If so, what triggered it and what was it like?
I was raised in a religious house. I went to church every Sunday until I was about 20. I played guitar for the church. Everyone else always talked about “feeling” the holy spirit, especially when I specifically played the music for the church.
I tried so, so hard, but never once in my life did I feel a damn thing. I prayed and prayed and prayed, but nothing. I was good friends with the pastor, and he would give me tips on listening for what God was telling me, but I never heard anything.
And eventually I gave up.
I find it fascinating that you were able to help others feel a spiritual connection through your music all the while it was eluding you. Thank you for sharing.
I am truly grateful that church wasn’t my first experience with live music. Music is powerful, and the churches around me tried to co-opt that by convincing you that the experience you just had was Jesus when it was actually just live music and group energy.
That’s what it’s like if you are honest with yourself. I had the same youth (except I played trumpet in the church band). They try so so hard to convince you it’s happening. I think some people want it so badly, they make themselves believe all sorts of things. When you want it, but don’t want it to just be you telling yourself it’s happening. It just doesn’t. I of course only speak for myself and my experiences but I watched it happen so many times, and wanted it so badly when I was young. Not to mention the people who I connected up with again years later that seemed like they had all those experience tell me it was all just going through the motions, faking it until you make it. I actually had a pastor tell me that one time. He knew I was struggling to have a genuine super natural experience.
That’s how I felt growing up in the church until about last year. You can’t feel the holy spirit unless you give up all of the sin in your life to Jesus.
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” 1 John 1:9-10
People can be born in the church, but Jesus said you must be born again. Only then will the Holy Spirit live inside you.
Not sure if this is what you’re looking for but sure, there have been times when I’m in nature and I see a view or a tree or a river or whatever and things seem so beautiful and so connected and so awe inspiring that it gives me an overwhelming sense that there is more to all this than I’ll ever understand or comprehend.
I have felt a sense of awe, I have felt a sense of smallness in the universe, I have felt a sense of connection. Staring at a starscape, or across a vast landscape, being in a still and quiet serene moment of zen.
Nothing I have experienced have I classified as a spiritual experience, and I certainly won’t allow organised religion to prostitute my sense of wonder for their own ends.
That idea, the sublime, is considered by some to be of a spiritual nature, but ultimately I suppose it depends on how you choose to frame the meaning of ‘spiritual’.
I could see how those who believe in a higher power might attribute a sense of awe in nature to a spiritual connection with the creator deity they believe created it. But an atheist can likewise experience that same sensation just due to the majesty of nature and the thought of how improbable it is that we even have eyes to see naturally-occurring things of beauty.
The fact that I am in a position to experience, appreciate, and be overwhelmed by the reality of the world I inhabit beyond just existing in it, is certainly quite something.
I think I am in what seems to be a small minority of people who are anti-organized religion but pro-spirituality.
Spirituality is, at least, very open to interpretation and could mean a different thing to every person. The feeling of looking out from a hill across a rolling landscape, feeling a wave of calm and appreciation of the experience, could be considered a spiritual moment.
No.
Closest I can think of is sitting in an onsen (hot spring) in Arima, Japan, and suddenly feeling like I am one with the world - totally relaxed, without a single worry in my mind and feeling that everything will be ok. Can’t say how long it lasted, 5-15 minutes? Haven’t experienced that sort of peace ever since.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have access to such a deep sense of peace for more than a few minutes per a lifetime?
I’ve had experiences with religious people trying to force me to have a spiritual experience. Would not recommend.
Was this at a Linux user convention?
Jesus is in the room with you right now, can’t you feel him breathing down your neck?!?
Gotta dim the lights, light the candles, and play some soft guitar.
Yes - I feel it sometimes when I’m in church. A feeling of being connected to the others. And I felt it when my wife and I lost an unborn daughter - that was actually the time I became religious again :)
I’m the opposite of spiritual so the closest I’ve experienced is that euphoric feeling you get when you see unparalleled beauty in nature. Places like the Grand Canyon, Grand Tetons, Yukon, Alaska, volcano in Guatemala, and some waterfalls in Mexico are a few that spring to mind.
I have never been to any of those places. It’s pretty cool that you were able to tap into that sensation so many times!
I think I rattle off the fancy places because they’re the big ones that stick out in my mind, but I’ve also had that feeling just being out in nature close to home. Feeling the stillness of the forest can be just as powerful in your backyard.
