I was raised in a faith based religion and spent the first 15 years of my life searching for a spiritual experience within that paradigm. Throughout I was taught that such an experience could only come after my supposed death at which time I would meet my creator.

In addition my inability to access any kind of spiritual connection while alive was explained to me to be the result of my inability to have faith in the proclaimed God and hence there was something wrong with me. This initially filled me with deep remorse as well as a sense of inadequacy and unworthiness.

Needless to say this only undermined my self esteem, my peace of mind and any faith I may have had.

As time went by I began to accept that this state of affairs was not to my liking. For many who are taught to fear God I think you can appreciate that such an internal shift required a measure of courage.

Rather than give up on my search for a Divine spiritual experience however I gave up instead on the tenets of the religious beliefs I was taught.

I continued my search, not so much for a religion, rather for the experience itself. Here is what I found.

As I progressed through my life as a psychiatrist and a therapist I realized that not only was there a Divine experience to be had while alive but also that it was right within me. Indeed it "was" me!

All of this time I had been led astray by religious dogma promulgating "lies" about how we as human beings are fallible, inadequate, beings. All of this time I had tried to buy into such falseness.

It was only my breaking heart that helped me to "feel" the falseness of all of it. My heart felt heavy with sadness. I realized that this sadness was a message for me stating that something was terribly wrong.

Only when I managed to acknowledge the sadness and began to trust the message did I finally experience a surprising openness of spirit that filled not only my heart but my entire being.

I began to feel lighter, more buoyant, great inner peace, a deep feeling of love for my self and everything around me, a sense of inner confidence and self esteem, deep feelings of joy and contentment, a wonderful sense of expansiveness, and a deep feeling of connectedness to my body and my environment.

At last I had arrived home, to the experience of my Divine Self!

I then reflected on what I had originally been taught and wondered why it was that religions were essentially depriving human beings of such awareness. I occurred to me that by doing so an institutional religion could then usurp this divinity from its followers and thereby control them enmass.

If you look around you I think you will see how clearly this is happening. If you look at how religion is used to literally make individuals