The Varieties of ATS Religious Experience; or, Variations on a Theme

reply to post by mideast


mideast,
I'm not lonely in the least. I happily spend most of my days in solitude (apart from my 5 animal companions), and silence - without TV or radio. I don't make many calls, nor do I receive many. I suppose that my "ATS life" is my social circle for now!

But I think maybe we have a communication block. 'Persona non grata', (when I use it) means "unwelcome."

I agree with you though. Occasional loneliness - wanting to be with other people but having none around - is not bad in itself. Total isolation, though, I don't think is real healthy.

reply to post by wildtimes


Cool thread, took me a while to read it and I would like to participate as well.

I was adopted when I was 4 days old into a Catholic family that lived in central Louisiana. My mother made sure she took my sisters and I to Sunday school /church every Sunday. When I was about 6 we started going to the Lutheran church (Missouri Synod) and stayed Lutheran for the rest of my church going life. I was an alcolyte, an usher, also very active in the youth group.I started catechism a couple years earlier than what most Lutheran boys do because I had a very weak father figure growing up and I wanted to impress the pastor with my enthusiasm for being a confirmed member of the church. There was always things that just did not seem right about what the church taught about God and sinners and the devil. But I just kept my mouth shut and never asked the questions that I knew the church really had no answers for and just kinda went along with it all like a good Lutheran boy.

I started being home schooled at age 10. I was a very shy awkward kid and did not have any real friends, but what few I had were at church. Its not that I really tried to make friends, I really did'nt because to be honest, they all seemed dumb and uninteresting. I had a pretty active imagination and usually being in my own little world or just entertaining myself was a much better time. I'm sure everyone my age thought I was a weird loner anyway. After high school I kinda piddled around with a few jobs. I worked at a hardware store and a restaurant and then went active duty in the Army. I don't know why but I have always felt a strong pull towards the soldiers way of life. I joined up at age 20 and went through 6 months of Tanker training in Ft. Knox Ky. That is when I effectively moved out of mom and dads house and stopped going to church altogether.

Its not that I had lost my faith or anything like that. It just felt like going to another church was sort of like "cheating" on the church that I had went to since I was 6. Plus I was always gone. In a combat MOS you never have much free time and if I was lucky enough to have a Sunday morning off and be in garrison going to church was usually the last thing I wanted to do. Slowly my relationship that I felt that I had with God faded away until I did not really think of my spiritual side at all.

I spent a year in Bosnia after the civil war there as part of a peacekeeping force and I spent a year in Afghanistan in 2003 right after the initial invasion. If I had to name a point where i really "lost my faith" I guess this would be it. I don't want to go into detail here, but trust me when I say I saw firsthand the cruel, ugly, faceless side of humanity and what people do to each other. I could not believe some of the things that God would allow to happen to little kids, to women and old men and innocent people. The only thing I could think of was that God allowed things like this to happen because he must be sick and twisted and get some kind of enjoyment out of it. Not to mention that i was learning that this noble idea I had of being a soldier and serving my country and all of that was all a load of bullcrap.

So after 8 years of soldiering and being all over the world I got out and I came back to my hometown. I was very disheartened because I had no idea what to do with myself. I had only thought of soldiering before and now I had learned what a farce it all was so what the hell was I supposed to do now? I was very angry and tempermental. (I have since been diagnosed with PTSD but then I had no idea.) And I drank/drugged all the time. Me and my wife were trying to get through the problems that had happened while I was gone for so long and it was a very hard time of my life. Plus coming home and seeing how little the things and people around there had changed made the experiences I had overseas even more surreal. I felt like I had changed, so somehow my home should have too. I was confused and angry as hell and really had no idea why.

So shortly after I got home from all of this my mom invited us to come to church with her one Sunday. I said sure, it had been a while since I had seen most of the people there and I thought it might be nice to see them even if I felt like it would be worth being damned just to punch God really hard in the face if it was possible.

I felt so uncomfortable then that I wondered how I ever could have been such a church goer before. All the weird prayers and chants, stand up, sit down, now shake hands just felt wrong and somehow unnatural. I remember the pastor kinda buttering me up talking about my "distinguished military service overseas" and blah blah on and on. Suddenly I felt like punching the pastor in the face instead of God. That was the last time I went to church for quite a while. The wife and I were still trying to patch things up.

It was hard though. I got a job at the local lumbermill and worked there even though I absolutely hated it. It was such an unstimulating mind numbing job. There are no real jobs around here and people kept telling me what a good job that was for the area (25,000-30,000 a year! they'd tell me) so I figured I would have been a fool to quit it. Looking back i was a fool to keep going there hating every day. But I think my state of mind was such that I would have hated any job at the time.

