen even in my readiness to accept that simple answer to my 5 year old’s question. For me, there is an originator and sustainer of positive, loving purpose in the universe, purpose which can be found, or at least trusted, in any and every situation if one chooses to do so. I am comfortable calling this God, though I recognise all too readily the serious limitations that come with using language to describe our inner experience. Hence throughout this exploration I urge the reader to seek after the stream that flows beneath the surface. ‘We may never be able to say clearly what we have sensed or seen even though we carry with us the unshakeable conviction that things are not what they seem and that our rational lives are lived out on the edge of infinite mystery….. There is a knowledge which we struggle in vain to articulate, an apprehension which eludes conceptual thought, a sense of presence which all our images and symbols only dimly express, before which we can only in the end be silent, speechless.’ (based on Keith Ward in “God: a guide for the perplexed”)

In the months leading up to my mothers death I recall the way in which she seemed to doubt that her God loved her and she seemed to carry a weight of guilt. I still have an old envelope I gave to her at that time. On it, as her 15 year old son, I had included the following thoughts, based on Psalm 103: ‘So far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. All our sins are miles away. They never even existed to God.’ I wanted her to share that feeling of being okay. Today this is at the heart of my sense of purpose and my message. It is possible to enjoy the sense of being okay, accepted, free and loved. Certainly I am not perfect, I do many things which fall short of the way I wish to live, I am not always true to the inner voice. But God does not hold this against me and neither should I.

And when mum finally died on the last day of 1970 an inner part of me was able to accept it and know that although it did not make any intellectual sense to me it was somehow meaningful and okay. And from this basis I gradually came to terms with having no mother around any more.

By my mid to late teens I had developed a strong set of beliefs (and probably a good few superstitions) based around the Christian faith I had embraced. I had become a passionate evangelical fundamentalist. I was ready to argue an intellectually robust case for creationism but at the same time was hungry for a real experience of the God that I sensed existed. What I saw in the Baptist church where I had grown up did not inspire me. Very few people there seemed able to talk to me about actually knowing God and they struggled with my challenging questions about why doctrine and practice did not match up. I could not ignore the contradiction between what I believed about the love of God and the sometimes anxious, sometimes angry, boring and joyless lives that most church goers seemed to live.

At 17 an older friend of mine, Mike St, who had a substantial impact on my early thinking, told me of a group of Christians who were running an evangelistic crusade down in Cornwall. They believed in a Baptism in the Holy Spirit, of which I had read longingly. It was portrayed in books I was reading as a personal, experiential encounter with God and so at 6.30 one morning in August my dad dropped me off just south of London and I hitchhiked away on the next step of my journey. I went in search of something more real and returned 3 weeks later having met a group of Charismatic Christians that would have a significant influence on me for several years to come. Inducted into their more experiential approach to Christianity I returned home more passionate than ever and arranged to spend my ‘gap year’ before going up to University helping others from the group evangelise students at the University of Brussels.

This was a year of exploration and confusion. A good sign Paul C would say! Confusion signals hope of insight ahead. In the middle of it I returned to England to be my father’s best man at his wedding as a new woman replaced my mother. Abroad I read widely. I found some deep sympathy with the existentialists who felt an awful sense of the meaninglessness of life. I recall walking through the main park one evening and having a moment of identification with Camus and Satre, sensing deeply the emotional and intellectual consequences if I were to conclude that ‘all is meaningless.’ The spiritual journey for me has always been about these questions of what is life all about and why am I here? It has always been easy for me to slip into a moment of angst at the thought that it is all meaningless. In a nutshell my stance has been, either I am the product of an intricate chain of essentially random events and life is completely meaningless and I can do whatever I want irrespective of the consequences, as there is no real foundation for any form of morality; or the universe is the product of a ‘purposeful intelligence’ and I want to find out where I fit into it. The moment in the park told me that the emotional consequences of the first choice were unacceptable to me (why go on living?) and my commitment to the alternative journey deepened.

