My fascination with faith started to take root when I was quite young, although my parents had only a healthy Sunday respect for religion. In retrospect, this time seemed to be the start of my inner exploration. I attended Sunday school, a once a week ritual. My awareness of the spiritual side of life boils down to a memory of a billboard on which Jesus said that in order to go into the Kingdom of Heaven, one had to become like little children. Thus, I believed that, as a child, I was guaranteed entry into the kingdom of heaven. Outdoors, I loved climbing to the top of trees where I would feel I could speak to Jesus. At night, Mum used to sing to me, “Gentle Jesus meek and mild….” and I would ask God to bless all the people I knew and loved before laying down my head.

I did a lot of thinking and talking to Jesus and God when I was a child. I had an unquestioning faith but didn’t understand its relevance in my life. I was, though, waiting for a return of Christ, like many others at that time, and I questioned how would I know him, and would I find the strength to follow his advice. My school days saw me spending a lot of time alone in my imagination, and in the company of animals and nature. Around puberty, I became aware of consciously acknowledging my inner spiritual path, and revelled in the feeling of certainty and assurance that those moments of reflection brought about in my heart. When I was 14 my youngest sister was born and the family moved from the suburbs of Glasgow to an un-modernised farm cottage in the wilds of south-west Scotland, Galloway, just outside the quaint town of Kirkcudbright. One of the first things I noticed was that when I went for a walk the whole place rang with sound – wind, birdsong, cows, almost orchestral, in fact.

During my first year at my new school in Kirkcudbright, one of my significant memories was that I was old enough to join the local Presbyterian church. I fancifully expected that through joining the church I would feel a renewal of spirit inside because that is what the readings of my bible class had told me would happen. To my great consternation nothing happened.

After leaving school, I made another move, this time to Edinburgh, and for the next few years diverged from my spiritual path almost deliberately—partying, having a good time, etc.—which only brought a bigger sense of loss and numbness, did not furnish me with joy or fulfilment, and left me with a hollowness inside.

In my early twenties, in 1962 I went to America, to forge a new life for myself with no fixed time to return. I met many Americans who unhesitatingly welcomed me into their homes, showing me real unconditional love; my walls of defence that I’d built up throughout my life began to melt away. The land and the people, the whole life there was expansive. I felt as though my limits had melted and life held only possibilities. The limits of my thinking dissolved and part of this inner change was connected to faith. I explored the many branches of Christianity that existed in Baltimore. My inner being started to take some kind of form. A lot of time was spent meditating in the Catholic church just up the road, at any time of the day or night. I was welcomed as a Protestant. I watched mass after mass after mass and I would copy the movements but, of course, the words were in Latin. It was only in 1964 that the words of the mass were translated into English and were straight from Daniel: “He shall be called wonderful, marvellous. He shall return in his great glory.”

In 1963 the assassination of President Kennedy coincided in my life with the end of a romantic relationship. This left me with a broken heart and sense of loss, yet again. During this time I was working in a bank and can remember the moment Kennedy was taken to hospital and the feeling of horror that overcame everybody. We were sent home from work and at the bus stop I had the vision of the powers of yin and yang in the firmament and I was confident that although this was horrific, something good would come out of it. Unknown to me the Universal House of Justice was elected in London in the same year. Perhaps I had picked up the fragrance of the prayers being said at the time. The yin and yang feeling seemed to resonate with the power of the movements that were carried out in the Catholic mass, the kneeling down and the standing up, which also reminded me of the yoga sun salutation – both of which raised me up. The feeling of change ahead prevailed.

A spiritual transformation actually took place in me whilst I was in America and sparked a renewed interest in faith and belief, also inspired by the black freedom movement and the spirit of the sixties. On my return to Scotland I visited the minister. He told my mother that he thought I’d had some sort of spiritual conversion. For me it was a realisation that there were so many different branches of Christianity, some of which contained the spiritual element missing from my experience, in particular Catholicism. One of the questions I put to my soul in meditation in the Catholic church was a question to Jesus to show me the Truth. I thought this rather strange, as Jesus was said to be the Truth. There was still a feeling of a missing link, so I left things in His hands.

A letter from my baby sister, Jane, had motivated me to return to Scotland. She wrote “If you don’t come home soon I’m going to be all growed up”. I was 25 and applied to do teacher training in Alnwick in northern England. I lived in Alnwick castle, in a turret room up a spiral staircase, a meditative setting. Although this was a time of reflection and questioning my prevailing thinking, I felt quite lost and isolated: my strongest sensation was of being in darkness and trying to find my way towards the light.

