Drilldown #1: TBMs, details re your spiritual experience

[_Themis]

I had a "vision" once, but it was just a flash, it was only in my "mind's eye", and it came during a time of intense emotional prayer right after 9/11. But when you're in a religious context that encourages you to have such experiences and narrate them in a grandiose way (i.e. Pentecostalism), you grab hold of any little thing and try to forget the inconsistent details. I was never very good at this.

I think this is a major part of what separates the believer from the non-believer after they have viewed the evidence regarding LDS issues.

[_mentalgymnast]

Could you define what you consider to be the non emotional aspects of the spiritual experience?

Aspects that didn't directly involve emotion. Four quick examples.

1. All consuming, body encompassing warmth. Starting as a burning in the chest and radiating throughout the whole body, or so it seems.

2. Sudden thought/premonition "on the spot" which causes one to take an unplanned action which in turn saves your life or the life of a loved one.

3. Bearing testimony of Christ and/or teaching the gospel and afterwards wondering, "What did I just say?" Knowing that you were a conduit for the Spirit.

4. Sudden and complete healing of a body consuming sickness instantaneously after offering a heartfelt prayer in a time of extremity.

Regards,
MG

[_mentalgymnast]

I think you would agree that feeling a presence is not nearly as good as seeing, whether in a dream, mind's eye, or physical.

Not necessarily. As I've said, I'm not going to judge the importance/validity of someone else's spiritual experience or the "goodness" of that experience for them personally. You can only be the judge of what is "good" or "better" in regards to your own spiritual experiences.

Regards,
MG

[_CaliforniaKid]

Do we get to know what you saw?

I saw a key. As I prayed a bit more, I concluded that the message of the vision was that 9/11 was the "key" to converting our generation. I then shared this message at the open microphone. (This was during a Pentecostal prayer service. The open microphone was for people to share words of prophetic insight with the congregation.) The youth pastor then came to the mic and said something along the lines of, "that very well could have been from God." I was a little miffed by that, because calling people's experiences into question wasn't exactly standard practice, so I felt like he had singled me out. But in a way I'm grateful, because it forced me to reflect on the experience and question it in a way Pentecostals aren't usually accustomed to.

It should also be noted that shortly before this experience, I had heard a news story about how people immediately after 9/11 had flocked to the churches. I think my experience was partly a response to this environmental cue.

[_Panopticon]

Read Michael Persinger's "The Neuropsychiatry of Paranormal Experiences." J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci 13:4, Fall 2001. It was very eye opening to me. I have a PDF of it, but I'm not sure how to attach it to the post (maybe not possible with this board).

The article by Dr. Persinger details studies about how paranormal experiences can be induced through electromagnetic fields, fields that can be found naturally, for example, in houses with bad wiring. The experiences detailed by people in these studies range from a sense of a “presence” to a sense of profound peace or “contact with the infinite,” to full auditory and visual hallucinations. The article also explains that these experiences are more common and more profound among people with high temporal lobe sensitivity. In other words, your propensity for temporal lobe micro-seizures may determine your level of “God experience,” which impacts your “God belief.”

I think there is a high probability that many people mistake many things for communication from God. If the minor and completely explainable things that have happened to me are the high water mark of God’s communication with man, we are all suffering from a delusion.

[_Morley]

Read Michael Persinger's "The Neuropsychiatry of Paranormal Experiences." J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci 13:4, Fall 2001. ....

Here?

[_Themis]

Aspects that didn't directly involve emotion. Four quick examples.

1. All consuming, body encompassing warmth. Starting as a burning in the chest and radiating throughout the whole body, or so it seems.

I suppose you may not call it an emotion, but certainly a feeling.

2. Sudden thought/premonition "on the spot" which causes one to take an unplanned action which in turn saves your life or the life of a loved one.

Quite common across the board. No reason not to think our brain and environment may all that is involved.

3. Bearing testimony of Christ and/or teaching the gospel and afterwards wondering, "What did I just say?" Knowing that you were a conduit for the Spirit.

Also common including non-religious settings. The difference is that most would not interpret it as being divine assistance in non-religious settings, while in religious settings it would be for many different religions and beliefs being taught. Most probably contradict as well.

4. Sudden and complete healing of a body consuming sickness instantaneously after offering a heartfelt prayer in a time of extremity.

Also common in many religions. Even some very far off being Christian like voo doo. They even have more interesting stories, some kinda scary.

[_Themis]

Not necessarily. As I've said, I'm not going to judge the importance/validity of someone else's spiritual experience or the "goodness" of that experience for them personally. You can only be the judge of what is "good" or "better" in regards to your own spiritual experiences.

Regards,
MG

I think based on what she said that the visionary experience had more impact. Visionary ones usually do, although having an extreme emotional/feeling with non-visionary expereince can have more impact, if the visionary one did not have as much impact emotionally. Emotions and feelings do that to us, whether religious or not.

[_Nightlion]

Do we get to know what you saw?

I saw a key. As I prayed a bit more, I concluded that the message of the vision was that 9/11 was the "key" to converting our generation. I then shared this message at the open microphone. (This was during a Pentecostal prayer service. The open microphone was for people to share words of prophetic insight with the congregation.) The youth pastor then came to the mic and said something along the lines of, "that very well could have been from God." I was a little miffed by that, because calling people's experiences into question wasn't exactly standard practice, so I felt like he had singled me out. But in a way I'm grateful, because it forced me to reflect on the experience and question it in a way Pentecostals aren't usually accustomed to.

It should also be noted that shortly before this experience, I had heard a news story about how people immediately after 9/11 had flocked to the churches. I think my experience was partly a response to this environmental cue.

lol to think that Pentecostals are as much the crab grabbers who will pull down the uppity as will the envy of the LDS. In another venue you might have been on you way to Evangelical Super Stardom. hmm?

I was a couple of years ago just awake when my eyes were open to see a light shining in the darkness. I saw nothing but the light and yet heard a single word and knew to what that word applied. That literal insight which came by way of an open waking vision had a huge impact upon my life making the difference of enduring well under special circumstances that may have wrecked havoc in my life without that specific wisdom. I think the unusual manner of this revelation caused me to never forget what I heard so that it could be well applied as the need was great that I finesse things well. Which of itself is most remarkable.

[_CaliforniaKid]

Several years ago I wrote in a published paper about a couple other formative spiritual experiences I had:

My own religious journey illustrates well how the spirit can challenge the letter. As a Pentecostal, I was raised on a steady diet of biblical stories and theology and believed most or all of what I read. There is also, however, in Pentecostalism a deconstructive tendency wherein the experience of the individual (or even of the community) threatens to turn on the biblical/theological boundaries and to challenge them.[38] This is precisely what happened to me when in high school I had two spiritual experiences that suggested a pluralistic relationship between the religions. The first was a dream in which a Mormon friend and my evangelical pastor argued some theological point with great vehemence, much to the disillusionment of all present. At the end of the dream I realized that both had been saying the same thing, though neither had been willing to admit it. The second came as a mental impression in response to prayer as to which church I should join. The answer that burned itself into my mind was, “My [i.e. God’s] salvation is not limited by the bounds of church membership.” Although I am now inclined to be skeptical that these insights were propositional revelations from above, they have nevertheless remained significant for my theological development. At the very least, I seem to have understood at a subconscious level a truth that my conscious mind was not yet prepared to accept.[39]