Wooed By The Spirit: A Quaker Mystic on Hearing God, Silence, and Oneness | Patricia McBee

Is there within us a Presence that knows what we need before we do? How do we hear its guidance, and how do we trust it when it asks us to abandon what we thought we wanted?

At eight years old, Patricia McBee felt an overwhelming Divine Presence, and she has followed its leadings since. A Quaker mystic and elder, she has spent a lifetime learning to recognize its guidance in all its forms. The fully formed verbal instruction. The way opening that arrives without warning. The way closing that refuses to budge. The bait-and-switch that has taken her places she never intended to go. Even the laziness that, in hindsight, brought her exactly where she needed to be.

The Presence also communicates in visions. One showed her that she is absolutely safe even when wild beasts that could tear her limb from limb lurk in the forest. Through these leadings, her understanding of the Divine Presence has been completely transformed—from the traditional God of the Sistine Chapel with his flowing beard, through God as love, to a vision of Oneness.

She calls her life "Wooed by the Spirit." This episode is an invitation into what such a courtship with the Divine Presence within each of us.

Timestamps

00:00 Spiritual Guidance: A Voice Told Me To Change My Major

04:47 Testing Spiritual Guidance: Waiting, Journaling, and Sharing with Elders

09:04 Mystical Experience at 8: The Divine in First Communion

16:49 Finding Elders, Spiritual Companions, and QuakerMystics

19:48 Can Laziness Be a Form of Guidance? : First QuakerMeeting

26:01 Way Opening, Way Closing: Living Inside QuakerDiscernment

28:42 Cultivating and Expressing Spiritual Life

33:01 Silence, Hymns, and the Vision of Perfect Safety

37:36 Core Quaker Belief: That of God in Each Person

43:31 Silence, Sleepiness, and Being Present to Friends

48:06 Universal Truth Across Different Religions

52:10 Evolving Understanding of God: Love, All-That-Is, and Oneness

01:08:57 The Psychological Impact of Theology: Accepting All of Oneself

01:15:10 All-That-Is, Oneness, and Perceptual Appearance

01:21:23 Hard Work and Intelligence Alone Aren't Sufficient

01:36:01 Returning to Love as All-That-Is and Oneness

01:39:23 Bait-and-Switch Guidance: Life's Unexpected Turns

01:49:19 Marriage as a Spiritual Discipline

01:52:13 Death, Safety, and What Comes Next

01:58:23 Prayer After Oneness

Music for this episode by Benjamin Bigelow