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God Experiences


PaulS

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If you feel comfortable sharing such, I would like to know better peoples' "personal experience" with God. What is/has been your direct experience with what you believe is God? How in only one or two short paragraphs would you say you 'know' God to exist?

 

Thanks in anticipation

Paul

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Since it is here on the board here is a link. In spite of my doubts I tell the story like I experienced it then not how reflect on it. It changed the next 20 years of my life.

 

http://tcpc.ipbhost....rative-meaning/

 

Someone in the thread suggested that the manic event "allowed me to experience God" I have had several such experiences of God.

 

As I write there "The meaning exists in the telling of the story. As I say often there is no meaning prior to an experience. Meaning is made by walking & talking."

 

Now you owe me a Beer because it costs me emotionally to share the story

 

dutch

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I think I owe you a thank you for asking the question. In reflecting on the several experiences I realized that I need to get in touch with one them by using it as a meditation focus.

 

The challenge of these experiences is to live into the promise that they hold.

 

Dutch

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I think I owe you a thank you for asking the question.

Dutch

 

So you owe me a beer then, Dutch? :D Tell you what, next time I'm in Colorado, we'll go round for round!

 

Thanks for sharing. I am yet to read your other post in full.

 

Cheers

Paul

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Hi Paul,

 

Here is an existing thread on this forum called "God Experiences" in the Debate and Dialog section that might interest you. It's kind of a starting point you can use to see what has been discussed already if you like and others can just enter their personal stories here if that that is what you are looking for since this is not a discussion or debate area.

 

Joseph

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Thanks Joseph for pointing me to that link - I certainly shall give it a read.

 

Please understand that I deliberately posted in this section specifically for the purpose of asking people for their own personal experience. I have no intention of debating or discussing (other than maybe a question or two to clarify, if need be). But my intention is definitey not to challenge or argue anybody's personal experience. I am interested in it for that very reason - it is personal to those who share it.

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PaulS,

for me, I've had too many of too many varied kinds and too many different points of my life that had too many different and varied 'functions/purposes' to something in my life and stage of development at the time, to even begin trying to tell of each one, let along in enough detail to convey what it was like and how they affected me, how I feel i 'know' they were "God experience" and not just some delusion or imagination or manifestation of mental unwellnness. I've shared a bit about some of them in other threads.

 

I will try to sum up here some points about what might be "God experiences", that seem in my own personal experience, study, and contemplation on the matter, what might be called "universal qualities/qualifications" of what one might consider a "God experience" as distinguished from anything else that might be "mistaken" for such....some of these "qualification" are of my own analysis, some are expressed in some fields of psychology and various schools of mystic thought. Browse "Discerning Spiritual Emergency from Mental Illness" for some good distinctions some have suggested

 

But, generally...first, this is hard to explain, but you KNOW you are experiencing something remarkable. As in so many accounts in the bible and other spiritual literature, some how you just KNOW you have come into the presence of the Divine.

 

Second, The effects, results, on the person, are positive and expanding, not negative and regressive. This is a MAJOR point of distinction between what might be called a "God experience", experience of the numinous from what be the manifestation of mental illness. But keep in mind, it is positive and expanding in results, effects, referenced here, the experiences themselves can sometimes actually seem at the time quite negative, even frightening, though not always, not usually, and IMO and that of many that consider such thing, such really difficult experiences don't usually occur (in a healthy sense) until after the person has already had a good bit of more positive experiences of the numinous, more personal affirmation of the positive experience as a part of their reality. Even the seeming negative experiences, ie, have potential for positive outcome. ie, one might very well come into head-on confrontation with one's inner demons, but will have been repared in some sense with the tools for engaging them in the battle, it will be time for them to engage them toward overcoming and destroying them.

 

Third, the changes that result are profound and presisitent. Profound in that something is changed that begins to work its way through virtually every corner of one's belief's systems, worldview, attitudes, thinking, and persistent, is that is permanent, not a fleeting experience. The best way I can demonstrate that difference, quality, is some of the rather dramatic and seeming powerful "Spirit" experiences of many in the pentacostal type church environment, no matter how dramatic the experience of a state of ecstacy, being 'slain in the spirit', speaking of tongues, etc etc....they are neither changed in any significant was by the experience, and it passes, they must keep coming back to get another 'fix'.

 

Finally, you cannot deny or reject them. That simply isn't a choice, an option.

 

Jenell

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Modern science sees energy forming the material universe of matter and space then it all resolves back into pure energy in one big circle. "All is one". A continuous path where everything is united in the universe. Therefore, I would say there are various degrees of transcendence from the physical to the direct experience with the pure energy. My experience of God is what I first stated in various degrees transcending the word 'god' and feeling the unity.