On finishing college at 28, I married and went on a deep sea trip to the Far East with my husband, a Merchant Navy officer. There I saw first-hand how other cultures lived, and I was exposed to other religions outside of different branches of Christianity for the first time. Among the people in the East I felt a palpable pulse of religious belief. The East was so full of colour and vibrancy; I felt my senses fully awake.

In 1979, I found myself living life as a single parent with two children in my home town of Kirkcudbright. It had been a very painful divorce and I was now returning to my spiritual path. It took the whole of the following year for me to recover both my physical and emotional health. After the trauma of the break up, I plumbed the depths of my physical and emotional reservoirs of health. Into this mix came an interest in the practice of the hatha yoga discipline. It included the ending of each session with the continuous chanting of “Om.” This chanting left me in an elevated emotional frame of mind.

My next move was to enrol in a typing and shorthand course which started on my 40^thbirthday. As I walked into the classroom, faced with a sea of faces, one pair of eyes bored into my very soul. I felt a resonance, a definite connection, as if the owner, Jackie, had seen into my being and accepted what was there unconditionally. In the days that followed, at every tea break, we talked. I drank in her every word. At that time, in 1980, the world order was badly disrupted. There was the Pol Pot massacre, the Iranian hostage crisis in London, a massive earthquake in Iran, three major global incidents happening around the same time. All the time, people were living in terror of the nuclear button being pushed. I also questioned Jackie about different religions. Her loving and gentle response comforted me. I asked if she belonged to a religion and she replied that she was a Bahá’í, and the word struck a chord. Within two or three weeks I realised that what animated her was the object of my search, and I wanted to soak in as much of her joy as I could. Her magnetism was irresistible.

The first time she mentioned she was having a gathering, I asked if I could attend. I was mesmerised as I listened to an introduction on what the Bahá’í faith was about. I was completely dazzled by the explanation of the relevance of the Bahá’í faith to the world at the present time. The essential oneness of mankind was obviously the only thing that was going to heal this stricken planet and all the answers to solving our disturbed way of living were to be found in the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh. My first draft from this cup of pure wine guaranteed my continued devotion and I was filled with an inner thirst to learn more. One of my concerns had been, would I recognise the return of Christ? Jackie hesitated, thinking carefully before replying that Bahá’u’lláh was the return of Christ. My response to this was unexpected. A surge of anger erupted within me and I asked furiously why had I not known about this? She replied that these revelations come to us when we are ready.

When I was with these people I forgot myself and felt a freedom and love which I hadn’t felt since childhood. I wanted to be totally immersed into this way of life, but life as a single parent had to continue. I realised when I was away from the Bahá’ís, I found myself drowning in the sea of difficulties. Whenever my Bahá’í friends visited me, I was transported upwards by the words of Bahá’u’lláh who I recognised as the living Christ. I knew I wanted to become a part of this community but still felt unworthy to live a truly spiritual life. I was very much a child of the sixties.

Easter was always significant to me in my Christian faith when I would feel a renewal of spirit. It was Easter 1980 when I ended up staying with Jackie for the weekend. The time was spent questioning intensely all who visited, and there were people from all over the world. I loved the diversity. All responded to me with such love and I felt so elated. On the Saturday I went out for a walk with two or three people and then returned to my room. I paced the room all night and felt so alive, as if turned inside out. I committed myself on the Easter Sunday and signed my name on a small card before being taken by Jackie’s husband to catch the bus back to Kirkcudbright. I sat on that bus and felt a completely new person, very calm and completely happy with what I had just done, although didn’t really understand exactly what it was. I only knew it was huge. Arriving in Kirkcudbright, I felt as though I was arriving in a new place and from that moment onwards for me I felt the presence of Jesus in the town.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, I went from mental crisis to mental crisis, and was aware that each was an emotional shedding of several skins from which something new was coming into being. What that something was began to emerge. Each time a crisis happened, I focused on prayer and tearful entreating of divine help and mercy, that I could perceive the will of God in what was happening so that I could then serve Him and share what was in my heart. In retrospect, I can see that I noticed that similar tests would be presented to me each time until I learned the lesson (of detachment). These tests culminated in an experience in Poland where I nearly died through carbon monoxide poisoning. I found myself in hospital twice and was advised to return home to Scotland to recover. The outcome of this was to find myself in a prolonged state of PTSD which required some years of counselling. This produced physical answers but was devoid of any spiritual essence. What I needed was the spiritual component in counselling. Jackie, again, came to my rescue, pointing to prayer and meditation.

