An interesting look at the spiritual motivation behind my book, Paradise of Presence, can be found in the following short bio I wrote in 2017. I stumbled on this in my Google files, and realized that I had forgotten about it. After reading it, I discovered that it outlined the spiritual shift that led to me writing my book, and I decided to share it with the world.
I have believed in Baha’u’llah as the latest manifestation of God ever since I signed the registration card1 in 1980, when I was 21. Back then, a person signed a registration card to formally declare belief in Baha’u’llah and apply to join the Baha’i community. I recall the moment clearly. My partner at the time convinced me to sign the card with him because it would make the couple we were staying with happy. They were very eager for us to sign. We liked them. They picked us up when we were aimlessly hitchhiking on New Year’s Day 1980 and took us in and told us about the Faith. So I agreed to sign, for their sake. My partner secretly suggested that nothing needed to change for us as a result. But straight after I signed my name on the card, I was filled with the sense that I had just joined a real worldwide community. It gave me a deep sense of belonging, and I entertained the possibility that I had done something very important.
Twenty years later, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of New Zealand sent me an email saying that, at the request of the Universal House of Justice (the head of the worldwide Baha’i community), my name had been removed from the Baha’i community membership list. The email said that this action had been taken because “an established pattern of statements by [me] and behaviour and attitude on [my] part over the past two or three years” indicated that I no longer met the requirements of Baha’i community membership. It contained no further information. I had no idea this was coming; the first I knew of it was when the email arrived. However, I had received a warning from my best friend of all, Baha’u’llah, who had inspired in me a dream about 18 months earlier, in which I was strangled to death by a dark-robed, soulless, faceless man for “stealing” the estate of Baha’u’llah’s son and successor, Abdu’l-Baha.
What followed was a roller coaster decade of anger, grief, defiance, insight, and depression. I was criticized and rejected by Baha’is. I received numerous hurtful messages online. I was no longer welcome at events held by my local community. Apart from a handful of loyal friends, I no longer saw people I had known for 20 years. Early on, the local community held a meeting about what had happened. I was not invited. My husband reported what was said. The National Spiritual Assembly member Peter Manins, who lived locally, told the community that I no longer fitted the requirements of membership and had been removed. My reputation was destroyed. I had become a leper.
But a new dawn eventually came for me in the form of an internal state of forgiveness, detachment, peace, and joy. I found myself, metaphorically speaking, standing on top of a hill and, looking out over the land into the far distance, seeing the faces of thousands of Baha’is who firmly believed that I was spiritually diseased. I knew that nothing I could say would ever alter their perception of me or convince them to listen to my sincere testimony of faith. It no longer mattered.
I could have chosen to disbelieve. But, instead, my understanding of what it meant to be a believer underwent a radical change. Prior to my disenrollment, it was community membership that formed the backbone of my religious life and Baha’i identity. Much of what I did was mapped out for me. The Baha’i administration maintained the parameters of what was correct belief and determined the goals, plans and activities members were to put their energies into. I was so taken up with participating in community life that I gave little attention to the “inner space” needed for a personal devotional life. Nor did I think that mattered much, for I saw myself as a good Baha’i, faithfully participating in community service. I thought a private devotional life was just a small part of what was important.
But I was wrong. I saw things that way because my absorption in community life biased me in favour of the community’s demands and led me to give those all my attention. When community life was stripped from me, I was forced to turn my attention to my much neglected devotional life. As I read the writings each day, I discovered things I had never seen before, but that now became as plain as day to me. The fundamental message Baha’u’llah seemed to be conveying, which I had not noticed, was that he wanted me to disregard all else but him and focus my attention entirely on him. I discovered this message in many of his Hidden Words; for example: “O child of light! Forget all but me and delight in conversation with my spirit. This is of the substance of my command, so turn towards it.” (Hidden Word 16, my trans.)
I began to focus on Baha’u’llah’s repeated exhortations to detach from the world and understood him to be telling me to disregard the nightmare I had been through, forget the world, and unite with him. I saw nothing else in the world for me to hold onto, and Baha’u’llah was offering the one place where I felt wanted, so I let go. As a result, my ties to the world came loose and my world turned upside down. From my new vantage point, I saw my connection to Baha’u’llah as my primary reality and my connection to all else as secondary to that and ephemeral. This left me with an immense feeling of freedom from my past—everything that had happened to me, my sins and indiscretions, the many things I had done that I regretted, the unfortunate ill-feeling associated with the disenrollment. None of it had a hold on me, or defined me, any more. Instead, I saw it as constituting a necessary story that I had to live through to get to a better level of understanding.
This has left me thankful for the upheaval I went through. When I was a community member, I took little notice of Baha’u’llah’s insistence that I should detach from the world. I was not able to see the deeper emotional and spiritual challenges that the detachment process involved. I did not understand that detachment from the world meant detachment from the Baha’i community, as well as from everything else. This idea never occurred to me, even though the Baha’i community is a part of this world. Instead, I believed that total dedication to my responsibilities and activities as a community member constituted detachment. After all, I had let go of everything else and given myself over to a Baha’i life centred in the community. I saw it as the vehicle for my salvation. How then, could Baha’u’llah have been asking me to detach from the Baha’i community?
But now, being a follower of Baha’u’llah is for me the experience of being surrounded by a cosmic and luminous creation, of infinite worlds, which is commanded by Baha’u’llah. The routines that make up my devotional life form the backbone of my religious life. I read the writings morning and evening, I pray, I meditate, I learn from my tests, and I teach. These are the means by which I create my spiritual reality and maintain my connection to Baha’u’llah. My new world is exploding with God’s limitless bounty and creativity. From here, I have made a fresh start and begun a new story, based on the infinite opportunities before me.
My book, Paradise of Presence, is my first attempt to capture something of my new life’s story—the one begun in the transcendent world Baha’u’llah has opened up to me. Anyone can go there, if they wish. The gates to the Placeless are open wide.
*The text on the registration card reads: “Full recognition of the station of the Forerunner, the Author, and the True Exemplar of the Bahá’í Cause, as set forth in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Testament; unreserved acceptance of, and submission to, whatsoever has been revealed by their Pen; loyal and steadfast adherence to every clause of our Beloved’s sacred Will; and close association with the spirit as well as the form of the present day Bahá’í administration throughout the world.”
- The text on the registration card reads: “Full recognition of the station of the Forerunner, the Author, and the True Exemplar of the Bahá’í Cause, as set forth in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Testament; unreserved acceptance of, and submission to, whatsoever has been revealed by their Pen; loyal and steadfast adherence to every clause of our Beloved’s sacred Will; and close association with the spirit as well as the form of the present day Bahá’í administration throughout the world.” ↩︎