At the same time I recall a strange and telling moment that I feel reluctant to share. Lying on my mattress on the floor of my Brussels flat, I recall struggling within myself to ‘hear what God was saying’ about whether I should go the next day to the coast to practice my evangelistic techniques on the unsuspecting holiday makers! Did God want me to go or not? I struggled and struggled and could not decide. I was not at peace. In fact I was in inner turmoil. The Charismatic stream I was swimming in had me well indoctrinated with the need to do ‘the will of God’, and to achieve this one ideally needed to gain some special ‘guidance’ from God. This form of potentially superstitious belief was common, holding within it the fear that if I got it wrong something bad might happen. The idea of trusting myself to know what was ‘right’, of being confident that I would ‘hear God’ quite naturally within my own conscious and sub conscious mind, was quite foreign to me then. My hunger and search for a meaningful life was being enveloped in a package of religious ideas that, in retrospect, often led me on long detours and down dark, somewhat scary, alleys and to the end of unsignposted, confusing cul-de-sacs.

At 19 I returned from Brussels and set off to university to study Experimental Psychology and Neurophysiology – another step on my journey to understand the human predicament, provoked initially by my mothers ‘breakdown’ and subsequent suicide and the desire to make sense of what she experienced.

Here, encouraged by a new friend, Shellie, who lived far more from her heart than her head, I discovered poetry. She helped me to tap into that more emotional and intuitively spiritual level where I was becoming increasingly aware of an intuitive response to that presence of which Wordsworth wrote. By 19 his famous lines were an essential part of my developing spirituality:

I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.

These lines captured my experience, my awe and wonder, my sense of the majesty and beauty of the cosmos that spoke to me then, and still does today, of the presence of something I cannot ignore. They captured that discernment of infinity and eternity in the bounded and the transient. They spoke of the unlimited and perfect Beauty which all individual forms of beauty reflect. For many years escaping to the hills or walking by the sea has been the one of the best ways of replenishing my spiritual battery. If I begin to lose the connection a wander in the rugged hills or a stroll by the breaking waves opens again the window on the infinite.

And now a key feature of my journey, alluded to above, comes into clear focus – again and again as I reflect on my experiences I sense ‘the hand of God’, purposeful coincidence, synchronicity, providence, call it what you will, all things working together for good. The sense that my experiences are not random, that they somehow fit together with a bigger master purpose and that they are in some mysterious fashion overseen by a ‘God’ who is good and has good intentions for me. A classic example occurred at the beginning of my second year. I had taken on the responsibility for running the Christian Union (a club that Christians often form and belong to in universities) in the college and had arranged for the members to visit all the freshers (new first years) when they arrived. It was not something I particularly wanted to do but it was the ‘right’ sort of thing for a Christian Union to do. I think I only visited one person. The first door I knocked on was opened by Chris P, who invited my in and with whom I spent a wonderful hour or so discussing his experience of church, God and religious life. We shared so much in common in terms of passion and a desire for reality. We remain special friends to this day. As a result of that one knock on a stranger’s door I met several individuals, who were to have a significant influence on my life, all associated with the church that Chris was part of on Teesside. That I should even organise such a door knocking initiative was very out of character anyway. That the first door I knocked on should be opened by someone so committed to the inner journey, was then and still is, for me at least, too much of a coincidence.

Of these influential individuals that Chris introduced me to the most significant were the figures of Paul W and Derek F who, over the following years, became my mentors and friends. Their deep commitment to the Christian faith as well as to living with integrity, and their readiness to ask hard questions, made them both special people and, to my mind at least, unusual Christians.

I recall 2 or 3 significant events over those next 2 years which, in retrospect, seem to have laid foundations for the rest of my life.

The first was a moment of deep insight, revelation, enlightenment, ‘God speaking to me’. Again, call it what you will, words are used simply in an attempt to convey an inner experience and for me it is the experience that matters more than the way we explain it. Again lying on the floor, this time on my mattress at a Christian retreat in Catterick I realised that I was okay; that I was accepted. That in the terms of the Christian framework as I then understood it, God had forgiven me for everything I had ever done wrong and all I would ever do wrong. In God’s eyes I was okay and accepted. As I have alluded to before, I had already done many things which fell short of the way I wished to live, I had not always been true to the inner voice. I was pretty certain I would continue to ‘get it wrong’ sometimes (how right I was!). But God did not and never will hold this against me and neither should I.