I undertook several courses in counselling to understand the dynamics of the process. I also discovered Reiki and trained in the basics; I saw that this method of healing had an immediate effect on human energy levels and combined it with massage. As a Reiki practitioner, I put myself in the hands of the Divine Healer; this seemed to be the antidote to the pain that was being experienced by many.

Looking back, one of the things that grew then was a sense of certitude in my belief and integrated commitment of all parts of my life’s work, i.e., teaching, practising the healing touch, working with groups regarding personal development, and progression towards a sense of empowerment, as well as a very profound feeling of the need to release the self from attitudes and actions which I seemed to have outgrown. This was embodied within the Ruhi System of Training which was being rolled out within Europe and across the world by the Universal House of Justice and the Counsellors and in which I played a small part. This helped to deepen a firmness in my belief and a sensitivity to others. During this time, I had the privilege of easing my parents’ journey into the next world within twelve years of each other. This showed me the enormity of Bahá’u’lláh’s love, mercy, compassion and protection. As an observer to this process, my experience told me that I had become a spiritual midwife. At the time of writing this, I am involved with the later books of the Ruhi system.

In the holy year of 1992, a very good friend very humbly offered to finance me to attend the World Congress in New York in the November, as part of a small party drawn from Southern Scotland and northern England. After several nights of earnest prayer, my decision was to accept. Once I said yes, all doors opened and the practicalities of getting there fell easily into place. The event was a fusion of colour, drama, music, story-telling, and coming together of people from far corners of the world, all bringing with them such humility and purity of heart. It was a melting moment, the celebration of 100 years of the anniversary of Bahá’u’lláh’s ascension.It was a transformational experience for those who attended. We were instructed on returning from the Congress to explain to all the eternal nature of the soul, unaffected as it is, for example, by the inexplicable illnesses that some people might contract.

I returned home exhausted but with the commitment to invite a diversity of people to gatherings to show the reality of the spiritual nature of human beings and of global society through education. It was a watershed moment for me in many ways as it released a huge amount of my spiritual energy.

After becoming a Bahá’í my life became extremely eventful. One of the first events I attended was the Irish summer school in Waterford in 1980. This resulted in my making a vow to present a soul to Bahá’u’lláh within a year. This soul turned out to be my babysitter who was inspired by the Bahá’í writings on my wall. She made her declaration to become a Bahá’í in 1981, on the anniversary of the Martyrdom of the Báb. I also requested a pilgrimage visit which was granted for June 1983. At that time my parents were very unhappy about my becoming a Bahá’í, as they were both pillars of the local community and church. I spent the whole pilgrimage in floods of tears, an emotional cleansing as I was going through a very difficult divorce/custody issue. On my return, after several days of complete rest I felt renewed and able to take charge of events in a way I had not been able to do before. My parents saw this dramatic change for the better in me and began supporting me and reading up on my belief.

In 1987 I was privileged to go on a second pilgrimage which again resulted in a renewed inner spiritual strength and, as an answer to prayer, resolved another challenging life-issue. I have enjoyed summer schools, attending more or less every year, and taken part in many outreach programmes of development. Fast forward to 1992, which I have mentioned in some detail and which filled me with a renewed sense of energy and commitment. After that, I offered to go to Poland along with a performing arts group for a two-week visit to Warsaw, to strengthen the fledgling Bahá’í community there and meet their friends. I visited Poland again in 1994 to help support the teaching work there, although that visit was cut short as mentioned previously. In 2005, I had the privilege of going again on pilgrimage for three days, this time travelling with my spiritual mother, Jackie.

Over the years I have pointed a number of souls towards God, in 1981, in 1992 and in 2017. I am now dispensable. For the last few decades, I have been cultivating the quality of my inner being. From the early 1990s onwards I have walked a very well-lit path where many friends have walked with me. We weave in and out of each other’s journeys over the years, heading to a common homeland. Each stage of several years has brought its own particular challenges, yet after reaching the age of 70 these seem for me to have been less devastating. I feel I now just have to be watchful. Along the path there has been a whole lot of learning when people close to me have died. I am preparing myself for the big letting go which is my own journey towards the spiritual worlds. Having found my path, I have found a reason to be here, and have the power to reflect on my experience and an understanding of what is happening.

Without this spiritual path, my life would have been rootless, directionless and without meaning, and would have been a very different experience, one from which I have been spared through the mercy of Bahá’u’lláh.

_______________

Marlyn Groves

Scotland, June 2020

________________________

Marlyn passed away on 26 May 2023.