This article is one of many techniques developed by Adventures in Spiritual Living to encourage and support personal spiritual experience. It can be used by individuals or enjoyed as a group activity and sharing.
This exercise is motivated by the realization that it is important to our spiritual growth that we should increasingly grow in the ability to feel the presence of God. Experience confirms that it is possible to learn to feel the presence of God and proves that feeling God’s presence is immensely different from hearing about the possibility of such an occurrence.
Think for a moment about the difference between actual experience and merely reading or hearing about an experience.
I’ll give you an example that should help. Imagine that you have never tasted a lemon. No amount of description or analogy can be the equivalent of that first startling taste. Your taste buds jump to attention! The saliva rushes into your mouth!
Experiencing the taste of a lemon is very easily distinguished from simply knowing about it. Feeling the presence of God is easily distinguished from knowing about his presence. Sensing God’s presence is experience. It is special. It is often exciting.
It is part of God’s plan that you grow in your ability to recognize his presence. You can sense the presence of spirit. With time and patience, you can learn to recognize those sensations.
What Feeling the Presence of God Means
Feeling the presence of God refers to those moments when you sense spiritual ministry to you or through you, when you feel a contact, a down-reach, a presence. This can take many forms. Feeling God’s presence also includes some events that occur in your life, but which get no special attention as being from God.
- Feeling God’s presence may be a comforting calm in a time of grief or sorrow.
- It may be a sense of joy or of insight from seeing some ordinary event in your life in a new way.
- It may be a feeling of being assisted in achieving an important goal in your life.
- It may be a feeling of being in the physical presence of a very good friend, the excitement or perhaps the calm which comes from being with someone you truly love and who loves you. Only in this case, your loved one is spiritual and is not visible to physical eyes.
- Love is a gift from God which is intended to be felt and shared. It is the quality of God most readily appreciated by us, even by some higher plants and by many species of animals. When we feel it, we are feeling the presence of God.
- When we feel empathy for the physical or emotional suffering of a person or animal, we are feeling the presence of God.
- When we are moved to respond to another with generosity or gentleness or tolerance or mercy, we are feeling the presence of God.
- When we feel joy from being of benefit to another, we are feeling the presence of God.
- When we get caught up in appreciating beauty, we are feeling the presence of God.
- When a truth, a profound insight, dawns in our consciousness, we are feeling the presence of God.
- When we get an urge to do good for others, we are feeling the presence of God.
- When we want to know God or to be like God, these feelings are results of God’s presence and encouragement.
The Exercise:
Bring a personal journal or notebook and a pen or pencil. Find a quiet place to sit. Relax, breathe a little more deeply and slowly. Reflect on the questions below. When thoughts occur to you, write them down.
Questions for Reflection
What do you feel or sense on those occasions when you have the impression God Is present?
What are you doing or thinking about when you have these feelings?
What can you do to encourage them?
Summary:
Look for God in everything. Possibly the most important factor in becoming able to feel the presence of God is your own willingness to choose God’s way, which is to live bestowing yourself in loving and caring for the welfare of others. Dedicate yourself to living a loving life. Ask to feel God’s presence.
Group experience: If you are able to participate in a group in which people share their experiences with each other, you will be encouraged and inspired by the variety and beauty of the individual experiences. Below, you will find notes made from the sharing of such a group.
Notes from the sharing of an earlier group.
What do you feel or sense on those occasions when you have the Impression
God Is present?
- I feel “The Comforter” presence. No words, just a feeling of a close and comforting presence. It reduces anxiety, guilt, tension, and grief.
- I get a high worship feeling, goose bumps, simultaneous coming and going exchange of love feelings.
- Warm waves of relaxation and peace every night as long as we needed it to relieve the fear and tension. This was clearly an answer to our prayer requests.
- Like being rocked, held, comforted. It erases worry and lets you know you are loved.
- Sunrise, driving to work, feeling peaceful, feeling of transcendence, everything is harmonious.
- Peacefulness, calm, unified.
- The feeling descends from my head down and envelopes me. Recently, I can get into this feeling and stay there for several minutes.
- Feeling as if in the presence of a friend. Loved. Appreciated. Feeling of positive expectation.
- Alert, creative, happy to be productive. As though with a friend. Absence of self-centeredness.
- Like brainstorming with a friend and getting stimulating new ideas.
- Relaxation is often involved. Also, a feeling of being pulled along. A strong connection, a drawing feeling in the heart area. Music often helps stimulate it. Like a romantic love feeling.
- Mid forehead, streaming-in feeling. Like a spot of tension. My perception in my mind is one of being taught.
- Like a satisfied feeling. Contented.
- When help in the moment comes, there is a feeling of a flow. Sometimes an opening of vision. I sense more meaning in what I hear, see, read, etc.
- An attitude change toward self-control and serenity.
- Awareness of the presence of a spiritual mentor.
- Recognition of good things done by others. Also, the good feeling of service to others. Feeling of timelessness. See outside time. As though you see the eternal relationships of everything. It is a moment of being in eternity. As if all pettiness has burned off. Everything is miraculous. Everyone seems eternal and perfect.
What are you doing or thinking about when you have the feeling that God is present, and what do you do to encourage the experience?
- Observing or considering goodness
- Contemplating the goodness and generosity of God
- Appreciating truth or meanings
- Attending conferences with spiritual friends
- Engaging in spiritual discussions
- Enjoying music selected to inspire and uplift
- Observing, appreciating, or reflecting on experiences of beauty
- Committing to God’s will
- Trying to do God’s will
- Giving thanks and engaging in gratitude
- Helping others
- Appreciating nature
- Asking to experience God’s presence
- Imagining and visualizing my prayers such as with “Healing Circle”, and “Holding in the Light”