It was a moment when the balance tipped from theory towards experience and it has stayed with me ever since and forms the bedrock of my beliefs about, and my experience of, God. I am okay. God, the Other, the Infinite, the I am, the Big ‘T’ loves me, warts ‘n’ all.

The second key event was being introduced by Paul W to a little red book by Norman Grubb titled ‘Who am I?’ If I had to pick the book that has had the greatest impact on me this would probably be it, even though today my thinking has moved on beyond much of its content. However, it is a book I have treasured and which, 25 years later, I recently thought I had lost, much to my concern at the time. It contained several thoughts which struck such a chord with my inner knowing and my experience of, and thinking about, God that these have stayed with me ever since and form clear contours on my spiritual map of the world. The first and most mind blowing thought, which appears on page 18 of my old copy of the book, was simply that ‘God exists for His universe, not His universe for Him.’ God is love and this is what loves means. Speaking in dangerously anthropomorphic fashion, it is as though God derives total pleasure or fulfilment in giving itself to others. This thought has stayed with me throughout my journey as the plumb line against which I have struggled to measure so much of the teaching which I have encountered in the church. The second thought was that we can only know anything if the opposite exists. That thought became the essence of the solution to the problem of evil for me! More of which later perhaps. And finally the thought that ‘every problem is an opportunity.’ How these three thoughts resonated with my inner knowing. Something within me leapt! These seeds might take years to germinate and grow but I knew they had been sown. I felt them being planted, driven deep into the soil of my inner life.

The third thing that I recall vividly from those student days was a phrase that I often used – “listen to your belly button.” There was a growing awareness that, despite those Brussels type experiences of confusion and doubt, I could ‘hear God’, sometimes more clearly than others, if I could just let my head be quiet and trust my ‘belly button’. That part of me that I now treasure as my intuition, my subconscious, that part of me that really knows me and is in tune with the universe, God, the infinite, the Now. That part of me that I become much more aware of during relaxation, when I allow my mind to quieten and I drift down to the still, calm centre of my being. Those times when I know I am aligned both within myself and with the infinite, when I am, to use Paul W’s phrase, living with integrity, when I am being true to myself.

Somehow the years between these late teen and early twenties times and my mid thirties seem in my memory to have been dominated by religion, its authority and my involvement in church, not to mention work, health problems, marriage and the challenges of children. We became involved in church leadership and life became consumed with doing church rather than knowing God. I have never been a conformist and continued to question and challenge the church systems but my identity had become quite dependent on my activities within the church and I only rarely came close to recognising that I was concentrating on doing rather than being - that I was in danger of mistaking doing Christian things in a Christian way for being a Christian or a knower of God. I was very struck recently by the thoughts of Alan Watts, who in his book ‘Behold the Spirit, essays in the necessity of mystical religion’, suggests that the church spends much of its time encouraging its members to mimic the outward signs of knowing God in the mistaken belief that this will lead to the reality that produces those effects. This can be no more effective than hoping that teaching someone to play the piano and giving them the theory of music composition will make them a great composer such as Bach or Brahms.

There were some positive developments. One was a growing awareness of ‘Grace’. A broadening sense of that initial revelation that I am okay. I identified deeply with the songs of Dave Bryant, a cockney Christian seeking to put his experience of God into words and music. Songs like ‘Naturally Supernatural’ and ‘God likes me’ struck an intuitive chord with me, capturing something of my real experience instead of theory, and they stay with me to this day.

