To me, knowing the truth means instant liberation, so no more fear of death, the truth itself frees one's mind from the bondage of this material world, of this organic world. That's what happened to me, I found it, took it for granted, was more focused on my day to day life and then I lost it, I lost that connection that we all seek... now I ask for one more glimpse into that world that I call Home.
Back when I discovered the Baha'i Faith I was so young that I had no fear of death. I was not even searching for God or a religion but my older brother had been searching for years, little did I know it because we lived in different states and were not very close. He had looked at all the religions and he read the Bible five times before he stumbled upon the Baha'i Faith. Later, I considered it rather odd that he had been searching because none of us three children were raised in any religion or believing in God, since both our parents had left Christianity in early adulthood, before we were born.
My father had become an atheist and he died when I was 12 but I think my mother retained a belief in God, although I do not recall her talking about God. Then again, all hell broke loose when my father died suddenly of a heart attack and my mother started drinking. Shortly after that my sister and I joined the hippie movement and took a lot of drugs. I vaguely remember having some spiritual experiences from the drugs but I don't remember thinking about God. Then both my sister and I moved across the country and went off to college together and stopped taking drugs. Shortly after that we visited my brother and found out about the Baha'i Faith and joined.
As I think I said in another post on this thread, I do not believe that God wants us to be focused on the spiritual world while we are still living in this world because then we would and we would long for the other world and not want to be in this world. Aside from that, we have to traverse this material world existence to prepare ourselves for our life in the next world, as that is the main reason we are here, aside from helping others and making this word a better place for future generations..
What Baha'u'llah wrote about the afterlife and the journey of the soul was interesting to me when I was young, but since I had a whole life to live, I did not think about it much, and besides, death is not real for most people at that young age. Now that I am older I think a lot more about death and I am very grateful that I know where I am headed even though I do not know anything about the nature of the spiritual world. But the real value of being a Baha'i is that I know the purpose of this life and what I am here for, which of course ties in with the afterlife, which is where we will spend most of our existence.
So you too were in a way searching for the truth from a very young age. At around 16-17 I had my first out of body experience, that's when I started to read the New Testament, Jesus's words for the first time in my entire life, this out of body experience took me by surprise, I had no idea what happened to me, took me years to learn about this.
Life is like this my friend.. At one point in my life, some two years ago, I became a christian fundamentalist, I would tell people that they are heading straight to hell and think of myself as being good, while judging to my right and to my left, everyone. I moved from that "place" but while I made a huge progress, I can't move forward from this "old" me that has no desire to leave me.
I am sure there was a reason you had that out of body experience, and then became a fundamentalist Christian, just as there was a reason I had to go through everything I went through to get to where I am at today . I was all leading up to something, little did I know it at the time.
I never read one page of the Bible until eight year ago and I did not read any of the Baha'i Writings either because I was on a different path, but I sure have made up for lost time during the last either years. Better late than never.
Wherever you are at today I assure you that you won't stay stuck. I thought I was stuck for 12 years but I finally worked my way out of the hole I was in and progressed from that time on. When we are young every thing feels like forever but as we get older each year passes like it was a day!
I must study about your religion because I find it really interesting!
There is surely a lot to study and it is a lot easier now that we have the internet. Back in my day all we had were books. Please let me know if you want any suggestions or have any questions. Meanwhile, maybe this video will cheer you up and give you hope. It is not an "official" Baha'i video, but I think it was done very well and it is only three minutes long. It gives you an good idea of what Baha'is believe about the spiritual world, or heaven, and it is pertinent to the topic of this thread.
