A stunning account of God’s Love

The following is not from the Course; it’s from a near-death experience of a woman named D. S. Weiler. But I believe it helps make real to us the kind of love the Course is talking about when it speaks of God’s Love. It fleshes that Love out in surprising detail, so that you really get a sense of it, to the point where it seems very difficult to really believe—to believe a love like that could actually exist.

It’s long, but it’s quite likely that, once you read it, it will stay with you forever. What precipitated Weiler’s NDE is that she had just tried to commit suicide. After finding herself, to her complete surprise, still alive (meaning, conscious, thinking, feeling), she sees a light in the distance and then suddenly finds herself right up in front of it:

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The Meeting

I wasn’t by the barrier any more. I could not see it anywhere. I had a feeling it was to my right and lost in the distance. All I could see was the huge, brilliant light now directly in front of me. I felt examined. I looked right at it, in curiosity.

I was right in front of and dead center (sorry, pun accidental) of the largest glowing globe of light I had seen. What I learned next amazed me. I discovered that the glowing, golden globe of light was alive. It was a “self”. It was a living, aware, loving being.

We were the same! We were both living beings. It was huge, loving and powerful, strong and gentle all at the same time. I felt small and confused but I knew it was alive. It knew “self and other” the same way I did still. I wasn’t dead, it wasn’t dead, but it didn’t look “human”. It felt human to me.

I was aware that this being of light was aware of itself as alive and living. It was aware of me in the same way. It was strange to look at something I thought of as so different from me and find out it was not different. This felt like a surprising discovery; Kind of a “Hey, it’s another soul!” Not so much that it was “human” and had been living on earth but I recognized it was another living, aware self.

When you meet a human you know it’s another human no matter what the body that contains it looks like. A cat or dog is alive but not human. A flower or grass is alive but we don’t see them as human, either, just another life form. Some animals push the line and feel “almost human” to us, but we know they are animals still.

That being was “human” or “like me” in feeling but powerful beyond description. I was fascinated by it. We were alike and alive but I was in awe of it. That Being was so much more in every way than I was that I felt small compared to it. I felt physically smaller. I felt my lack of my control over my self as less powerful.

The essence of it, the “self” or, rather, “selflessness” of it is so much harder to tell. I felt the power the Being appeared to create and that was sent out from it. It was like standing in the sun but instead of sunshine LOVE warmed you. It was like nothing and no one I have ever seen or met but I knew it only loved. There was no other word close to what I experienced. Pure Love came from that being.

The Power of Love created and sent out by that being was a force, like electricity is a force. I could feel it being sent out and touching everything around it. I try to write it and there are no experiences in my life to compare it to that captures the essence of what I felt. It was unlike anything on this world.

That being was composed of love; It created love, it emitted love, it directed love. It lived on love. It was Love; Love the Power. There was nothing in that entire experience with the other Divine Loving Being that was not totally “good” and powered by “love”.

I have to use the words we know here. They mean something far more than I can express with them. There was nothing negative in all of that being, or in my self or anything or other one around me.

There was no “evil, wicked, mean or nasty”, the ideas would not even work to show the opposite of love I felt. They could not be expressed. They were not possible there. Bad, negative, evil, none of that existed there. All I could think is “There is only Love. It is only good.”

This other being was much larger and more powerful than I was. I felt no fear of it. There was only a complete acceptance of the rightness of the moment; I knew I was safe and loved. I only felt more curious. I wanted to understand what was happening to me. I wanted to know this powerful “other self” that held me.

As you gather information meeting a new person for the first time by seeing how they stand, how they speak and form an idea of them, we met. The phrase, “We stood looking at each other” is right but misleading.

Neither of us had a leg to stand on, a place to put it if we had one or eyes to see with as we know them here. I have to use the words I can find that fit best. It is not easy.

It was like forming a first impression in your mind but so flooding of my senses that I struggled to comprehend the completeness of this other entity. It was just too big for me to grasp, though I tried.

Communion

I knew that other self was what held me where I was. It was who had drawn me closer. Now I learned it knew me. It knew me in all I was, in all my life, in all my truth. I could not hide anything from it. I had no desire to hide anything. I felt no fear or shame that it “saw” all of me. Then came to me the first hint of truly understanding the meaning of the word “grace.”

That being knew all of everything I ever was and loved me. Not just loved me but every thing that defined me as my self, unique from any other bit of creation, was wonderful to it. It loved the way I was made, it loved that we were meeting, it loved me with all the love it had in it. It’s love over powered me. I knew that I was precious to it and treasured by it. I was perfectly what I was supposed to be and it loved me just that way.

If I was a diamond, I was flawless, perfectly cut, beyond beautiful. I could not be loved more by that being. Not one thing in me needed to be changed for that being to love me. I was perfect – in it’s eyes – as I was made. I felt it think at me, “As I made you, I did you perfectly!” With joy, it loved me, as I was, completely.

That Being loved me so deeply that it would never hurt me. It only wanted my complete, loving self to be all the me I was created to be. I did not have to change. That which is my true and ever living self is perfect. I didn’t have to be anything but just me. Truth lies there. Unconditional love sees only the beauty of the truth of love in each living spirit.

We began to communicate when I understood it was “speaking” to me. Then I knew it could “hear” what I wanted to share with it. It was not with spoken words but more like with complete thoughts with no possibility of misunderstanding. It was a true communication of perfect understanding between two spirits.

I would “ask” then would “know”, the answer from the golden, glowing, loving being. I had no lips to speak and no ears to hear but I heard and spoke somehow. So did it. I reveled in that complete, pure, communication. There was no possibility of misunderstandings or evasions. There were no words to confuse the issue, only the truth of learning and knowing each other between us.

This is how we were supposed to communicate and understand between two people. It’s that “heart to heart” talk taken to the ultimate level. I feel the lack of it here. Words are so bulky and awkward compared to just “showing” you how I feel or what I think. In every sentence I write here I feel the weight and awkwardness of these words.

I have little memory of all that passed between us. We “talked” for a time, in loving joy at being together. I was small and asking questions. It was “answering” me, giving me what I felt a need to know as fast as I could conceive the question in my thoughts. I didn’t have to ask some things, they were just showed or told to me.

I “knew” (was told?) that being loved me just as I was. I did not need to change one thing to be perfect. I was perfect to it. I knew it felt a true joy in being with me. I felt like it was just bursting with happiness because I was there. It was beyond glad to see me, it loved me. It thought I was just perfectly made and was thrilled that we were together. I repeat this because it amazed me.

That huge and powerful entity made me feel like being with me made it’s life worth living, complete. I was giving it joy by just being there. How could someone or some thing I never even knew be so loving of me? How could it be so glad to be with me that it seemed like it’s shine brightened when I joined it?

I was so loved! I was loved completely and just as I was, as all I was. Small, confused, dead by my own hand, I was cherished and loved. I was precious to it. I responded to that with my own thoughts of my joy in the peace, love and total acceptance it was giving me. I tried to love it back with my little self.

The being knew I loved it and that I was thankful for it’s love of me. Then it love me more. I loved it more. A cycle of pure love between us grew. It was like the most wonderful, perfect joining of hearts between two beings you can imagine. I call it perfect communion.

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Weiler’s full story—long, but full of fascinating elements in addition to what’s included here—can be found at http://4herway.com/4letterword/thebook.html.