I have borrowed inspiration from Aphraar in Through the Mists* where chapter IV is named The Mount of God. This book and the two that follow are the story of Aphraar’s life once he passes and leaves his earthly body and existence behind. The books are pure magic and I have read them again and again. If you want to know more about spirit life, God, God’s Love for us, His goodness and Laws (which are all about love) and the potential that is possible for us all then read and read them. They are my absolute favourites and I learn new things every time.

I love mountains, always have especially after climbing my first one nearly 30 years ago. It was Snowdon, in North Wales and I climbed it in a pair of borrowed plimsolls on a random trip one June. I was fortunate that it was a warm, dry day as there are parts of the climb where movable pieces of slate and shale can pull you over in worse weather and take you to your peril down the side of the mountain. But to be honest, I never gave it a thought: I was an exhilarated and fearless adventurer and I loved every step up, every step closer to the summit. The air was so clean and the views varying as I climbed until I reached the peak and what I saw took my breath away and made my soul sing. I remember holding my arms up to the sky and even though I didn’t have any thoughts about God at that time in my life, I felt such gratitude for such grandeur and beauty.

Snowdon is only 3,560ft – a small mountain compared to the 29,000 feet of Everest, but I have only managed to climb mountains in the UK so far and it has given me a taste of something: a sense of freedom and wonder, gained by the challenges it offered and it came to me that the journey I am currently on is like that. I have been listening to the amazing talks from the 2016 Divine Truth Assistance Groups and so have been reflecting a lot on my own journey with ‘The Way,’ as Jesus calls it. If you have read my blog you will see it has been a very in and out journey and when I read back on some of my posts, I can see constant misunderstandings about it and myself amid pieces of Truth. It is why I suggest you always refer back to the actual teaching on the Divine Truth website, as my learning has been slow. I can spout off stuff intellectually, but I am talking about my true learning: the soul based, emotional learning. The real stuff!

In early 2012, I was living near Glastonbury – the UK centre of many different, mostly New Age beliefs. It attracts many pilgrims looking for something and I was one of them. I guess you could say that at that time I was living in a valley down from the mountain where there were many paths crossing each other, heading off in different directions, many going round in circles, or coming to a dead end. Now in that valley there are many people who are a bit like cats: you know when a cat falls off a fence it moves so fast to act as if nothing happened and it’s in complete control, pretending nothing did happen…a bit of self delusion to create a cool facade.

When I first arrived at that valley it seemed full of wonder and interest. I saw things I had never seen before, investigated and tried some of them: yes the proverbial kid in the sweet shop. I was lost and I was looking for new experiences and I found them. But you know the thing about sweets? They are not really good for you: they are a big con. They may taste sweet, but they are made of cheap refined sugar, with additives and other nasties in them. They are there to tempt you and there are many sweet makers who tell you lies and woo you with the colour and other sensory delights as you eat their poison.

A bit dramatic you may think, but my experience there showed it to be true. Glastonbury was full of tricksters, misleading paths and lies and we may have been seeking something, but for many of us we were just feeding our sugar addiction because we wanted to feel better, to feel special: we wanted the buzz, the tingle of sherbet on our tongues.

I have a questioning mind and a certain sixth sense and I started to notice things that didn’t feel right, in fact some of it felt very off. I experienced a very addictive relationship – that initially felt sweeter than sugar, but I was tricked by my own addiction and darkened my soul. I became less happy (was it really happiness or just addiction fulfilment?) and less interested in the winding paths and stayed at home more and more. But one day I came home after some crazy event and I shouted out and said, “Whoever you are, Bob, God, Great Spirit – if you are up there I want the truth. I am sick of the lies, the inconsistencies, and the bloody mysteries, please give me the truth.”

I must have meant it, as within 24 hours I had received an email from a friend saying, “Check this out” and there was a link to the “Secrets of the Universe” talks that Jesus did in 2007/8. I watched the first one and then the next one and I sat there with my mouth open, choked up some emotion as something hit my heart and then laughed. Here it was, without realising it, I had sent up a prayer and God answered. Yes, the guy talking said he was Jesus – I’d need to think about that for a bit, but boy everything he said made sense. It was so opposite to the new age stuff I had been feeding off the previous few years, I actually felt relieved and hopeful.