I was in college, it was night, and several friends and acquaintances of mine had lugged a case of beer to a giant empty wire spool that sat next to our campus at the time. The spool on it’s side made for a good table.
Having completed an entire class about world religions, we were set to debate whether Buddhism or Taoism was a more reasonable philosophy.
The girl to my right was definitely engaged in the conversation, but she hadn’t said anything yet. I asked her “so what do you think about all of this?” She looked at me, crossed her arms, and fell backwards into the ground. I immediately said, “holy shit, did you guys just see that?” Nobody else saw the girl. As it happened, the wire spool was on the lawn between the campus and a graveyard.
Maybe I’m nuts or maybe I saw that. Never saw anything like that again though.
“As it happened, the wire spool was on the lawn between a graveyard and an abandoned/haunted giant spool factory.”
How did that affect you?
At the time, I approached it from the perspective that consciousness in some capacity was possible after death while acknowledging that I had no evidence on the questions of how, why, how frequently, for what duration, etc. I hypothesized that ghosts were whorls of consciousness like the whirlpools in water after the passing of an oar.
I was raised Lutheran, but had been approaching my understanding of existence from what I thought of as a logical perspective. For example, I reasoned that heaven, if it existed as a joyful reward state, must either be essentially finite in duration or must involve eternal dementia based on the notion that eventually you would run out of novel or interesting thoughts or experiences. To remain joyful, heaven would have to either have the individual be dissolved back into the universe/almighty or would require forgetting earlier novel experiences.
These days I tend to just anthropomorphize the universe itself, as the wants of an omniscient and omnipotent being would be indistinguishable from the natural rules of the universe. To quote Roger Waters: “what God wants, God gets (God help us all)”. I figure God wants matter to be attracted to other matter and for electromagnetism to be a thing (amongst other rules of the universe).
I’m an atheist
Find yourself some mescaline (peyote or San Pedro extract)
Trust
I would not even know where to start looking. So many people here are sharing experiences on Mushrooms, LSD, MDMA, etc. How are ya’ll getting your hands on it lol.
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I want to genuinely thank you for taking the time to write this comprehensive list.
I have always been interested in psychedelics although I am a little hesitant because even moderate amounts of THC have had profound effects on me. One of the first THC edibles that I tried led to a psychedelic-like spiritual experience (which I know isn’t typical so makes me a little concerned about potentially having some pre-existing mental conditions).
I have always been a goody two shoes with rigid beliefs about the world. Never had done drugs. Drank very little and only during celebrations. The THC experience shattered many of the most rigid constructs in my mind.
I then attempted, with no luck, to recreate that experience for a very long time. This often resulted in me laying alone in bed stuck in thought loops. Precisely why your mention of walks in nature makes a ton of sense, by the way!
Edit: removing my glorious list, DM if ya got questions
I had a weird revelatory experience when I was 14 or so about the nature of God, and how in order to define something you must include certain characteristics and exclude certain characteristics. From that I drew the conclusion that any definition of God must be woefully incomplete, as how can one exclude characteristics from the definition of a thing that is all things and entirely beyond comprehension. From there I decided that any way of acknowledging something greater than ourselves is as valid as any other way, and that’s guided my spirituality since then.
Ive always enjoyed Godel’s ontological “proof” (although I disagree with it’s conclusion “proving” catholic God)
"God, by definition, is that for which no greater good can be conceived. Therefore, God exists in the understanding.
If God exists in the understanding, and is that for which no greater can be conceived, than he can be imagined greater by existing in reality. Therefore, God exists"
Im an atheist, but I really like this quote in the context of Eastern Philosophy (like the Tao) over western philosophy
Interesting, about half a year ago I asked to myself why echo chambers could possibly happen. After this I’ve been discovering multiple unrelated books and have been reading them, each with different relatively unconnected topics, but eventually their knowledge all fitted together perfectly, even supported by examples in my own life, and eventually I reached the same conclusion.
Knowledge has a dark side, what we know and say about something (definition) decides the very way we look at it. Everything we define can never encompass every case, and every system we build can never encompass all of reality. Just look at the system of language, just saying the sentence “This sentence is a lie” leads to a paradox, and paradoxes are just the signs of an incomplete system. Therefore, if God is everything, God escapes our definitions.
I suppose reaching for God is then seeking out the great undefinable, in love, in experience, in knowledge, or whatever else, and broadening your own limits.
