perception of a spiritual experience

A few months ago I took a one day channeling course. The teacher promised that by the end of the evening, every participant had channeled his spirit guide.
I've been talking to my guide for many years but I figured that maybe this guy could teach me something to improve my methods, so I paied up and took the class.

There where 9 participants of which most said to have experience already. One lady had expectations of speaking in tongues after the class. Another said she couldn't understand her guide. There was one women who stood out, she would always interrupt others and forced her views upon them, acting as if she didn't need to be here... so why was she there at all? I admit that during this highly spiritual course I had several thoughts of hitting her in the face to get her to shut up.

The first hour, the teacher gave us crystals and ask us to 'feel' their energy. While everyone was nodding and saying "oh yes I feel that... oh this one has strong energy!... do you feel that? Yep I feel it to", when I received the crystals, I felt nothing. The teacher looked at me and I told him I didn't feel anything, he went "hm".

Next he let a small plant go round, again the same thing happened. Everyone seemed to agree on the energy that came from the plant. When it came into my hands, I felt nothing.I knew I could feel energy coming from trees and plants, but not here and not now... I tried to focus, what intuitive feeling do I get from this plant? A thought popped into my head that this plant yelled at me: "help me, I'm being abused". I couldn't help but giggle out loud, which made the teacher look my way. "I feel nothing" I said.

Finally we went further to the "meet your guide" part.
Now as I said earlier, I have been talking to my guide for many years, maybe even during childhood, but I can't remember if those where just inner conversations or something else.
When I want to talk with my guide, I don't need hours of focus, it's like I snap my fingers and I have a 'connection' so to speak. I used to have only one, while the last couple of months they became more then one.

so back to the course. We all had to close our eyes and focus. According to the teacher we had to 'climb up' through all the lower 'astral levels' to come to the place where our guide is. (just for the record, I have never in my live perceived different levels, just one big astral plane) While the teacher talks us through and helps everyone to climb, I'm not going up. So I call for my guide and ask him where "up" is, he thought that was funny. At this point I stopped listening to the teacher, I don't have a clue what else he said, I just sat there chatting with my guide about creating on the astral and the physical, about changing the astral environment at will, because I still perceive it as I do the physical world.
Some time later, my astral perception became one of a huge playground, with lots of colors, mainly red blue and green, clowns and ... lots of smarties, It was raining colorful smarties and I felt happy as a little kid, it was nice.

The teacher asks everyone to open our eyes, after a min or so everyone is with us again, except for the 'big mouth' lady, she kept her eyes closed as long as it took for the teacher to express his concern (Biiiiiig Drama! and I'm sure she is faking it).
"wow" said the teacher, "where did you go?" She replied "if you ask me to go climb up as far as I can, where do YOU think I went? To God of course!
I try to stay openminded, allow everyone in the room her own beliefs and perceptions of the experiences they all just had. But it's hard with this one.
The others told of experiences of seeing light or angels, that sort of things.
When it was my turn to tell I decided to be honest and I said "I saw clowns and smarties"
It was kinda funny, but not among this croud... my mistake.
The "big mouth" lady jumped up and yelled "you saw the devil!" The teacher asked her to sit back down so we could continue. I guess the rest didn't know what to make of it and it wasn't mentioned again.

I was so glad that this course was over. I didn't learn to speak in tongues or channel in another way but thought form. Actually I didn't learn much at all.
Afterwards the teacher approached me, he said it was crystal clear to him that I was stuck in the underworld and that I needed help. (I don't think so buddy!)

so far for that event.

Sorry for the rather long story telling, but it was mainly this event that made me wonder about how others perceive my (or your) spiritual experiences. I believe that the lady and the teacher couldn't be more wrong with their perception of me. I don't need them to see me all enlightened, because I'm not.. but I was a bit insulted by them.

So how do you react when people judge you wrong on your spirituality? Do you let them? Or do you feel the need to correct them any way you can?

reply to post by GypsK


I can just picture you there in the class not going with the flow. LOL
You saw clowns and smarties and they decided you were in the underworld? hehehehehe

Overall, my impression from your story is that the "class" was an exercise in groupthink. Get with the program Gypsyk, you know darn well your experiences prior to and after this class need the experts to interpret for you. C'mon!

