Once you know that nothing never happens, and that everything is a teaching, youre fully prepared to recognize a sacred visitation when it comes. Just for a moment now, remember a time when for some reason your mind . . . stopped . . . thinking. Remember what thats like, the open spaciousness, the simplicity of a moment in which all your thoughts are emptied out. Suddenly you are left with nothing but right now in front of you, behind you, above you, and below you. Into that moment something inserts itself. It is definitely something, even though nothing seems to be happening. That something is a call to go deeper. When you answer, you say yes to God. You say yes to spiritual awakening. It doesn't matter whether in that moment you are asleep and dreaming or staring at the wall or baking cookies or washing your car or singing your child to sleep or even arguing with your husband. In that moment when your heart says yes, you have drawn back the curtain on lifes mystery. You must watch closely and listen, alert to everything that happens, every detail you are shown.

Some visitations are truly visits in the most literal sense. In the book Sacred Visitations, I shared how my own spiritual awakening occurred during a meditative sleep state. In my case, a guide actually appeared and took me to a beautiful, pastoral place where I met people who later showed up in my life playing very important roles. But the most significant thing about that sacred visitation was that it transformed my heart in an instant. Before the experience, I was down on life and myself, deeply uncertain whether there was any sense at all in seeking God. After the experience, when I woke the next day, I was changed. Everything looked different and brighter and, most of all, I was absolutely certain that I, my life and everything in it, belonged to God. I understood that I was involved in an essential process of returning Home.

This change of heart is the acid test of a sacred visitation. Such visitations are gifts of grace. They may be dramatic, outrageous, and exciting, or they may consist of a quiet inner nudge that emphasizes all that we deeply know, a message that prevents us from ignoring our own wisdom any longer. The purpose of a sacred visitation, or spiritual experience, if you like, is to change us, to move us deeper into living as our true Self. Some people call this project spiritual progress. Were saying yes to God. We say yes to God first by accepting that the sacred experience we have just had is both real and significantand then by taking the time to unfold its mysteries. When we take this second step toward understanding, were saying yes to a transformation of the heart. We say yes to our souls illumination. We dont even have to know why were saying yes. We simply find ourselves trusting in that Divine Something weve Always Known but Couldnt Quite Pin Down. We begin listening to its subtle inner directions, and we keep going. In this way, step by sacred step, we make our way to divine freedom.