Mystical Experiencer: Female in early sixties
Submission date: November 25, 2021
Current location: U.S.A.
Age at time of experience: 56
My husband had died seven months earlier, and I was in deep grief. Late one night, I returned to the library and was about to sit down on the sofa when something welled up inside of me. It rose from the center of my being, from the center of the earth. Its qualities are indescribable, except to say that it was tremendous and roiling, and it shook me utterly.
I had never experienced anything like it, and I had no idea what had just happened. At the time, I had no spiritual life at all and I was a hair’s breadth away from being an atheist.
Immediately afterward, two things became clear. The first was that this was God, though “God” seemed like the wrong word for it. The second was that everything I thought I knew was wrong.
These few seconds changed everything and still, six years later, it remains the guiding experience of my life. Everything unfolds from that experience.
I have had many experiences since then, but this was the most significant, the one that enables all others.