You must readjust your ways to conform to the teacher's idea of spirituality. Afterall, he/she is the all knowing authority.

In my opinion, spirituality is personal therefore everyone's experiences will be personalized.

Edit

I forgot to ask if you rescued the plant?

[edit on 22-10-2009 by Hazelnut]

I applaud your honesty ! I just try to interpret each moment as sincerely as possible ! Many seem a need to act out and seem to feed off the attention ! I think this can be healing for the observers . Instead of playing into the drama I say a silent blessing and wish em well. Working with the different energies that must have been present you chose to introduce humor and sadly this energy was not utilized ! A sure sign to me that there were many pretenders at your gathering.

Hey, I´m back again...

I agree with "Hazel" that spiritual things must be seen personalized, but in general it´s all the same.
I mean the backround knowlege and the basic physics are the one and only behind it. understand? The "matrix" just IS.
You decide what u want to make out of it (as i told in the healing thread) and how u work with "special" pics or techs.

To your question about s.o. judging our spiritual:
I never had such negative expirience, because when s.o. told me i am wrong with my spirituality, i told him my own sights to it and that i only use other pics or analogys as he did... afterwords we saw that we´re using the same cooking tech, but not same water...

As i told u in the healing thread i never judge other sights, as like i only can help (spirtually) when s.o. asks me for...


peace n love

Originally posted by Hazelnut
reply to post by GypsK

 

I can just picture you there in the class not going with the flow. LOL
You saw clowns and smarties and they decided you were in the underworld? hehehehehe

Overall, my impression from your story is that the "class" was an exercise in groupthink. Get with the program Gypsyk, you know darn well your experiences prior to and after this class need the experts to interpret for you. C'mon!

You must readjust your ways to conform to the teacher's idea of spirituality. Afterall, he/she is the all knowing authority.

In my opinion, spirituality is personal therefore everyone's experiences will be personalized.

Edit

I forgot to ask if you rescued the plant?

[edit on 22-10-2009 by Hazelnut]

nope, I fear that the plant had to participate in many more of these courses....

spirituality IS personal, and I had expected that at least spiritual teacher types would realize that... but apparently not all do.

Originally posted by trueset
I applaud your honesty ! I just try to interpret each moment as sincerely as possible ! Many seem a need to act out and seem to feed off the attention ! I think this can be healing for the observers . Instead of playing into the drama I say a silent blessing and wish em well. Working with the different energies that must have been present you chose to introduce humor and sadly this energy was not utilized ! A sure sign to me that there were many pretenders at your gathering.

I'm not sure they where pretenders, they probably do have experiences and only try to make sense of it. Of course it's easy when someone else tells you what you are supposed to see,feel,... as that teacher did, you can't go wrong if you agree with everyone else, lol.
It wasn't my intention to go against the flow of that class, I'm just not the follower type. I didn't feel much and they took that as a sign of being unexperienced.
But I think your right in saying that a lot of people are feeding off the attention with this sort of 'meetings'. Maybe they acted out against me because they couldn't do just that.

Originally posted by JimIrie
... spiritual things must be seen personalized, but in general it´s all the same.
I mean the backround knowlege and the basic physics are the one and only behind it. ...

Yes of course, in the end it is the same. That's why I tried to let 'big mouth' lady have her opinion without opposing her on it. Same for the teacher.
When it comes to spirituality I have a non-dualistic view and I don't even want to start to explain that to people who think dualistic, not in an eye to eye discussion anyway.
And as I grand them their views, I feel that I am often not granted mine.

To your question about s.o. judging our spiritual:
I never had such negative expirience, because when s.o. told me i am wrong with my spirituality, i told him my own sights to it and that i only use other pics or analogys as he did... afterwords we saw that we´re using the same cooking tech, but not same water...

As i told u in the healing thread i never judge other sights, as like i only can help (spirtually) when s.o. asks me for...

I had that with some people, and a lot here on ats aswell.
The problem is that most people think that whenever there are two theories, only one can be right (usually theirs).. and that brings us back to point one, in the end its one and the same thing

Thats the game...