My actual experiences, Connecting to God, and being aware of the life in my body, do not fit neatly into any of the religions or philosophies I have studied. As Shakespeare's Hamlet said to Horatio, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." - Hamlet (1.5.167-8) When I started this book, I was initially more concerned about the physical, my diet and supplements, than the spiritual. However, I have discovered that the spiritual and mental are vastly more important than the physical. Without the spiritual and mental, none of the physical solutions continued to work for me. I thought I was going to die. As I wondered what it would be like losing my body, and going home to God, I had the most incredible experience: the barrier I had placed between God and me disappeared. God was always there, but there was always a separation: God was THERE and I was HERE. For that timeless moment, I was open to God. I was not asking for anything, or trying to get God to do what I wanted, I was just curious what it would be like to go Home to God, and I was there. The first thing I did was offer up some of the things I had done this life that still bother me. You could say, I confessed my sins. Instead of being told I was wrong, or being punished, or being forgiven, I was greeted with understanding. God already knew what I had done. I was still loved and so were all of God's children. God loves all of God's children just the way they are. The experience was like being oriented to The Game of Life. The message was, "I gave you Life, to have a Life." I was not being welcomed Home to stay at Home, but for a pep talk and some advice. Like a player who had been battered in a game, I was being dusted off and sent back into The Game. God was not welcoming me Home to stay, but giving me strength to deal with the life I had chosen and would give me strength whenever I was willing to ask for it. When I told my wife about the experience, she saw it as a mother would: God did not want God's children under foot, God wanted them to get out of the house and play, to get a life. Each of us is a unique individual and will have a unique perception of God. My experience is my experience. When I told my brother-in-law about my experience, he could not accept it. He did not believe that one could communicate directly to God. He believed that one needed to go through Jesus. His experience was of calling on Jesus in his moment of need. He received the strength he needed to stop drinking and stay sober after the loss of his wife to cancer. Seeing him sober and carrying on with his life, one can see that what worked for him, definitely worked for him. His life was changed by his experience. I think each of us experiences God as we can accept God. We mentally filter our perception of God to be something we can accept. My experience leads me to believe we are all the children of God, and that God loves all God's children. It is only now, as I am writing this book, that I am understanding that the spiritual is truly the most important factor in health and sickness. Over the years, I have studied and been involved with various religions and philosophies, including Christianity, which seemed to me to treat the body as secondary to the spirit. At least that has been my interpretation, and my error. As I look at it now, the attitude I accepted, and held, was that the body was an encumbrance on the spirit being free. The truth, as God told me six years ago, is that I was given life to have a life and I took a body on this Earth to have a life. It is here, on this Earth, that the people I love the most, have also taken bodies to have a life. We are all children of God playing this game together. We can make this life and this planet a wonderful thing or a terrible thing. I think God would have us choose Life and Wonderful.
About the Author: Thomas J. Mason is a retired Information Technology Manager who lives in the High Desert north of Los Angeles with his wife of forty-two years and their dog, Tara. He discovered, after falling in love with the beautiful redhead who was to become his wife, that in addition to her incredibly cute redheaded twins, she had six other children. But by then it was too late. He was hooked. She continues to be the best thing that ever happened to him. These days, he puts his great-grandchildren to sleep by singing Irish and Scottish traditional songs while accompanying himself on his Irish flat drum, called a bodhran. Since childhood, he had studied science and philosophy. For most of his working life, he worked with computers and computer controlled equipment. Nothing he studied prepared him for for two unique experiences that happened when he thought he was going to die. He wondered what it would be like to be with God, and God told him that he had been given life to have a life, and his role in God's Game was to get a life. The second experience happened one day while walking his body around his property. He was wandering off in thought, when he became aware that his body was alive and that it was in communication with the rest of God's Creation. Two experiences that have shaped his philosophy and life ever since.