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Modern science sees energy forming the material universe of matter and space then it all resolves back into pure energy in one big circle. "All is one". A continuous path where everything is united in the universe. Therefore, I would say there are various degrees of transcendence from the physical to the direct experience with the pure energy. My experience of God is what I first stated in various degrees transcending the word 'god' and feeling the unity.

 

It is be as if a veil of 'forgetfulness' or 'unawareness' has been placed over us here in this life, this material existence, that separates us from "God-awareness," that at least for some, at some time and place, seems to lift, or thin, if ever so briefly...that is the metaphor I think of in the rending of the veil in the temple, behind which was concealed the Holy of Holies, when Jesus's physical body yielded up material life on this earthly plane..

 

Jenell

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Paul,

 

Whenever i am aware , even if just momentarily, without judgments or measuring or applying names or labels to anything, i am having a 'God experience'. It is to me, experiencing purely without applying filters of thoughts and in that state, there is simply nothing to say until thinking again starts. One is aware of ones connection to that which not only is ones life force and sustaining it but to all that is seen. At times it is so subtle, it can be missed but it is known to be actually present always.

 

Just my own experience,

Joseph

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Well described, Joseph. I'd agree in that observation, through my own experiences. At least, as being one kind of 'God experireience." There are other kinds, that happen differently, but what you descirbe, to me, is the every essence of what it is to "tune in and connect." To me, the basic element of Pauls "to pray unceasing"....with practive, holding close to that state, it becomes like "an open line." When communication is in order, you don't have to go find the number, dial the phone, and wait for God to pick it up and answer. It becomes more like the airplane pilot staying in open connection to the control tower.

 

Jenell

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I don't know why but I feel inclined to post this experience now. It is not a God experience as such, but one that strikes me as quite peculiar and I wonder about it to this day.

 

In April 2009 I went to the hospital on the way home from work because I had felt a pain in my chest for over a week. I was pretty quickly diagnosed with having 'globus' which is a physical symptom of anxiety and feels like indigestion or a squash ball stuck in your chest. I never regarded myself as one who felt anxiety, but I have since been advised that it is not uncommon for people who have always felt 'in control' of their lives to suffer anxiety when they don't feel they have that control any more. This was me to a tee as since the beginning of 2009 I had been worried about money and never a moment went by without me worrying about what my cirucmstances might be in the wash up of of this global financial meltdown. On top of this I probably was feeling a bit of loss of 'self' as the father of two young demanding boys (at that stage 5 & 3yrs).

 

I felt comforted that this was a simple physical sympton of anxiety and felt quietly confident of a full recovery in due course with some simple lifestyle strategies and no medication.

 

Two days later I was speaking to a friend of mine who is a strong fundamentalist. I've never felt threatened by his beliefs that I was destined for the lake of fire, to me that was simply unrealistic. But on this day he told me that he thought my globus was God trying to call me back to the fold. I remember asking him about hell and he telling me about Armageddon, and I was sitting there on his balcony overlooking the river visualising a giant Jesus having a mid-air battle with Satan. It freaked me out and then I spent the next 9 months fearing I was destined for Hell, but powerless to do anything about it because I simply couldn't 'believe' that.

 

Anyhow, this is where my God bit kicks in. I initiated closer email correspondence with my sister who is a missionary in Mexico, and debated many points with her which in the main, left me totally unsatisfied. She referred me to a book called The Andromedans by one Denis Osborne. She thought this book had credibility for trying to 'prove' the existence of God. I didn't actually get that from the book but felt driven to contact the author and asked if he believed in Hell. I tracked him down living in the UK and emailed him To my suprise he responded and we began corresponding.

 

I'm sure I must have come across as troubled and desperate, and thankfully he showed kindness and love and tried to help me.

 

As it turned out, he was going to be visiting Australia in the next few weeks as his daughter lived here and was having a baby. He offered to meet me.

 

We did meet and one of the first things he said to me was that he had said to his wife that from reading my letters, he just wished that he could give me a hug! It brought tears to my eyes that this stranger could perceive my pain and furthermore, actually felt for me and wished me well. I won't bore you with details but basically alll he wanted to tell me was that God loves me - no matter what. Although I am still not sure what God is or if there is a God, but at the time this is exactly what I needed and it helped me so much in getting over this nearly suicidal fear of Hell.

 

So where I am going with all this, is that as I mentioned earlier, to this day I still wonder what it all means to reach out to my sister in Mexico who sends a book to me in Australia by an English author, who I manage to contact and discover that not only does he have family living near me but that he would be out visiting them very shortly and could I meet him. I do and he helps rescue me from the hole I was in. How does that work?

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"Completion" and "perfection" are not the same, not equivalent. Something can be at any stage of progression toward a completion in some sense, therefore be presently "incomplete", and yet still be "perfection" of the present state it is in. Consider an embryo, that may be developing properly, it is in the present state "perfect" yet still far from "complete" in the progression toward a full term infanct.

 

Jenell

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