Then it turned out, Jesus and Mary were over for a visit about 10 days later. When I got back home after listening to them (they were just so humble and grounded), I seemed to have moved out of the valley and was now sitting at the bottom of a very large mountain. Well I didn’t know how large it was as the clouds were around the top at the time, but it looked interesting and remember I love mountains, so it was definitely more intriguing than the valley to me.

For the next 18 months, I was excited by it, but also sometimes struggling to not be pulled back into the valley by the sweet addiction and ended up in some interesting situations, mostly because of my mediumship ( which I called channelling then) and I was tuning into so many things without discernment or knowledge. I set up a healing and card reading little place about 3 months after discovering Divine Truth, but I very quickly just got a feeling it wasn’t right in some way so stopped it. But despite this pulling in and out, I couldn’t stop watching the Divine Truth videos and I think it was the “Truth about Reincarnation” talk and the talks on spirits that really made me see that life in the Valley of New Age was not all it thought itself to be.

So I wandered in the valley a little for a while, but with a growing fascination for the mountain and a desire to climb it. I did physically leave Glastonbury early 2014, very sick of it if I am honest and I started my blog as I had decided it was time to try the mountain.

The first attempt up the mountain didn’t go to well. You think reading a book on mountain climbing teaches you how to climb it, but it doesn’t: you can understand a few ideas, but until you put one foot in front of another and equip yourself with the right things, you don’t really know. I will say for the next three years, following that decision, my attempt at the mountain was extremely slow. I have fallen over and slid back down many times; I have even told lies to others to give the impression I am an expert on mountain climbing, even though I have only gone a 100 metres at the very most; I have become very angry and had a tantrum about “how hard it is;” and berated myself for my uselessness and incapability to get farther. During these times I was often stomping round the base of the mountain or sulking, not moving an inch, throwing the occasional rock upwards.

Much of my failure has been because my motivation was wrong and I wanted to do it my way. I wanted to get up the mountain so that I could quickly forget the past: the valley of New Age, the City of Sin, the Prison of Fear and the Cage of Family. I wanted to be able to magically float up the mountain and just be at the top enjoying the view, congratulating myself I had done it and everything was different.

Well, you can’t get up a mountain like that apparently. Last year, I finally started to look a bit more closely about what my motivation was and what I had been doing wrong. So forget the sudden transformation to the top – what is this mountain all about anyway? What is so special about this mountain? I started by looking at who has already got higher than me on the mountain and what were they doing that I wasn’t.
Well near the top was Jesus – do I feel he is Jesus? Yes. Why? Because he seems to know how to get up this mountain; because he seems to walk his walk; practice what he teaches and understand more about this mountain than anyone I have ever heard: “by their fruits ye shall know them.” Coming up after him, bit further down was Mary and she is exactly the same – walking her walk. Both with courage, care and openness: unselfishly happy to show the rest of us the way.

There are a few others who have started the climb and in all these people I have seen positive changes in them over the years. Watching Jesus and Mary get happier and closer to each other is pretty awesome and inspiring. But with all the successful climbers, what is the common factor and why do they want to climb the mountain?

What I learnt by watching and listening to them is that their motivation was different – they had an interest in the Creator of the mountain. They want to discover more about how the mountain got there and why, what was its purpose, who created it and what does it say about the Creator of such an amazing, majestic thing? So now, I have been doing the same, learning about the Creator, looking with fresh eyes and questioning things I thought were true.

I also had a realisation about the climb up the mountain, remembering my first every climb all those years ago: that I enjoyed every step and even when others told me it could be dangerous I didn’t stop. I also realised that being harsh on myself, pushing myself up the mountain would ruin the journey. I wouldn’t notice the things along the way: the mountain flowers; the way the rocks are formed; small patches of various grasses; butterflies and other small creatures who inhabit tiny homes there; the taste of beautiful mountain waters and the breath of it’s clean air.

How can I know how to truly climb a mountain, learn everything it has to teach me about myself if I try to fight the natural way it shows me to go. The mountain and its Creator want me to enjoy the journey: to be patient with myself, to have courage, and to drink the waters of Truth it offers. Because a mountain is magnificent, beautiful, strong, steady and if we take our steps with patience and awareness it will hold us and lift us to new heights and that is what the Creator wants – for us to lift to new heights: to bring us close to Him, to enjoy and experience what has been made for us and what we can co-create with Her.

