Turn On Your Heartlight: A Theory

I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. Psalm 16:7

(Yes, the title of this blog is a Neil Diamond song. You'd better step off. I love me some Neil!)

So, anyway, I read a book the other day and one of the chapters talked about a guy who was good at "listening for the whispers of God". He would see words and phrases in the everyday world around him and conclude that God was trying to communicate because of it. An example they gave was a phrase on a water bottle and another on the back of someone's T-shirt. I've found myself noticing repetition in everything over the last year or so. So much so, that I've been keeping track of such things in my journal, trying to see if any of it means anything or comes to pass. Repetitions of scripture, songs, concepts, words in the every day world; things that seem silly, but somehow feel larger than their natural state.

I asked one of my pastors what he thought about God speaking that way. He told me he believed God communicates with people in many different ways, and he believed that could be one of them. I struggled with the idea though. Because it seemed a little too Ouiji board/horoscope/tea leaves-ish to me. Doesn't it sound rather psychotic to think God would direct me by surrounding me in specific beverages? Or that He speaks to me through clothing?

But more recently I've started to see it in a different light. Not that God is putting objects in my way to remind me of things. But that perhaps those are just normal objects that mean something different because something in me has changed.

St. John of the Cross says that, "God Himself feeds and refreshes the soul without the active participation of her discursive mind...God transmits his secret teachings to the soul and instructs her...He supernaturally imparts His divine wisdom...She does not have to do a thing, nor will she understand a thing... Contemplatives call it infused contempation or mystical theology."

Lately I've been waking up mentally humming worship music, finding myself mid-song before I am even fully aware of my state or surroundings. I've also been waking with theological words or concepts in mind, the details of which quickly slip away upon the coming of morning like those of a good dream. God surely is a part of my night. Which makes me wonder - perhaps He is downloading information into me as I sleep. Things I can't possibly understand because I'm not divine. And then waking me morning by morning, wakening my ear to listen like one being taught (Isaiah 50:4).

John 14:16-17, 26 says, I will ask the Father, and He will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever - the Spirit of truth. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

So, best I can attempt to theorize: since I have the Holy Spirit in me, perhaps when I come across a normal word or phrase, the part of me that is spirit (the tiny part of me that has the capacity to understand the imparted information), sees these words and resonates within me ever so slightly in this moment of soulful deja vu - my spirit gently pulsing in recognition of the divine like the warm glow of ET's heartlight in response to the mothership's return.

But, because it is impossible for me in my limited humanness to decipher such information, I must settle for an undefinable awareness, a knowledge of merely the existence of some important yet hidden truth. Rather like a lost name on the tip of one's tongue, unable to be recalled but there nonetheless...