Anyways one night we were down for some mechanical stuff and my friend Suzy and I were sitting out behind the plant trying to keep out of sight and out of mind until they got things running again. Suzy was easy to talk to and for some reason I always could talk to the women around me easier than the men. My older sister said it was only because I was handsome why the girls were so easy to talk to but I am not sure. Anyways she was reading a book by Sylvia Browne on the afterlife. I asked her what it said and she told me how this lady believes that there is no hell, that God is not a judge of our lives when we die, we are the only judge. She said Sylvia was talking about how we have all lived before in past lives and sometimes when you feel a kinship with someone you probably were friends in a past life.

I went to the library and checked out some Sylvia Browne books. I don't really like the whole new agey touchy feely light and love message but at the time I was fascinated because I had learned something that I had never thought of before. There is another way to find God without a church telling you what god is. I thought maybe if I could find God in my own way I would stop being so messed up and I could really be happy without smoking snorting or drinking any happy.

So I read about buddha, Islam, Hindus, new age stuff, ancient religions, pagan religions, everything that I could.
You see the church had touched on these things when I was younger and went to church all the time. But the way it was presented to me then was very biased. I remember one time the Sunday School teacher saying in a mocking tone that Hindus believe in reincarnation and thats why they can't eat hamburgers because the cow that it came from might be their Grandma. So anyways, I just prayed on my own. I would go out in the woods and sometimes just sit there and talk to God. I have come to believe that God is not a He or a She or even an it. God is the spirit and conciousness of everything at once.

So I stayed away from church and started surveying in east Texas for a pipeline company. For the first time in a long time I had a good job that I really liked, I made good money, I really liked the guys I worked with and considered them friends which is something that I felt like I had not had in a long time. I was starting to find my own spirituality and figure out what I knew in my heart was true. Then all of a sudden in July of 2011 I get diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic melanoma with very large aggressive tumors in my lungs, sinus, brain, all over me really.

I had no idea what to think. I was 32 years old 6"2, 200 lbs strong healthy guy and I never thought I would have to deal with something like this. The doctors told me to go ahead and make a will out while I was still alive. My family would come see me in the hospitol room and I could see in their eyes they expected me to die. I refused to believe it though. Even when they showed me pictures on the tumor growing in my brain and the one in my sinus that was giving me horrible headaches and nosebleeds I knew in my heart that it was not my time yet. After 5 months of biochemotherapy, radiation, gamma knife for the brain tumor, endoscopic surgery and all of the cancer drugs and horrible side effects I am proud to say that i am NED (no evidence of disease). The doctors said that only 4 people out of 100 have the response that I did to the treatment which is the tumors dying. Normally they just consider it effective if the tumors can stop growing while you take biochemo. My body is totally shot and I am no longer that big strong guy anymore but I am alive.

I had alot of people praying for me when I was sick. Hell I was one of them. I prayed alot for God to get me better so I could go back to work and continue on with my life. I realize now that is impossible so now my wife works and I sit at home all day. I do chores around the house but I find myself getting lazier and lazier and sleeping more and more. I keep wondering lately why I am still here. Why I did not become one of those 96 out of 100 people who don't make it. I feel like surely there are people more worthy than me who were in my same situation but for some reason God has deemed fit to keep my here in this useless body. I keep praying for god to reveal to me exactly what it is I am supposed to do but i don't feel God like I used to. I don't drink or do drugs anymore but i do still engage in escapist behaviors like playing games, reading an

just shutting everyone out and staying in my own little world.

So yeah, i am kinda back where I was when I got out the military. Trying to figure out what the hell comes next and feeling like a ship bobbing along on the ocean with no sail or rudder.

I'm trying hard to keep from being cynical and pessimistic. Sometimes people say things to me like, "Wow, you look so great! You were so lucky!" And I think yeah, I'm lucky alright, I'm lucky that I lost 60 pounds and all my skin peeled off and all my hair fell out and my ears ring all the time and the neuropathy from all the damn drugs makes my feet and back feel like its on friggin fire. I'm lucky that for 6 months straight I was so sick that I could not even look at a hamburger on a Applebees commercial withough puking for 30 minutes straight. I'm lucky to have a constant throbbing headache behind my right eye where that damn tumor almost killed me, I'm lucky to feel like midgets are stabbing icepicks in my thigh bones constantly, I'm lucky to get fatigued and out of breath and weak from just walking not even a mile down the road. Not that I am not grateful to be here, I am, people just don't understand though and I guess its something hard to explain.

