Total Awe and Bliss and One-ness with Everything

Mystical Experiencer: Female in mid-sixties
Current location: United Kingdom
Age at time of experience:  7

I was ‘playing out’ with a group of friends in the woods. We were heading for a small stream at the bottom of a hill to go and catch minnows in jam jars. My friends went on before me but I sat down under a tree for some reason (maybe to get a stone out of my shoe or something).

The woods were beautiful, and the sunlight was playing through the trees. Suddenly I felt myself leaving my body and ‘joining in’ with all the nature around me (like Jane Goodall's experience, on your site, which resonated with me). My consciousness was entirely outside of my body but there was no fear at all – I was engulfed with a feeling of total awe and bliss and one-ness with everything around me. I was completely at peace and knew absolutely that I was created out of love as was all of the creation around me. I knew that I never wanted it to end. Then I began to feel my consciousness come back into my body and really didn't like the feeling of limitation that it brought. When I was fully ‘back’ there were tears rolling down my cheeks. After a while, I went to join my friends at the stream and there was a kind of ‘afterglow’ around everything, the water, the laughter of my friends, everything.

When I got home my father was digging in the garden and I said to him ‘Dad? You know God?’ to which my dad replied ‘Yes, dear’, and I said ‘Dad, I know what God is, now.’ He said ‘That's nice, dear’ and carried on digging. That was when I knew that there was no adult who could explain this to me or help me understand. My dad was the kindest and most loving person I have ever known but had lost his faith and was an atheist.

Thereafter I took myself off to church in the hope that somebody would explain/validate what had happened to me but they just gave me pictures of Jesus to colour in! It has affected my whole life and now I am an ordained Anglican priest because of it.

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