I couldn’t agree more with both of you.
Sort of. I was trying to get a medical issue more under control and was using cannabis, but worried the CBD was contraindicated with one of the meds so I dropped that out and did straight THC oil.
After a few days of that I was playing a video game and got a strong sense of a divine interaction (which was weird given I was Agnostic) and that a Yes/No popup selection would occur but that what it would really be asking was if I consented to learning the mysteries of the universe and everything that would entail.
Indeed, a popup appeared (FFXIV: Shadowbringer main quest - not exactly unexpected), and I selected Yes.
I later learned (a) that CBD is an effective antipsychotic, and (b) a lot about the literal mysteries of antiquity.
Please try this again now that FFXVI is out and report back. For science!
A few times on psychedelics I did. On mushrooms I had a strong sense that I was in harmony with nature, on lsd felt more in harmony with myself, and on mdma in harmony with the people around me. Haven’t touched the stuff in years but I do feel like my experiences shaped my outlook on life in some ways I never would have thought of before.
I absolutely love how you summarized the different types of harmony you were able to experience. Thanks for sharing!
Mine was intense and vivid. I suffered from depression for as long as I could remember and I thought about killing myself every day. I had super intense anxiety that never calmed down too. I prayed and prayed about it to Jesus and it never went away and that caused me to leave the church for a few years. I rededicated my life to Jesus as a last ditch effort and because I thought it would help me a little bit and I started reading my bible more but nothing with my depression changed yet. It wasn’t until a restless night I had where I was ready to kill myself that I decided to open my bible one last time and I came across this.
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:4-7
These verses made me realize that if I’m not able to have that peace of God, then I must be doing something wrong. So I just started praying and repenting of any sin I could dig up on myself and nothing was working until I asked God to forgive me for wanting to kill myself and I immediately felt the blood of Jesus wash over me and I have not struggled ever since. Every day to me now is like a vivid spiritual experience, like Jesus is with me every second. This is not a feeling, but a knowing. Its putting 100% of my faith in Jesus that allowed him to change my life.
I am glad you are in a better place now, my friend.
Only on acid - my buddies and I got lost in a maelstrom and clung to a raft to survive. Two of us woke up on a serene island and made a beautiful community with the indigenous peoples of the island.
The other two found another island and created a futuristic industrialized society.
The ideological differences eventually formed physically into a great barrier called The Schism. They began polluting our lands and forced us into a hundred year war and many lives were lost.
Peace was found when emissaries from both tribes travelled to the caldera of the great volcano at the center of our island and met with the Keeper of the Scrolls who revealed to us that The Schism was invisible - we took that to mean that the only thing truly separating our people was our perceived differences.
But we were really, really trippin
Mine was also on acid, only ever done it once and now you can miss me with that shit… I fucked up hard. I did it solo but also ended up 4 or 5 brownies deep along with drinking all night. It was going great at the start but after a few hours it all went wrong, I’m not sure if I passed out and was dreaming or just walking around but I was no longer human. At one point I was mold in a petri dish and so was my wife and when we grew and touched each other we made a mutated mold and that was our kid… anothet point I was ink and my life was being drawn on a page and as time passed the page turned and me, the ink was drawn. The worst part which was unbearable and I think lasted the longest was that I was a everything and everything that had ever existed or would exist all happening at the same time, kind of hard to explain this one, I wasn’t really a physical entity at all, more like time and space but all in a tiny dot. Needless to say not being a person for what felt like forever was kind of a big ego death… not sure how i kept a job down I was basically psychotic for the next 18 month. I wasn’t sure if I was real, I wasn’t sure if my kid was real. I never got suicidal but I was constantly afraid I was slowly losing my mind and I could become suicidal, there were days that’s all I could think.
Definitely not my jam
One perspective I’ve heard before and I find interesting is (paraphrased) that we, as humans, are the result of a universe yearning to know itself. (I’m sure there’s more but that’s the jist of it.)
It could be that our consciousness isn’t specifically human, it just inhabits the bodies best able to experience and learn about the world we exist in.
Could you please drop a pin on the map for the Keeper of the Scrolls? He seems like a good dude to know.
Maybe we can encourage him to start c/askthekeeperofthescrolls so that more people have access to his wisdom?
Unsurprisingly, last I heard he’s living in a van on a river in Texas.
I miss that guy.
