The following reflection is one way of getting in touch with your images of God and your images of yourself:[1]

Imagine you are sitting on the top of a mountain that is overlooking a vast city. It is twilight, the sun has just set, and you notice the lights coming on in the great city… Watch them coming on until the whole city seems like a lake of lights… You are sitting there all alone, gazing at this beautiful spectacle… What are you feeling?

After a while, you hear footsteps behind you and you know that they are the footsteps of a holy man who lives in these parts, a hermit. He looks at you and gently says just one sentence to you: “If you go down to the city tonight you will find God.” Having said this, he turns around and walks away. No explanations, no time for questions…

You have a conviction that this man knows what he is talking about. What do you feel now? Do you feel like acting on his statement and going into the city? Or would you rather stay where you are?

Whatever your inclination, go down now into the city in search of God… What do you feel as you go down?

You have now come to the outskirts of the city and you have to decide where to go to search for God and find him… Where do you decide to go? Please follow the dictates of your heart in choosing the place you go to. Don’t be guided by what you think you ‘ought’ to do, or go to where you ‘ought’ to go. Just go where your heart tells you to go….

What happens when you arrive at this place?… What do you find there?… What do you do there?… What happens to you?… Do you find God there?… In what way?… Or are you disappointed?…. What do you do then?… Do you choose to go somewhere else?… Or do you just stay where you are?…

Now change the fantasy. Choose some symbol for God; anything that for you symbolizes God best — the face of a child, a star, a flower, a tranquil lake… What symbol do you choose?…. Take your time in choosing it. Having chosen your symbol, stand reverently in front of it… What are you feeling as you gaze at this symbol?… Say something to it… Now imagine that it speaks back to you. What does it say?

I want you to become this symbol… and, having become this symbol look at yourself standing out there reverently…. What do you feel as you see yourself from the viewpoint and attitude of the symbol?… Now return to yourself standing there in front of the symbol… Stay for a while in silent contemplation… then say goodbye to your symbol… knowing that you can and will come back to it… Take a minute or two for this and then end the exercise.

It may be helpful to write down or draw your personal image or metaphor, and your image or symbol of God in your journal.

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[1] This prayer exercise is from Anthony de Mello’s book Sadhana— A Way to God. Anand, India: Gujarat Sahitya Prakash, 1988.