Having recently graduated from high school, I stood next to our garage feeling a bit aimless about my life as I watched my father work on the family car. My father began to speak to me which was somewhat surprising as he didn't often engage in small talk. My father asked me what I wanted to do in life and what classes I intended to take in college, scheduled to start in the fall. Not possessing any clarity on the question he raised, I simply shrugged my shoulders and muttered that I didn't know. He quickly countered by stating that I would be good in business based on what he saw in me. Not realizing what he actually saw in me, I took his advice to heart. Suddenly, I felt much more positive about my life, as if a small piece of my life puzzle had just neatly fit into place.
I graduated with honors in four and a half years which isn't bad since I finished with two undergraduate degrees. Since that moment on, I dove into work with a passion. Eventually, my successes grew and I found myself becoming increasingly wealthy, not rich, but certainly not poor. I owned my own business, a home, and was in a somewhat serious relationship. If I wanted something I generally had the money to buy it. As far as I was concerned, I had reached every goal I had set for myself in life. But yet something was still missing so I began to veer down the path of self destruction.
What I was doing from early on was filling the void I felt in my life. I guess that I never really got over the aimlessness I felt as a teenager. I still lacked the meaning to life I so desperately sought. As I drove home after working another twelve hour day, I began to experience a physical pain in my chest. I realized that the pain I felt was the spiritual void I had attempted to fill with materialistic things and relationships unsuccessfully. I knew that, materialistically speaking, I had everything I had ever desired but that it wasn't enough. Recognizing this, I looked up into the sky and said to God, "Let's do it your way." Little did I realize that what I did was to set into motion what would be seven years of hell.
The first thirty-three years of my life had been about me only. Now everything I had worked for in my life was being painfully stripped away because (I believe) what I had created was not based on a spiritual presence or practice. I had erroneously thought that I was in control of my life. I then turned to religion for answers. After a few years of attending church, I realized that religion would not satisfy my search for the meaning to life. I started looking into new age practices and eventually had a few paranormal out-of-body experiences including leaving my body through my third-eye chakra and traveling to the sixth heaven where time does not exist. Yes, there is more than one heaven, and yes, time is not our truest reality. Still not finding all of the answers I needed in new age practices to complete my life puzzle (meaning to life), I looked to science and began studying quantum physics and thermodynamics.
This too, fell short of what I required to give meaning to my life although it seemed that the void I felt was decreasing in magnitude. Eventually it hit me, that everything in life is interconnected. I also recognized that we are an integral part of God. We are each a wave of consciousness as souls in the ocean of God Consciousness. To me, it explains God's omnipresence. I also recognized that the phenomenon of multiple heavens is, scientifically speaking, parallel dimensions. I also realized that religion, science and even new age principles reflect God in its own way. In all of this I found meaning to my life. We are all on a journey back home, and that there are many roads back to our creator. The fact is, we need each other and we need God, whatever the concept of God means to you. Believing in a God provides a higher meaning and direction to our existence. Without a belief in a higher presence, we are nothing more than the things we accumulate.