My Encounter With The White Light

It was the early hours of a still, cold morning, too early to head into the office.  So now I had even more time to mull over what I was about to face.  Lying on my side, I stared at the bedroom wall with a mixture of dread, emptiness and a gnawing ache in my stomach.  In my mind’s eye, I could see the people I was due to meet in a couple of hours.  I imagined some would be angry and aggressive, shouting and making demands I couldn’t meet, while others would be sad and disappointed, making me feel even worse.

My troubles started four years earlier.  That year, the company I co-owned suffered severe financial losses.  My business partner and I struggled to keep it afloat, but things went from bad to worse.  My only respite was coming home to my late wife, Cushla, with whom I always found peace and serenity.

 Now,  the business was about to go bust.  Later that morning, I would head into the office to face creditors who would demand monies we didn’t have.

 Beside me, in the bed, Cushla sensed my terrible anxiety and was praying for me.  I hadn’t felt it then, but she gently placed her hand on my shoulder.  Suddenly, a small, bright, unearthly white light appeared in the centre of my forehead.  It’s hard to explain—it’s as if it was from a faraway galaxy, yet it was still inside my head.  It began to expand throughout my mind.  I sensed an all-encompassing, unconditional love flood through me.

A voice spoke to me from the light.  The nearest earthly explanation of the message I can think of  is that ‘everything would  be okay.’ I lay there in awe.  I knew I was experiencing divine love.  I wanted the overwhelming comfort, warmth, and love to last forever.  But, gradually, the light drew back, and I  returned to the ‘real’ world.

     I turned around in the bed to face Cushla and told her what had just occurred.  She looked at me tenderly and said: ‘I could sense your terrible anxiety, and I didn’t know what to do for you.  So, I said to God, ‘Please help him’.  I touched your shoulder as I said this, and I felt an energy leaving me from my side.  As it did, I felt a pain in my ribcage area.’ She then encouraged me to trust the astonishing message from the White Light.  ‘Things will get better,’ she added knowingly.

‘When will things get better?’ I whined.  I was at the end of my tether after years of pressure.

‘Just have patience and faith,’ she said.  Her words brought me comfort, mainly because her track record concerning prophecies had been one hundred per cent accurate.

Over the coming months, things turned out much better than I had feared.  I became a partner in a new start-up company in the UK.  Less than a year after my first company folded, I returned to Dublin to set up a similar business with an Irish partner.

It's Personal!

Although God is beyond comprehension, I sensed from the White Light that I wasn’t encountering some impersonal, abstract being or phenomenon.  Instead, I was, to some degree, having an encounter with a personal God.  Though the entire experience lasted only seconds, I realised he knew everything about me.  But there was no judgement, only immense love and compassion.

In his article, Divine Love Is ‘Supra-Rational',David Torkinton makes a good attempt at explaining  the inexpressible nature of God and his love:

 ‘His existence is one lifelong, uninterrupted, and eternal experience of loving and being loved.  In order to try and appreciate what this means, use your memory for a moment to remember the most treasured moments of loving and being loved that you have ever experienced in your life.  When you have done this, then multiply them by infinity, imagine that these moments never began and never ended, but simply went on and on forever.  Imagine further that these experiences of loving and being loved are tangibly felt by someone infinitely more sensitive than yourself.  Only then, in some infinitesimally minute way you might be able to glimpse from afar what it must mean to be God.’

Being Open To Divine Light

We’re never on our own.  Even if we can’t physically see God’s light with our earthly eyes or feel his divine love, so powerfully described by David Torkinton, it is always around us.  I was just fortunate that I was allowed to encounter it for a few seconds throughout the White Light experience.  I don’t recall anything I did to deserve it— I believe it happened because of Cushla.

Before I met Cushla, I was agnostic and lived somewhat in the fast lane.  Inspired by her goodness and seeing how happy she was because of her spiritual discipline and strong faith, I began to climb the spiritual mountain with her.  I believe that because of this, and especially now that we were married and growing together in body, mind, and spirit,  God used Cushla as a channel for me to experience the profound grace of the White Light.

Nothing in my world had ever come close to that mystical experience.  But then, Cushla was never of this world.  I learned from her that things are often not what they seem and that other ways of knowing are available to us that can help us access an unseen but more powerful and benevolent dimension—one that can continually guide and support us if only we are open to it.  As Thomas Merton, the  American Trappist monk, writer and mystic, said:

‘Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and the divine is shining through it all the time.  This is not just a nice story or a fable, it is true.’

Notes

*This quote is from the book Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam by A. Helwa.