About thirtysix years ago I had reached the end of my tether. Living without love, without self-respect and without work totally broke me up. I wanted to commit suicide and jump into Amsterdam’s Amstel River. However, the river was covered with ice, and I didn’t jump. I lay down in the snow at the water’s edge, and desperately hammered the frozen ground with my fists. “I don’t want this anymore!” I screamed. After some time, having spent all my tears, I climbed on my bicycle again, intending to go home. And, while cycling in the Rijn Street of Amsterdam on the way home, it suddenly became very clear. If I had reached the lowest point of my life, the only way for me to go now was up.
And, at that very moment, in that very place, I promised myself to do everything in my power to become a happy and joyful person, and to jettison all my old and outmoded beliefs about the world. During the remainder of my ride home, I felt light and free.
In the period after that memorable bike ride in the Rijn Street, I started searching. I saw the program “The Change” from EO (The Dutch Evangelical Broadcast), where people, after a mostly very unhappy period in their lives, beamed with joy after having found Jesus and enclosed Him in their hearts. At that time, I was very curious about these experiences. What were they, actually? The EO itself didn’t interest me. I visited the Bhagwan Centre, saw numerous videos about Krishnamurti, and went to all sorts of seminars and lectures. I also read various books about spirituality. And a totally new world unfolded itself before me.
The search in itself was a joyful revelation for me. I was delighted, and felt like a newborn baby who, in a state of total purity, starts to discover the world anew. Free from numerous cumbersome opinions and dogmas, and free from being influenced by what other people thought of me. Suddenly it didn’t matter anymore. I was free!
I believe my real enlightenment started in 1988. I met Iris in a kindergarten where I worked for one hour each day. Having no hold at all over the boisterous children, I was totally exhausted after that one hour of working with them. But when Iris entered the classroom, the erstwhile rowdy children became quiet all by themselves, and started to play in a nice way. After a few days, when this phenomenon became very obvious, I asked Iris for an explanation. She told me that she was meditating, and when she was calm and composed inside, the children followed suit. It turned out that Iris was giving a course in meditation at the Brahma Kumaris Centre in Amsterdam. She invited me to come and join. At the Centre, I learned to think positively, and could immediately put it into practice. In a peaceful state of mind, I entered the class, and trained with the children. I succeeded, as the children became sweet and tractable, and I had no more trouble with them.
At the Brahma Kumaris Centre, they talked about God.
I asked one of the teachers why she was so absolutely sure that God actually exists. She replied that she couldn’t explain it to me, but that it would be better if I experienced it myself. She advised me to open myself to God, and that the best time to do so was 4 o’clock in the morning. The next morning, at exactly 4 a.m., I sat up straight in my bed, spread my arms open wide ....thought for a second: “Haha, look at me, what am I doing? ...” and said: “God, please come to me ...”
To my enormous surprise and shock, a white light came instantaneously from my upper right side and entered me through my head. At that moment I was so afraid that I immediately dived under the blankets, and lay there trembling for quite some time afterwards. The next morning I woke up and went to the greengrocer. Something strange happened. I felt the need to hug him and had to force myself not to. After that I wanted to hug the woman that sold the newspaper and the baker. I knew them for years and never had I hugged them or felt the need to.
I fell in love…with myself, with the greengrocer, with everyone I met. And saw the world in a totally different way. I discovered my own talents, and started to use them. Everything I started to do was successful. Before this happened, I lived on social security. I didn’t trust myself, and thought I was unattractive.
This Being In Love lasted for quite a long time. I believe it was several years. And this feeling returns fairly often.
Some 2 to 3 years later I was in India, and had a bad temper. I sat morosely on a low wall and sulked. Suddenly a white light came again from my upper right, and entered me. The light kept on coming, and I felt as if I was a balloon filled with joy and happiness. At a certain moment, I couldn’t stand it anymore, and asked the light to stop. It was just too much but the Light did not listen and kept filling me.
During the journey back to Amsterdam I cried the whole while. I was so happy and excited, wanting to share this wonderful blissful experience with my family and friends.
It has been several years since I was with Brahma Kumaris. It felt good, being there, but I wanted to go on without being organized. The relationship with the Light, though, has always remained. Every time I recount these amazing experiences, and also now, at this very moment ... I feel that incredible sensation moving through me.
