Sharing Spiritual Experiences

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malkie
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Re: Sharing Spiritual Experiences

Post by malkie »

Chap wrote:
Sun Sep 25, 2022 8:03 am
May I ask, please:

1. What is it about an experience that makes you classify it as a 'spiritual experience'?

2. How different do you think that experience might have been if you had been brought up in a family that practised a different religion?

3. How different do you think that experience might have been if you had been brought up in a family that was confidently and calmly atheist?
Back in Scotland, just before my family moved to Canada, the missionaries who were working in our area had an interesting experience relating to your second question. Not directly an answer, but an indication of how things can go very wrong if cultural influences are not taken into account.

They were teaching a family who had recently arrived in Scotland from some part of India. The family were fluent in English. Arguably they spoke better English than I did, having been taught "BBC English" in the then Indian version of the English educational system. I mention this so that it is clear that the parents of family did not misunderstand what they were being asked by the missionaries.

After their second visit to the Indian family, the missionaries dropped in to tell us what had happened, and why they were not going back to these heathens.

At the end of the first visit, the missionaries has told the family that they must ask god if "these things were not true" (Moroni 10:4), and that god would give them a burning in their bosom to confirm the truth of the missionaries' teaching.

When they went back, the father told them that they (the missionaries) were fake, and that god had given them no such sign.

On further inquiry it turned out that the family asked god - by making food offerings and burning incense at their family shrine, and by meditating. They even proudly showed the missionaries their shrine. As you might imagine, they did not take kindly to being told by the "Elders" that they were doing it all wrong, and that that was not how god operated.
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Chap
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Re: Sharing Spiritual Experiences

Post by Chap »

malkie wrote:
Sun Sep 25, 2022 12:51 pm
On further inquiry it turned out that the family asked god - by making food offerings and burning incense at their family shrine, and by meditating. They even proudly showed the missionaries their shrine. As you might imagine, they did not take kindly to being told by the "Elders" that they were doing it all wrong, and that that was not how god operated.
Hmm. I don't think that the missionaries had paid sufficient attention to the Old Testament. In that collection of texts, there are detailed instructions as to how one should go about making offerings of food and incense in order to attract the attention of the deity of the people who wrote those texts, who is supposed to be continuous with the Mormon deity. So what was the problem?
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Kishkumen
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Re: Sharing Spiritual Experiences

Post by Kishkumen »

Thanks for your quick and clear response. So would you agree that anybody who has "a profound experience that enriches their life" that may also be "rejuvenating, even transformative" might reasonably be said to have had what you would call a "spiritual experience", even if religion plays no part in their life at all?
Of course! They may not call it that, but yes!
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Kishkumen
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Re: Sharing Spiritual Experiences

Post by Kishkumen »

When they went back, the father told them that they (the missionaries) were fake, and that god had given them no such sign.

On further inquiry it turned out that the family asked god - by making food offerings and burning incense at their family shrine, and by meditating. They even proudly showed the missionaries their shrine. As you might imagine, they did not take kindly to being told by the "Elders" that they were doing it all wrong, and that that was not how god operated.
Sounds like there was room for more tact and mutual respect on both sides.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
msnobody
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Re: Sharing Spiritual Experiences

Post by msnobody »

Chap wrote:
Sun Sep 25, 2022 8:03 am
May I ask, please:

1. What is it about an experience that makes you classify it as a 'spiritual experience'?

2. How different do you think that experience might have been if you had been brought up in a family that practised a different religion?

3. How different do you think that experience might have been if you had been brought up in a family that was confidently and calmly atheist?
I guess I'll be extremely vulnerable here and probably share and wish I had not, kind of like Kish said in his original post. I think I've posted bits and pieces of this before, but here goes.

1. So, you're in your upstairs bedroom awake and lying on your back in bed with the lights off. Suddenly you're raised up out of your body. You're face is close to the ceiling fan light fixture. You're drawn to look to the left where you see a dark figure in the shape of what you immediately interpret as Jesus with very bright white light from behind the dark figure. Next, you're looking down the stairwell and hear an audible voice say, "You've got it all." Next, you're hovering over your daughter's bed and you can see her through the covers; how she is laying, and the position of her arms and legs. Next, you return to your body; back to lying in bed on your back and you're husband is still going to town like he never even noticed anything had happened.

Several days later, it seems like you're world shatters, which leads to major clinical depression. Your husband is indifferent and can't understand why your world is shattered. Some time passes, your world remains shattered and your spouse indifferent. You unceasingly pray asking God to help your spouse understand why you feel your world is shattered.

One Sunday, you're both dressed and ready to head to your church, but suddenly, you're drawn to go to your parent's church, the one you grew up in; a church you haven't been to in years. You get there and the pastor says, "This isn't the sermon I prepared for today," but I feel like I'm supposed to preach this instead. The pastor thinks he is preaching to the youth of the church. The pastor preaches on every single thing you've prayed for the Lord to show your spouse. Afterward, you get out to your car, and your spouse turns to you and says, "That was for us!"

Fast forward a bit and you're still in the clutches of clinical depression. Everything is a struggle and you don't even feel like holding up your head, feeling like you're dying a slow death that isn't fast enough. You work 12 hour shifts on Saturday and Sunday. One day you take your truck to work and while driving to work, you see a figure with what looks to be dark, churning storm clouds inside. This figure is sitting out on the hood of the truck. The next day, you're going to work in the family van, and you know that same figure in in the back, but you never have to turn your head to know it is back there, but you can see it. You've left home for work with a firearm under your back floor mat, and you don't even know why. I interpreted that as God showing me that there was great spiritual warfare going on in the unseen realm on my behalf. How would you interpret that; spiritual or otherwise?

I personally don't know any other way to interpret it other than as spiritual experiences. I think the out of body part was God preparing me for suffering, and that I was not alone in that suffering, although as it played out, I only had a mustard seed of faith that I was not alone.

2. I don't know.

3. I don't know. Perhaps it is like I said, maybe as time went on and puzzle pieces were added, a larger picture would emerge.
The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession... The LORD set his love on you and chose you... The LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery. Deut. 7
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Kishkumen
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Re: Sharing Spiritual Experiences

Post by Kishkumen »

Thank you for sharing that, msnobody. The experience in which the pastor felt prompted to give the sermon you and your spouse needed is something I have a little experience with. I think those things do happen and that they are little miracles. I don’t understand how it is, but I think it is.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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