Sensitivity To The Reality Of Experience

It is a fact that the direct experience of God does not depend in any manner at all on whether someone is easily disposed or not to mentally believe in God or not. In the end many people who have never had a serious thought about God, one way or the other, have suddenly encountered God in the most unreasonable manners and the most unlikely circumstances and times. In actuality these are confusing experiences for anyone. This can cause a great deal of anguish for those who have friends who can only mock them in this situation. The church is most often of no help at this time as they invariably seek to indoctrinate such a person, any formality being of no use to actually drawing closer to the reality of God. The conceptual knowledge of God is inevitably linked to a certain cultural matrix; the reality of experience beyond concepts is itself not modelled on variations in culture. This later reality is the geography of the contemplative life.