In short, I feel as if I’m going to explode with love and joy ... because it has to be told ... God IS, in whatever way you might want to describe Him or Her, and He is there, for everyone! And it is important that I continue to feed my mind and soul with good books, lectures, discussions with friends and meditation.
Sometimes I forget, of course, and allow my ego to come through ... for instance, I am in my car, driving to work. The radio is on, and I listen to the news. Looking at nothing in particular and daydreaming. Until I realize: I’m getting closer to my work. At that moment, I immediately shut off the radio, and say: “Dear God, please take over for me ... surely it is no coincidence that I am to go to this place today and meet certain people there today.” And it always works!!! I enter another consciousness ... feel relaxed and free, and allow the training session to happen all by itself, as it were. It works in the most intricate of situations ... I just trustingly let go, and exceptional things happen. I can always totally depend on this. And there are numerous examples of miracles. Bigger ones and smaller ones, but they happen every day. If I just desire them, and open myself to them, and allow them to enter my life.
I give training sessions to people in all kinds of businesses. These include members of the police force. And one of the miracles is that I am now offering training to those very police officers who used to chase me when I was taking part in public demonstrations. With many of these officers, I have forged lasting relationships, and we have beautiful discussions about life and spirituality.
I call the Light “God” because that’s the way I learned it when I first experienced it. I didn’t have any resistance against the word, because, unlike many people whom I meet, I was lucky enough not to have had any negative experiences in a religion. Whether you call Him “Energy”, “The Source”, “The Light”, “Allah” or “The Universe” or “Buddha”, it is all the same. Someone once told me that I had experienced myself without the usual blockades.
Is God within me, or is He out there? I just feel the energy coursing through me, and I do not know exactly how that happens. I just rely on what I experience. For others, the experience might be different. In the past years, I have talked with a large number of people who all had similar experiences, each in his or her very own way. The people who heard my own story and started to explore by themselves also reported unique experiences.
Love frequently flows through me, and I see its effect in the faces of the people whom I work with. Often I feel so charged with pure absolute joy that I just don’t know where to put it all. I am an overflowing vessel.
It is actually very simple and uncomplicated.
Some time ago:
It started early one fine morning. I always wake up very early, and remain in bed for a while, enjoying the chorus of the serenading blackbirds. At that moment I thought that I had never again, as long before, sat up and spread my arms, inviting God to come. So I sat up straight in bed. Well, there goes. I waited ... no white light. Nothing happened. But I experienced a wonderful, exhilarating feeling and showered, dressed, and went to meet the day.
On that day, I had to go to the hospital for a puncture in my breast. The doctor was concerned, as the lump was quite big. I was so filled with joy that I was totally relaxed as I lay down on the table of torture. And, despite the searing pain during the puncture, the feeling of joy remained within me. After I arrived home, I listened to a voice-mail message from a spiritual centre in Zwolle, which desired information about a lecture I was going to give. And guess what the name of that centre was???? THE WHITE LIGHT!!!!!!
I shared my experience with God with a colleague from South Africa. Together, we gave a workshop in Amsterdam not so long ago. She told me, in an e-mail, that she was going to give a lecture in Cape Town. In her lecture, she uses symbols to show that we can remove several layers in order to reach our centre, or core. However, somebody told her, as feedback, that some people regard the part with symbols as redundant. As that particular part is the most important of her lecture, my colleague faced a considerable dilemma.
She was very confused about the whole matter: let the symbols part remain in her lecture, or remove it altogether? She went to a beauty parlour to have her nails done. While she was reclining on the couch, waiting for the beautician and thinking the matter over, she visualized spreading her arms wide and thought: “G’d (Jewish people do not actually pronounce God’s name), what on earth am I to do?”
Suddenly a woman entered the room. She was a beautician working in that beauty parlour. The two ladies didn’t know each other. The beautician sat down and asked my colleague what business she was in. My colleague told her. And the beautician replied: “What you do is the right thing to do, because you see the value in people, and sincerely want to help them. Don’t give up. Go on, and it does not matter what other people say. You must do what you have to do.” The lady said that she didn’t know why she uttered those words, but that she felt God was speaking through her, and she was trembling because of it. And, to top it all: the beautician’s name was Faith. Faith is a confirmed Christian.
This actually proves that God, or The Universal Energy Source, works through all religions and through all people, even through people who “don’t have any religion”. It doesn’t really matter, you know. What’s important is your sincere intention to experience The Source – and allow It to come through!
Marja Ruijterman
Translated by Tami Koestomo