And further themes too were developing in my awareness of the spiritual. Involved in a church system that placed a high degree of importance on church and biblical authority and listening to leaders I slowly became more and more convinced of the need to know God for oneself and not be dependent on others. Here the superstition proved powerful with feelings of fear easily arising initially - what impact would ignoring God’s supposedly appointed leaders have? It’s probably very hard for those outside the system to understand how an intelligent man, with a proven track record in leading a successful school etc could find it so easy to succumb to such thinking but such is the power of the church’s teaching, especially if you have been exposed to it for a long period. I recalled a prime example of this type of thinking recently. In my late twenties I was quite ill with stomach complaints. In retrospect I see them as the physical expression of inner struggles but church leaders repeatedly suggested they must be the result of some past wrong actions in my life which had somehow made me susceptible to the influence of the evil side of the universe. Possibilities ranged from having participated enthusiastically in yoga to having held our marriage reception in a Masonic hall. At the time these suggestions added to my inner conflicts and so probably exacerbated my physical condition. Encouraged by Derek F, who often asked whether my health might have something to do with how I thought, I found from somewhere the inner strength to resist other suggestions and, as I slowly began to become more of who I could be, my health improved.

As time passed the glaring contradiction between much that the church was suggesting and teaching on the one hand and, on the other, my conviction that ‘I am okay’ and  ‘God exists for his universe and not the other way round’ enabled me to withstand the superstition with increasing ease but even today I occasionally sense a faint echo of these dark voices and find that I need to employ my growing understanding of how our minds work to help remove the last emotional vestiges.

By my mid 30s I had become pretty disillusioned with church and particularly with church leadership. It seemed that too many of those in church leadership were lacking in the emotional maturity that their beliefs should lead them to. They often demonstrated an significant level of emotional insecurity, as well as a dogmatic approach and narrow mindedness that I could no longer accept. Too often they appeared only interested in conformity and were too ready to tell others how to live and what decisions to make. On the last few occasions that I spoke to the church in Middlesbrough I sought to highlight my growing unease with this, speaking on themes such as ‘different but not wrong’ and ‘the value of individuality and variety’. And then I was gone!

My spiritual path was becoming one of trusting my own inner awareness rather than external earthly authority, of valuing variety and the unique contribution every person makes to the world. There was a deep assurance that I was okay, that I was loved by God and that I had to explore the journey even if it meant doing so somewhat alone and isolated from the religious system I had grown up in.

For the next 10 years or so we maintained our links with Christian friends. While many in the M’bro church which we left became distant a few of those we had been close to remained good and genuine friends. I continued to meet with several of these, usually over a few glasses of alcohol, to contemplate the meaning of life and share our experiences. We also began to develop other friendships with folk at a church in the neighbouring Billingham and while we did not want to become ’members’ we did go along to their meetings from time to time. I re-established my relationship with Derek and came to value his friendship and insight and his ability to take me as I was even when he disagreed with my views. This was unusual in Christian circles and remains one of the great gifts that Derek gave to me, embodying the truth I knew, that to God I was okay, faults ‘n all.

During this time we often went to Cambridge for a short break in the summer and I would always spend a large part of one day sitting in the bookshops, browsing though the religious and spiritual sections, hunting for something that would inspire the next step on my inner journey. The most influential of the Christian writers I discovered were probably Henri Nouwen and Anthony de Mello, both catholic, both with an interest in psychology and a deep commitment to seeing Christianity as being about wholeness. Initially Henri Nouwen’s accounts and reflections on his own inner journey inspired and stimulated my own while over recent years it has been often been the writings of Anthony de Mello, who sought to marry the contributions of both eastern and western spirituality, that have opened new windows for me.

During these times in the Cambridge bookshops I also began to rekindle my interest in psychology, reading the likes of Albert Ellis, Windy Dryden, Maxwell Maltz and Herbert Benson.

A turning point came one hot sunny day reclining by the pool at La Garrenne in Brittany where we spent several very enjoyable summers with the children. I was reading Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence and, if I chose to use the language of my religious upbringing, I would say God again spoke to me. The revelation? ‘You can change. You are not a prisoner of your past.’ It came as I read Goleman’s thoughts on optimism and pessimism. Despite being a positive character at work, at home I had certainly exhibited a distinct pessimistic streak for years, always able to see the down side, something which had threatened the very continuance of our marriage at times. But there by the pool I saw that it was possible to change. And not just that is was possible. There and then I committed myself to learning to be an all round optimist. If, by repentance and conversion, the Christian religion means, as I now believe it does, a real and life impacting change of mind, then this was one such experience. It didn’t all happen over night but today I am a different person. I have learned to think positively. I no longer believe theoretically in God’s goodness and good intentions. I actually trust that walking in harmony with my creator and sustainer I am able to meet whatever challenges appear. And we are still married. I am not sure we would be if I had not changed.

