| My Journey Back to God by Dottie Titus My memories of a relationship with God go back a long way. I remember receiving my first bible at the age of seven as a reward for memorizing the "alphabet" verses, 26 verses from the bible recited before the church congregation. Even earlier, I sang a solo in church at the age of four. As a little child, belief in God came naturally. As I got older, I felt abandoned by God when I became a victim of incest. I remember a picture of Jesus in our church. He stood among children of all colors, and the words beneath the picture said, "Suffer the little children to come unto me." That picture made me angry. "Yes, I thought, the little children suffer and nobody helps them." It was probably inevitable that I would turn away from God. I remember the very moment: I was 23 years old, out for a drive when the thought came that whether or not God existed just didn't matter. I became an agnostic at that moment. God no longer mattered. Twenty years later, a friend asked me to attend classes in hands-on healing with her. I was very skeptical, my passion being science and math and beliefs that were logical. I agreed to attend the class for the sake of our friendship. Over the next two years, that class would shake the very foundations of my beliefs. In the first class, we were invited to let a particular spirit, called The Teacher, work with different levels of our auras while we sat with closed eyes. My skeptical mind was convinced it was all phony. I felt nothing through the first three layers of the aura. At the fourth level, however, I felt my chair shaking violently. I opened my eyes to see who was doing it. The shaking stopped; no one was touching my chair. I closed my eyes again and the shaking resumed. I was having my first "paranormal" experience. Throughout this class, I had experiences my logical mind could not explain. I discovered I could scan someone's body energetically and get accurate information about the parts of their body that had been injured. I discovered an ability to heal other's physical symptoms. None of this made any sense to my rational mind, and yet it was happening. I was beginning to open. Near the end of the class, I attended a workshop with Barbara Brennan, author of the book Hands of Light, and decided I wanted more. Because Barbara had first been a Pathwork student and teacher, I decided to start with the Pathwork, too. I didn't know why I was drawn to it, but an inner voice told me to do it. There is no way to avoid God in the Pathwork. Every lecture contains reminders such as this one, my favorite now: "You live and move and have your being in a universe that consists of such tenderness, such love, such personal care of the living God, the all eternal presence in all that is, that it simply defies description."--Lecture #250, "The Meaning of Grace..." But denial is a strong defense. I managed to ignore God until I read "The God-Image" in the book "The Pathwork of Self-Transformation." In that chapter, I finally met my problem head on. Children, the book says, have their first conflict with authority when they are very young. They also learn that God is the highest authority. As children, then, we project our experiences with authority figures in our lives onto our imaginings about God. If we experienced fear and frustration, we will feel fearful and frustrated with God--even if we consciously believe in a kind and loving God, our emotional reactions are likely to be fear and frustration. If we had indulgent parents, we will believe that God is kind and loving and indulgent, but in a such a way that we believe we can cheat life and avoid self-responsibility. Suddenly it was clear why the words "God, the Father" had always triggered a strong, negative reaction. Having had a controlling and abusive father, my picture of God was one of a tyrant, demanding a lot from me and giving little in return. I had found my God-image. Changing it was much more difficult, and it took several years. The first step was to open to the possibility that God was different than what I had believed. As I opened up, the frequency of "paranormal" experiences increased. I began to pray for guidance, and it would sometimes come in strange ways. Once, when I was in the throes of a new relationship, I prayed for guidance about whether or not this relationship was going to last. I didn't get an answer during the time I sat waiting, but when I got to my feet, my attention was caught by a pair of squirrels in the tree outside my window. A big male was trying to mate with the female (it was not squirrel mating season!). He was very mean to her, and she eventually escaped and ran away. Six months later, this was what happened in my relationship. God was speaking to me if I was willing to see and hear. My final surrender came during a training workshop for Pathwork helpers. During a breathwork exercise, I was suddenly reaching out to God and sobbing. I was experiencing my sense of unworthiness, the feeling that I didn't deserve God. I wasn't good enough. As the sobs kept shaking my body, I suddenly felt myself gathered into loving arms and rocked. There was no one near me, so it had to have been God Himself that held me and comforted me. As the rocking continued, I heard the sweetest words, "My beloved! My beloved! My beloved!" Me? A beloved of God? In that moment, every defense and resistance in me released, and I knew with absolute certainty that God exists and that He loves me beyond any love I have ever known. In the years since then, I have experienced ever deeper surrender to God's will, to God's love, to God's presence in my life. With this, "magic" has also come into my life. I've learned the "rules" for manifesting abundance. In my former job on the East Coast as a rental manager for a Pathwork retreat center, I grew the business by 400% in five years. My "secret" was that I asked God to fill the empty spaces on the calendar. And he did. When asked why I didn't do more advertising or other marketing activities, my answer was simply, "I don't need to. I only have to ask God." Dottie Titus, M.A., Ed.S., M.B.A., is a Pathwork Helper with 15 years of Pathwork experience. She is offering a workshop, "Finding Your No!: A Pathwork Approach to Abundance" on October 18-20. Copyright (c) 2002 Dotttie Titus |
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