Hello. I've been wanting to make a post here for a little while now but always felt a bit apprehensive about it. But I feel like I should anyhow, as it really feels like I need to get some things off my chest and I don't know of anywhere to speak about it with others who would understand, let alone relate.
For almost all of my life, I had no idea what Quakers actually were. I knew the whole pacifism thing, but that's basically it. Some time ago I stumbled on something about them and I saw a very round-about summary of them and thought that was kinda neat, but little else really. At the time, I wasn't religious and identified as agnostic. I grew up at a Baptist church, but stopped going pretty early on and it, honestly, didn't do anything for me...
So, I spent years as agnostic, but I'll admit it was sorta lightly so. I felt bold to say there was no God, but I simply said what the nature of God was, I've no clue whatsoever. That worked for me for quite some time, and I just kept myself living a decent, clean life. I always described it as just feeling good on a special level. Like, when I would do the right thing, even if it involved an inconvenience or even loss of some kind to myself, it felt good in a very special way. I always liked to think of this as proper actions being felt in the soul, if I actually had one at all.
Now, a bunch of stuff happened in-between, but I'll spare that. Long story short, I rather abruptly end up in a position where I feel ready to actually dive back in to my Christian roots. But, I wanted to do things differently, since the old way didn't work for me. Instead, I had this new way of doing things that was kinda weird, admittedly, and I knew some would call it downright heretical. During the transition to this point, I had now realized to follow that inner "good" feeling, and by doing so all sorts of stuff happened. I even began to refer to it as some sort of light of my soul. I had never heard of such a concept before, and in fact I'd been taught some stuff quite different. But it worked for me.
I continued along this path and kept developing my new, personalized belief system. Even learned that occasionally, through meditation and silence, I could actually "communicate" with Christ, so to speak. Although "communicate" was the wrong word for it, as it's really nearly impossible to describe. But it would generally form as a sort of complex, indescribable emotion that would quickly resolve itself into just like, raw knowledge. It would be like I knew someone had told me something, and I knew what they said, but there was no memory of words or exact phrasing. Like remembering an instruction from a few hours ago, where you got the idea but not the exact words used.
All was going great, and I continued elaborating on some of the things that just felt... right about Christianity, although to call it "right" isn't the best turn of phrase. More like I felt a push in a given direction of belief. Some of it was significantly different than what others like to preach, some of it quite different than what I was told growing up, but whenever I focused on this soul-light thing on such a topic, I felt it "pushing" me towards that, so I just kept going with it. I figured whatever, it's weird, but this will just be what I believe, and it need not be anybody else's business, as I knew many other Christian groups would push back against me, and rather hard.
Soooo... One day I remembered what I had read before, something about Quakers making use of meditation in prayer. I decided to dig deeper, since I never actually did learn anything meaningful about them.
And yeah... It's been a while now and I still feel rattled to my absolute core. I cannot begin to describe the degree of surprise and shock when I read a lot of these ideas, especially some of the classical stuff, that just spoke to me so wonderfully. So many concepts, I had begun to experience on my own, no idea whatsoever that it was even a thing at all.
I apologize for any long-windedness of this, but again, I really just feel a dire need to express it. It feels like my head will burst without getting it out. Prior to all this, the entire concept of some form of spiritual, direct experience with God always sounded generally kinda silly to me. I figured if God did anything sign-wise, it would be miniscule at most. Nothing too huge, and something that can easily be explained away.
But yeah. I'm now trying to find a place for myself among the Friends. So far, it really seems like the Conservative grouping fits pretty well with me, but I'm still exploring and taking things one step at a time. But words cannot say how happy I am to have discovered this all. It was validating to me in more ways than I ever could've dreamed and has truly opened a new chapter in my life.
I know I'm very new to all this, and I'm sure there are things I'm saying wrong here about my experience... I'm afraid I'm not great at conveying things like this. Until recently, I've never even been great about experiencing them in any capacity, let along explaining them. So, I hope nothing I wrote here comes off was confusing, odd, or seemingly disingenuous.
Thank you!