It was not long before I began to discover the literature of what I shall call, for lack of a better name, the personal development thinkers.

First of all my good friend Mike S introduced me to Steven Covey and another of those interesting events evolved. Did ‘God say’? Whatever that means I guess the nurturing ‘she’ nudged me in a certain direction! In Cambridge again I spotted a large pile of Steven Covey’s book, ‘7 Habits of highly effective people’. In a moment of ‘inspiration’ I bought 2 copies. I would suggest to Mike S and his wife Val that we meet up with our friends Alan and Kathryn once a month to discuss a chapter. It would be interesting for us to explore its ideas, might be of benefit to Alan who was experiencing depression and would provide some of that close friendship that we missed from being on the outside of church.

Determined to pursue my re-awakened interest in the psychology of personal change I also enrolled on a course in Performance Coaching and so began to read Anthony Robbins, Joseph Jaworski and a variety of NLP literature.

Over time I became increasingly aware that my spiritual journey and my journey of exploration of the psychology of personal change were converging. For a long time a central aspect of Jesus’ teaching had seemed to be ‘the Truth will set you free.’  And I became convinced that truth is truth whether or not it is in a religious format. I was aware that many in the church viewed any ‘truth’ outside the religious framework with grave suspicion. ‘Only Jesus can set people free’ was a common theme, although I have never been able to understand what is meant by it. The suggestion seemed to be that changing one’s thinking could not set one free because it was based on ones own effort. For those in the types of churches I had experienced, such self effort is somehow unacceptable as one must rely on God to effect change in us. Added to that, anything that might be construed as ‘The world’s wisdom’ was of no value. And so, as my spiritual journey and my journey of exploration of the psychology of personal change converged, I came to feel more and more distant from my religious background. Religious leaders seemed to be ignoring a whole source of life giving truth that was bringing light and growth both to me and friends like Mike and Val. How often over a period of 30 years I had sat in church and heard people tell me that Christianity was about God changing lives and I had been left with the questions ‘HOW does he do it then!?’ and ‘How do I actually go about changing?’ The synthesis of my evolving appreciation of Christian truth and my explorations of the psychology of change were beginning to provide me with some long sought after answers.

Adding to my new found enthusiasm for a wider definition of truth was the fact that I was increasingly meeting people whose commitment to living according to their inner ‘truth’ with a small ‘t’ was leading to them living what I considered to be a more godlike life than many of those professing to love the ‘Truth’ with a big, religious ‘T’.

The questions of ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Why am I here?’ continued to be central to my journey. I had now read 7 Habits and experimented with Covey’s idea of a mission statement but somehow it didn’t quite work for me; it became too verbose. It was about this time that I came across a small book called ‘Finding the still point’ by Gerald O’Mahony. In it he suggested an exercise that finally worked for me. “…we all have a motto inside us, and no one knows the right motto but the one to whom it belongs.” He encourages his readers to imagine they have the privilege of designing their own coat of arms and then to go on to identify a personal motto to go under their personal shield. Suddenly all of my thinking and exploring around my mission statement came into focus and crystalised as the simple motto “Awareness, acceptance, wholeness.” That was it. I had come to rest. This was, and is, me. It was who I am and why I am here.

Awareness of who I am, acceptance of who I am and journeying from where I am towards wholeness.

Awareness of who I am, of my place in the cosmos, of the NOW, of other people.

And, helping others to come to that awareness for themselves.

Acceptance of myself as I am, knowing I am accepted by ‘God’ as I am with my imperfections, accepting the NOW, accepting others as they are.

And helping others to discover that they are loved and accepted too, with their imperfections.

And always journeying towards wholeness, integration, alignment, integrity, towards greater awareness and more complete acceptance.

And helping others to do the same.

Several times since, I have explored my purpose again but always I return to this same motto. It fits. And today it is still me.

