The next image which I received was a voice and a sense memory of hands filling my mouth. The hands, slim, warm, covered with rubber gloves which occasionally made a squeegee noise when they rubbed my teeth, belonged to a very friendly and talkative dentist who was performing a root canal on me. Through many routine cleanings over the years, he had told me all about his two beautiful and talented daughters, whose artwork hung on the walls above the patient chair. A root canal apparently called for more intense conversational topics.
As the dentist poked and prodded in my wide-stretched mouth, he announced that while he would love to believe there was a God, there was simply no evidence. The root canal came shortly after my first “spiritual awakening” but there were far too many fingers and tools in my mouth for me to make any attempt to explain what had become obvious to me: Spirit is everywhere. There would be no teeth for him to work on, no him to do the work, no air for us to breathe, if not for the One that had created it all.
I now recognize that the single-sided conversation was Spirit’s way of helping me to feel Its love during a challenging moment. I had walked into the dentist’s office that afternoon expecting him to extract the raspberry seed which I imagined had lodged beneath one of a full set of completely healthy teeth. An unexpected yet routine root canal turned complex as the novocain somehow had no effect and I was obligated to undergo the procedure with no anesthetic whatsoever. As the drill lowered into my on-fire tooth, his compassionate assistant grasped my hand and held it tight. This hand is God, I wanted to shout at the dentist over the terrible noise of the drill. And I truly felt – I knew – it was God’s hand holding mine at that moment, through the assistant.
That was my first experience with the bliss that overshadows us in the midst of pain when we keep our attention on Source. It was a realization that I might not have gotten if I hadn’t had my eyes open for the Creator at that exact moment. Looking for Spirit is the number one prerequisite for seeing It, moment after moment after moment. Even if you saw unmistakable signs of God a month ago or a year ago, you could miss Her whisper today. Dawkins, I understood as Spirit flashed me that second image, would never, ever see God if he was “living [his] life on the assumption that He is not there.”
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