Over the past year or so I've become increasingly aware of a deep feeling within me. It's sweet and warm and soft and tender, like toasted marshmallows, and growing in me, revealing itself in meditation sometimes, or when I'm just sitting or moving about the house, or sometimes I dream the feeling and my dream is about a record or tape that contains the most beautiful blue/green music. Sometimes I hear the music; other times the feeling just comes from holding the album in the dream. I'm not sure what this feeling is - part of my own self, a gift from God, I don't know. It's just so tender and beautiful - it brings me close to tears.

I've just being praying and became immersed in the feeling - I'm now like melted chocolate. Anybody experience anything similar? Got any clues or references which might help me interpret the feeling? I can't bring it on myself, it just comes. It's lovely.

Anyhow here's a wee concrete poem about feelings:

hill
hallow

field
fallow

marsh
mallow


Blessings,

Stephen.

Yes, I know what you mean, Stephen. A kind of tender, mellow joy. I take it to be a taste of God's love and find that it brings wisdom and deep peace as well. Surely a state of grace!

One thing I've noticed - the feeling grows alongside compassion, compassion for myself, putting myself in the way of Christ's compassion. It's like the love of God at my core. It really warms and nourishes me. Thank you!

Thank you so much, Stephen, for sharing this bit of yourself with us. Just your putting it here in words makes it possible for us to "enter in" to this reality and share a glimpse of God's love.

I think I experience something similar to what you describe. For me, whenever I feel any deep sense of joy or peace, it always feels like intimacy with Christ. This is an inexplicable sense of being intimate, not fully at one, but intimate with God, sometimes a rapturous intimacy. Nothing can disturb it, nothing can 'enhance' this state, and it seems to

come when it wants

and depart when it wants .

I'm just beginning to deal 'maturely' with the times when God seems to leave.

May we all grow in His Joy and Love!!

I can certainly relate to trying to deal "maturely" with the times when God is "not so present". I came through a spell of 3 or 4 weeks there where my faith was really tested. I felt dry and abandoned. I thought, do I really believe in this peronal God? Aren't we all just part of some huge divine energy bubble. I fought through and shed tears in church and finally reaffirmed my faith in the Living God only for Him to return to me the next day in a huge wave of love which I've been riding for two weeks now! Such a gracious sense of Him as Father! Such a sense of Christ the Son! I don't want that barreness and doubt again though. A real battle!

Stephen,

At the risk of seeming insensitive, to other things I do understand about your sharing here, I don't understand what people mean when they say they feel "dry." Does it have an opposite? Wet? What exactly are you talking about? Is there some biblical reference here I'm not getting: Water of eternal life promised to the woman at the well, for example?

Hi Stephen, it is so strange. This Sunday morning as I move around the house doing this and that, I to feel this deep sense of peace, like a softness in my heart,or tenderness deep inside, it feels very delicate. When this happens, many times tears will flow or I will pray. Then I sit and read your post and yes there it is. Thank you for sharing your experience.

Christopher

Dry like a desert, Ryan. Barren, no fruit, as if God has withdrawn the refreshing rain of His Presence. It's just a metaphor.

And thank you for sharing too, Christopher. It's a very delicate feeling as you say and wonderful to me how it's shared amongst us and yet is so personal - a gift offered to us as individuals.

quote:

Originally posted by Stephen:
[QB] Dry like a desert, Ryan. Barren, no fruit, as if God has withdrawn the refreshing rain of His Presence. It's just a metaphor.
QB]

Thanks Stephen, I think I know what you are talking about, and I think I've been there. Still, it is a metaphor I would use as yet. Weary, tired, and most of all, dissipated -- in need of the rest of God, in need of re-collection -- these are the descriptions that I tend to use of late. Not synonymous exactly, but related, I think. What do you think?

Just after writing the above paragraph, I had a felt memory of something like water springing up within as if from a well. Following that, I could also have a sense of spiritual presence raining down from above. Teresa of Avila introduced me to that experience. Maybe I could use "dry" to describe the absence of that. It would not be "just" a metaphor though, not something I would say casually without a bodily felt point of refernece. It is a close metaphor for description of a bodily felt sense.

I've rambled. Thanks again for your sharing Stephen.