The most recent period in my spiritual journey began some three or four years ago. Another series of ‘coincidences’ and inner knowings led me to arrange an unlikely secondment from my headship to head up an education initiative in West Middlesbrough. On my personal agenda for this was a dream of exploring ways of making available to teachers the work of some of the personal development thinkers. When I started in the September of 2000 I had no clear idea how this would be achieved. But within 3 months a further series of surprising coincidences left me sitting in an elegant drawing room in London discussing my dreams with Paul C. We had soon arranged for him to run some programmes with teachers in Middlesbrough and in March of 2001, as we began the first of these sessions, a further key phase of my journey unfolded. Those first 3 days with Paul, which Barbara attended as well, took me through emotional highs and lows, opened new insights into how we work, enabled me to bring together much previous learning and ended with a long and very emotional session between Barbara and I in Asda’s car park! That is another story in itself. The 3 days had opened up the possibility of an acknowledgement of some deep resentments that we had been avoiding for years. Over subsequent weeks we were able to address these and while it sounds extreme I can believe that the events of those 3 days and the awareness that we came to probably enabled us to save our marriage. What was very interesting at the time about this experience, however, was one simple recognition. We had been part of religious settings for many years and had never come close to acknowledging these issues. Suddenly, in 3 days, and without a single overt mention of anything religious or even spiritual, we had been enabled to face up to some key truths about ourselves and in that had found the seeds of the possibility of liberation. And yet, at the same time, we had the clearest sense possible of the ‘hand of God’ at work.

So, coming right up to date. Over the subsequent three years Paul ran further programmes for us and our relationship has deepened as we have begun to share our explorations of the spiritual journey. There have been many further interesting and purposeful coincidences, and who knows where they will take us. As the title says, destination unknown.

Perhaps one of the most enlightening experiences is being in touch with a group of fellow travellers, particularly those with whom I shared the privilege of being led, by Paul C, through a ‘facilitators’ training programme called Prometheus. To share in the non judgemental and open minded spirit of this group of men and women has been both humbling and disturbing. Humbling because I am accepted as I am, warts ‘n all. Disturbing because the spirit of the group is so often so much closer to the spirit I believe Jesus would want to encourage than anything I have usually met in churches!

So where am I now? How do I describe or communicate my current spiritual experience?

At the moment I am still quite comfortable describing myself, to myself at least and to Christians friends who know me well, as a Christian, although I am reluctant to use this description with most people as it has so many unhelpful connotations, particularly the religious ones.

I have great sympathy with Tony Campolo’s description of himself as a Christian Humanist. I believe along with Tony that our purpose is to become the whole, mature, loving person God made us with the potential to be. And that we see what this is like most fully in Jesus who was a fully authentic human being.

I also have great sympathy with Anthony de Mello’s leaning towards Christian mysticism. Much is, and will remain, a mystery. Life is about being rather than doing, about awareness rather than knowledge. I have gained much from the practices and teachings of the eastern religions as well as western mystics.

So I might describe myself as a searching Christian humanist drawing guidance from both western and eastern mysticism and from modern psychology. Are such descriptions helpful? I have my doubts but the search to find possible descriptions has certainly been an interesting one.

For my own benefit and for my Christian friends and perhaps for those exploring what Christianity might mean for them I have gone on to explore, in a little more detail, the question: What sense do I now make of the Christian framework within which I have grown up and whose ideas have provided the framework for much of my experience? And how important are those ideas to my current spiritual experience?

At the moment many of these ideas still work for me, although my interpretation of them may now often be rather different to the interpretation presented by much of the Charismatic movement within which I spent  20 or more years. And my starting point is increasingly my own inner experience rather than the belief system of a particular religion or the authority of a book of scriptures. 

And so my journey continues. One step at a time. Responding as honestly as I can to the insight I have today. Recognising that tomorrow some new insight may cause me to move on or to change my models of the cosmos. My trust in the goodness of the intelligence behind it all gives me assurance that I will arrive at my destination, wherever or whatever that may be!

The next section provides my thoughts on how I am thinking about various Christian concepts at the present time.

Click here to read more......    My Spirituality