You cannot pick up a violin and know how to play its beautiful harmony in a moment: only patience, desire and endurance will lead you to play it skilfully and passionately. You will make mistakes, you will learn from them just as every time your feet slip on the mountain, you become more aware of the right way to climb its great heights.

This is the Way and the Way is all about wanting to understand and to know the Creator of the majestic mountain which rises much higher than any earthly mountain can. Its views and the beauty that await I cannot comprehend, but I am finally beginning to understand it’s not about some magic wand to wash away my pain. It’s about my desire, my will and my willingness to be humble to the journey and to be loving with myself along the Way. God waits patiently for me, she wisely knows that the journey has to be done to appreciate and treasure the lessons and gifts She has to offer. God knows that with each step the magic is happening and that the heavy rucksack (of my pain) I start with will become lighter and lighter until it disappears and I suspect my vision will become clearer and clearer too. ** Why not? So that I can experience the heights of being near my Creator. I am curious to know what that will feel like: to be in the presence of Love, as Jesus and many others teach. This is my hope and I still know so little, but what I am learning bring revelations and new views. I am too curious to stop.

When I started this blog – I said I was seeking Truth with little understanding of what that meant. I still am, but now I am shifting into seeking Truth about God and I feel this is where I will truly find myself and I will not be alone.

So fellow mountaineers or potential mountaineers, put on your boots, bring all your investigating gadgets and experimenting tools. Ensure you have plenty of pockets to fill with faith as you climb, be humble to the process and allow the discovery to open your heart along the Way, so that as you climb you learn to breathe in the gift of love and breathe out to gift it to others. Be patient, be kind, allow rest, and stay steadfast, “for he shall have all men saved.” *

I shall let dear Aphraar, have the final words,
“I realised the unspeakable mercy and love that had been exercised in the design displayed before me…..My previous conceptions fell thus short of the reality of the scene which lay before me as I stood upon that mountain side; yet this was not heaven itself, but only one of the halting places within the ranch of God’s infinitude, where homeward-bound souls could rest and refresh…towards their Father’s house of many mansions.
…For as language fails me to express the quality of the scene unfolded to my view, so also am I powerless to convey an indication of the area over which that celestial panorama was unrolled…Did I say it had plains and streams? It were far more true to say my eye wandered over vast continents, fruitful and picturesque, each bounded by proportionate seas and oceans…The gardens of Babylon were forgotten in the contemplation of such horticulture attainments….. The rose of Sharon blanched its cheek in the face of rich blossoms; and the aroma from the sweet incense of Jerusalem only became a type of perfume wafted by breezes from those trees which are robed in a living green..
Peoples of every nationality, intermingled without distinction; no cold formality, condescension, or patronage was visible among them, but rather a recognition that each possessed some power to augment the happiness of his fellow, and that the society of all was necessary for joy to reach its full ideal. It was a sacred, holy sight to gaze upon…
My eye moistened, and I bowed my head in gratitude as I received the revelation, and turning to my companion, I asked:
“What is this place?”
“The Mount of God, one of the vestibules of heaven.”
Maxine Bell@2019
*All quotes taken from ‘Through the Mists: Leaves from the Autobiography of Aphraar Volume 1’ Recorded by Robert James

**These are growing discoveries about God, and much has been felt reading Aphraar’s story, as well as The Padgett messages, nature and of course the Divine Truth teaching. But true knowledge of God comes from opening to receiving Her love and I may have let one small moment happen, which led me to cry for an hour. I am scared of surrendering, and I have old false beliefs from religion I’m still shaking off. I still do not have a definite knowledge of God or His existence yet: I am seeking and investigating with a growing desire by educating myself from books, talks and use of my own logic and I find in that it’s impossible not to open to God’s goodness sometimes. May this grow in me so that what I share becomes more full of truth. Besides it’s always good to investigate yourself.

There are a wealth of talks about Relationship with God on http://www.divinetruth.com or search on the Divine Truth channel on YouTube.