These warm "marshmallow" feelings of the Lord's presence are indeed awesome! I was wondering if anyone "sees" the presence of the Lord within themselves. By "see" I don't mean a vision of any kind at all, nothing is really seen as we do with the natural eye, but it is as if the Holy Spirit is giving you the ability to see the presence of Jesus dwelling within you. Looking within and seeing this is very wonderful, bringing with it a deep calm and peace, and a general sense of being with the Lord... not the same as the warm "marshmallow" feeling, but still just as satisfying. This ability to see happens during quiet prayer and at times during the day or night outside of prayer... Seems to come and go without my own doing, I can try to "look within" any time, but can't actually see His presence at will, it is a gift from the Holy Spirit. Anyone else experience this?

Blessings,

Caneman

Ryan and Stephen, I know what you are talking about. I'm glad that for you the experience was brief. Has anyone experienced something like that going on for years -- I mean a LOT of years? For me it has been about 10. I have read much about the Dark Night of the Soul, but there are so many aspects of my experience that don't seem to fit into that scenario. Anyway, not to belabor the point, just wondering if anyone else has had such an extended period of God's apparent "indifference", and how they handled it.

I've realised that this type of feeling arises when the attention is centred in the heart. It's as if the mind just drops into the bosom and releases these sweet sensations into the soul. The Orthodox hesychasts talk about "forcing" the attention into the heart, but this presents a lot of problems for me personally. Once in a while however, there is just a natural centring of attention in the heart and, accompanied by short prayers based in scripture, it's not difficult to believe that the heart is indeed where God actually dwells.

Based on these experiences, I've been praying for deeper union with the Lord. Instead of the deep bliss or ecstacy I might have expected however, I think I'm being led into a union that is based on the fellowship of Christ's suffering, where the heart really relates to Christ's passion and compassion and enters into His suffering for the world on the cross. It's not the kind of union I was expecting, more a union with the Lord's compassionate, suffering heart. It's reduced me to tears already and deepened my prayer life and my own sense of the cross.

I'm trying to articulate and express what's happening in my prayer life without drawing attention to myself, which is perhaps contradictory, but you know what I mean. I'm still trying to understand it all myself. It feels deep and pretty wonderful, with my heart expanding and a bubbling energy stream travelling from my base up to the right hand side of my breast. Such an experience of God's grace and who knows where it leads!! Quite exciting actually!!

Merry Christmas to you, Stephen!

Your experience of "union that is based on the fellowship of Christ's suffering" sounds very fascinating. I have wondered what the Saints have meant by this and now you are experiencing it too.

Maybe it would be better to get into this discussion on another thread, but I find this topic a huge mystery. Do you feel the suffering as a vague,general thing or is it linked to something specific in or around you?

I've experienced what I thought for sure was the grief of the Holy Spirit at times. It was not my grief, though I could feel that too. Although I can't prove it, it was as if I could literally feel God's grief over witnessing a certain destructive thing. There was both my personal reaction and then that would literally 'move over' and I could see/feel God's grief. I think you are probably referring to something different, eh?

Thanks Shasha! And Merry Christmas to you and everyone at shalomplace!!

The experience is a huge mystery to me too and not one I'd considered much before.

It feels like a general thing, encompassing the whole earth, but generated by my daily contact with those around me. It comes when I turn my attention to intercessory prayer. Suddenly my heart expands and feels the brokenness of the world. Individual faces come to mind, then general forms of suffering experienced worldwide. It connects closely with a sense of Christ's passion and his death as the way of healing and reconciliation with God. I have a longing for the wholeness of the entire planet, although I don't think it springs from anything in me personally, but is a move of the Spirit joining me with Christ in his love and longing for the world.

Just what is accomplished from this is a mystery too. I'm beginning to think the suffering of every individual is an unconscious crucifixion, an unconscious sharing in the mystery of Christ's passion and somehow, through lives or lifetimes in this planet, or in spiritual realms beyonds this sphere, God is working out the salvation of us all. When we become conscious of this crucifixion, it's possible that the work of the cross creates a deeper experience of empathy which transforms personal suffering so that it is no longer our own but Christ's for the world. We become joined with Christ in His suffering.

A union based on the fellowship of His suffering seems the best way to describe it.

Stephen, it sounds like you are experientially in touch with the paschal mystery -- our participation in the sufferings and resurrection of Jesus. I am reminded of Paul's statement that he, in his suffering, fills up what is lacking in the suffering body of Christ, which is the Church (Col. 1: 24). This is a very mysterious teaching, and difficult to interpret. I've come to understand it to mean that Christ experiences the suffering of all and joins it with his own redemptive sacrifice to effect transformation (thus do some teach on the efficacy of "offering up" their sufferings).

Keep us posted on how this process goes for you. I'd also be interested in hearing if there's a change in the experience if you shift your center of attention to, say, the 3rd eye.