The Day of the Holy Spirit

Earlier today I had lunch with a good friend. I have known Vince since I was at secondary school. We lost touch for many years, but reconnected again 4 years ago. Talking to Vince and hearing him describe a spiritual experience reminded me of something which happened to me back in 2000. The following is taken from an account of an experience I had which I wrote about in my PhD thesis. Hopefully you will find it interesting – thanks to Vince for stirring the memory.

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I find the organised approach to religion, particularly that of Christianity, difficult to relate to. The challenge is one of dealing with an exclusive view of the world i.e. “you are either in our camp, or you will not be saved”.

In the Autumn of 2000 I had the opportunity to test this out further, by attending an Alpha Group run by a group of local churches.

Alpha Groups were developed by an evangelist called Nicky Gumbel. The structure of the group is very specifically prescribed for the group leaders. The groups have been run all over the UK over the last few years. They peaked in the millenium year when they were closely allied to the launch of a video about the life of Christ, to celebrate his birth.

I was invited along to the group by a friend who was helping to organise it, as an agnostic, to bring breadth to the debates which took place each week. The format for each session was set, beginning with a meal, followed by a talk, and then breaking into discussion groups to explore the issues raised.

There were ten weekly sessions held on a mid-week evening, attended by about twenty people. Half way through the course,

there was an Awayday on the Holy Spirit. This was organised on a Saturday in a local town, with a number of groups coming together for the event. There were about a hundred people present. The venue for the day was a modern Methodist church, built around a central spire.

The part of the day that was of particular importance was the final session called ‘Worship with Ministry’. This session had the appearance of a church service, but there was a dimension to it which I had not encountered before. This session was organised to facilitate ‘praying with’ and the ‘laying on of hands’. These two activities were the focus for a period of quiet contemplation.

The organisers of the day explained that this session was the session where the Holy Spirit would come. I was quietly cynical, but curious to see what would happen.

The session began with a hymn, and then six of the leaders of the day stood at the front and invited members of the congregation to go up and quietly pray with them. There is no rational way to explain what happened next. Over the period of the next hour many members of the congregation experienced the unexplainable. Some fell to the ground, some shook, some cried and some laughed.

I could still remain cynical from a distance if it were not for the fact that I too experienced some of this. After watching the activities for a while, I felt moved to go up and speak with one of the leaders. This action is very difficult to explain – a True Believer would attribute this to the actions of God. There was clearly something that drove me to go forwards. In a Jungian sense, perhaps I was moved through the urge to individuate.

As I stood with the older man who was praying with me, I felt an overwhelming sense of presence. I felt at once very hot and very cold. I shook violently and wept uncontrollably. The man spoke to me of things personal to me, about my mother’s death (she had died the summer before), that he could not have known.

He also said to me:

“Take the path you need to take. God will help to show you the way, but you must follow the path you choose.”

These were not the words of an Evangelist seeking to convert, they were pure words that set out to guide me. I felt a huge surge of energy through my body, and then became overwhelmed with heat and light. The whole experience probably lasted about twenty minutes.

Afterwards I felt an all-pervading sense of exhaustion. I had given three people a lift in my car at the beginning of the day. We all waited for another half an hour until I was ready to drive back. The return journey was equally odd – I had driven most of

this route hundreds of times as it was also my route to work. And yet the whole route felt strange. It was as though I was driving somewhere I had never been before. I was disorientated and bewildered, but I was also filled with a sense of wonder.

This experience did not ‘convert’ me to anything. It did not turn me into a church-goer, or create a deeper sense of an existing faith. However, it did stir in me some feelings of greater certainty about that which cannot be proven. I had experienced for myself the workings of the great background wash of archetypes of the collective unconscious, rather than just playing with conscious manifestations of them. It was another step on an ongoing journey of awareness which continues to this day.