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Originally posted by PixieJane:
I'm not sure where I'm going with this (and I should go to bed). It's just odd that I don't believe and somehow touched something mystical, a higher reality, while others who believe can lack those experiences and be so petty and dogmatic, who can't actually experience spirituality, only agree to the spoken and unspoken rules of life.
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Mergoatsun ...
I've always been an empath, have done tarot and believed in spirits, etc. Yet I've never found something that really cements me and makes me feel full of spiritual fulfillment.
I guess I'm reaching out to lindaland to ask you all what makes you feel spiritually fulfilled?
I have my own spirituality, but I feel it's not enough right now.
First, I want to pay respects to every victim of religious and sexual abuse. If those 'humans' really knew God, they wouldn't have abused.
Religion versus Spirituality...
Bones/Body versus The Life Essence that fills the space-cavities.
In the soul realm we have our spirit/Life Essence, and then there are the things that belong to the personality and soulish-ego desires (our presences, things we like and want for ourselves). And the body is also wired for wanting/seeking out pleasure-- from food to sex to mystical rushes.
Thought-systems, beliefs, philosophies, anything you can have a hard-thought about belong to the STRUCTURES of essential-faith. The essence of faith-inside (no words, no thoughts) is a Knowing. You Know that GOD exists. It's a mystic kind of sense you just 'Know' is true. There's something greater than ourselves, that exists simultaneously outside(and in the Mind's Eye/HigherImagination), as well as Inside (again the etheric essence that comprise our inwardly-awakened consciousness).
I think about a tapestry backing, with which we take threads and yarns and fill-in holes to create image, comfort.
Anyway..... My words above are just 'out there' trying to bring Experience into Word.
Like you said P.J. --- There is NO 'requirement' for having a mystical experience, except that it happens IN and TO some individuals in life.
When I had my own ConversionExperience, it happened IN a Dream, NO preachers, NO institution, I was in one of the most organic thick parts of my life. Toddler and Baby, breastfeeding, husband extorting monies from the business and our material-possessions (without my knowing yet) and I had low-thyroid feeling quite physically exhausted.... too exhausted to 'really really' pay attention to anything that you'd want to imagine in cliché to be holy, and to be airy-fairy- lost in 'The Glory' kind of prep. .... I did 'nothing' but go to sleep, where I was 'presented' an ethereal contrast...
I had been a cantor in the rcCatholic church, I had a sense of the subtle-energies (but didn't realize that THAT 'was' something). I knew everything I had been taught in the home and parochial schools about Jesus. I lead the congregation in the church in songs and psalm-responses. I felt the subtle energies around the altar, the tabernacle. Even OUTSIDE of me, I could feel from time to time this 'thick honey' blanket surrounding me...
But inside? was Void. Just blackness like cosmic universal background of Space.
In the dream, this preacher came at me holding a bible, telling me I had to Ask Jesus INTO My Heart.
In those days, 'those-people' made me LIVIDLY angry. But since I considered myself a 'broadminded' person, I looked up at GOD (like Tevya, Fiddler on The Roof), and I said GOD?, 'these (yukky) people' keep giving me the same trite language??? Could ya send them a thesaurus or something??? LOL.
So, IN the dream, I wanted to see from the other point of view. I said GOD?, what is he talking about???
That's when I got the sensory imagery of the 'honey' around the tabernacle (where the consecrated hosts are kept), the 'honey' around me.... and the darkness and void INSIDE of me.
Then there was the appreciation of the Beauty of the Honey (The Holy Spirit, The Beautiful Christ), and the 'LOVE' that was IN it.
And I thought to myself, I Want That. I Want that outsideLove INSIDE of me.
By that time, I had shifted into a Lucid State. And this terrible-good powerful cry came up and out of my INSIDE-blackness and said, I Want That. I Want That!!!!
I had an Imagination-Experience suddenly where I was out in Space, and as I cried out 'I Want That'... there was a ripple of ethers that went out in every direction from me, that started small and grew in amplitude. And I Saw, with my Mind's Eye, I Saw the stars and the Fabric of Space itself shiver and Move. I Want That! I Want That.
Then it was as though everything went dead for a moment. My body was as though dead, and yukky meat. I was a dead-pile. Nothing. And this GIANT Sandglass appeared before me, and the Sand was full on the Top, and the sand started to pour through the tiny neck, to the belly of the Glass.
I saw that for a while.... It just 'was'. Then slowly slowly slowly slowly, as the grains filled the bottom part of the Sandglass, "IT" was filling "me."
I gradually woke up, and when I did, I was a New Person... The person who had gone to bed, went unconscious....Woke Up Different.
There was a Glow about me. It was like the Glow of a Bride, an Engaged Person. Almost like light pouring out of me. Such a Joy was present.....
My best-friend at the time had been a bornagain Christian. She NEVER bugged me, only listened...
We had an IceCream date on Tuesday nights... our husbands stayed with the kids, and we had time with each other and with ourself.
I showed up at the IceCream parlor, and she 'Looked' at me. All I could do was 'beam'... and SHE Knew what had happened to me before I ever spoke Words to her.....
When GOD comes INTO your life and BECOMES your LIFE, there is NO mistaking 'The Presence'....
KEEP Searching. Keep asking questions. Keep going keep going keep going. If you really WANT to KNOW 'GOD'.... He is just as WANTING 'you' to Know Him.
'BECAUSE' I Searched for the Light, and thirsted and longed and Yearned to Know The Truth, The LIGHT and The Truth was able to come to ME..... Humble, Nothing, Nobody-me.
And the Truth there, is that YOU are not a Nobody. You're 'A SOMEBODY' to GOD.
So, there's a limbo of 'the Universe'... and there's a 'personal' experience of GOD made available to us because we are 'persons'. We were 'designed' to feel with our senses. God made a way for us to 'feel' the Honey of His Presence IN and TO and Surrounding us.
Taste.... and SEE that the Lord is GOOD. There is NO Shadow in Him. If persons tell you God is Evil, they lie. They don't know HIM. They write books, espouse to philosophies that try to 'interpret' Him, even BLAME him for everything.
haha, I was listening to Bill Mahrer RealTime on HBO a few weeks ago, where he said that GOD is scapegoated all the time... He's made to be the beatch.
We are finite-- our minds are sooooo PUNY and Narrow. We like to have cause-effects all figured out, all spelled out and neat-- our need to CONCRETIZE things... And we're 'wired' for that---- so there's no condemnation there, whatsoever.
GOD 'knows' how we are... He does NOT get 'mad' at us. He knows our Frame, our Structure, our design.
That's where Faith and Trust come in. We have to trust that faith will Connect our Faith-ability. Then FAITH rewards. It's not always 'tangible-like' but it's like tangible. Like the way we can 'see' 11:11's, etc, we come to Know He is tangible.
So...... Thank you for the invitation to share what makes 'me' feel spiritually fulfilled. I'm not 'anything' to boast about... heck, barely got my life intact sometimes, but I'm make SUCH GREAT Progress now.
There's Promise in the Air for me....
I too am a Survivor of abuses from people who had mundane authority over me-- from my family, perverted (female) socialworkers when I tried to get help about what was happening in my home. Things snowballed constantly from that. I hadn't been prepared for life at all. And the life-training I got was harm upon harms.
BUT GOD, had a Plan for me to Live!
And that Living is NOT Over yet for me. The Best Is Yet To Come. My Best Days were saved for Last.
It's 'what's IN you' that counts.