Sometimes people say something like, "Wow, all that prayer really worked for you!" And I have to wonder if it really did. The whole 9th floor of MD anderson is where they treat the stage 4 melanoma patients like me and I am quite sure there was just as many people there that had families and churches praying for them as I did. So what the hell made me more deserving to live than anyone else? I don't know, but its got to be for something and all I can do is keep praying that it will be revealed to me and like Dora says, just keep on swimming.

Thanks to anyone that read all of this, I did not mean to make it so long. God bless.

reply to post by Cancerwarrior


I haven't had time to read past the first couple of paragraphs of your very poignant and important story yet, but wanted to let you know that I'm very glad you chose to participate. Thank you

reply to post by Cancerwarrior


Awesome story, thanks for sharing.

Whenever I think about the bad stuff that's happened to me, and wonder why I'm still here and better people than I are not, I just set it aside and figure that God has something for me to do, and maybe I'll find out later what it was, and whether I did it. Anything else is maddening and depressing, so I just leave it in God's hands.

Originally posted by adjensen
reply to post by Cancerwarrior

 

Awesome story, thanks for sharing.

Whenever I think about the bad stuff that's happened to me, and wonder why I'm still here and better people than I are not, I just set it aside and figure that God has something for me to do, and maybe I'll find out later what it was, and whether I did it. Anything else is maddening and depressing, so I just leave it in God's hands.

I guess that is where patience comes in. Just being patient and trusting things will work out good for everyone and I think maybe that is something that I am learning right now. I mean really learning it.

"Leaving it in God's hands" to me is the same as accepting what will happen and there is really not much you can do about it. I do believe praying helps almost any situation. Too many people pray like they are asking Santa for a wish list but I do think when you pray in the right frame of mind it sort of releases your faith and God + faith can do anything (even cure terminal cancer) because God put his divine spark in all of us.

But you're right, leaving it up to God is sometimes all anyone can do.

Too many people pretend like they are never gonna die. Like the days are gonna just keep coming. I realize that all of us just have so many sunrises left. I dont want to be sounding like I am feeling sorry for myself and that is kinda what my posts above sound like when I reread them, I just want things to happen sooner than God wants to I think.

I guess everyone finds out in time how we did.

Originally posted by wildtimes


Was it something you were born into?

Yes/ Kinda

Originally posted by wildtimes

If so, did you stay with it, or move on and leave it behind?

My Family where Jehovah witnesses and I was taken to meetings and stuff but they left it to me to decide how much I wanted to participate. I choose at age 14 to accept our teaching and get baptised as they seemed to make the most sense out of all other christian teachings.

I think what sealed the deal for me was that all other Religions seem to be happy to go to war and kill each other.
German Catholics Killed British and American Cathlics in world war 2 and Shia Muslims will kill Shiate Muslims.
I think some of the storys of dureing Rwanda massacres of Brothers from each side shieding each other from the slaughter were very encouraging too. Plus whenever I travel the world I always try and contact the local congregation and when I do you have instant freinds.

We are also one of the only Christian denominations that actually use God real name Jehovah which is rather strikeing for me.

Of course all though Jehovah is perfect and so is his planned orginisation, people unfortunatly are not. Which is why you hear some of the horror storys as you get bad people in any orgnisation religous or not

Luckly the bad people and bad congregations are in the minority (In my area I have had dealing with many and counterd some but few problems). So that how I accept the faults anyway.

Any question please ask It dont matter how stupid or maybe offensive you may think them Pm me if you like.

reply to post by JW2002


Thanks for posting! Once you have time to settle in, I hope you'll take the opportunity to read through the thread. Lots of stories to be heard.
Welcome again to ATS!!

reply to post by wildtimes


I originally posted this here during my awesome discussion with Dominicus…

Originally posted by Joecroft

Having read your bullet pointed journey above, I would like to give you a snippet of my own journey so far, so you can get a better Idea of where I’m coming from…

Like yourself I wasn’t brought up a Christian by my family and for most of my life, I would describe myself as being an Agnostic/Atheist. When I was 21 years old, I had a very strange experience. I awoke in the middle of the might at about 3am and I could hear a voice speaking the Lords prayer. The voice was powerful yet gentle at the same time, which I know sounds like a contradiction but that’s the best way I can describe it. Later I just shrugged it off as a dream, but deep down, I knew it was real…

Many years later, like yourself, I began to investigate into Christianity and started to attend a born again Christian church. I asked many questions, attended functions, meetings etc but I slowly got to point where I just couldn’t believe in God, by faith alone, so I decided to leave the church.

For some reason I just couldn’t let it go, so I started to study the Bible, research and debate Christianity online etc, to try and reach some kind of truth. At this time I was reading and absorbing myself in a lot of Jesus words from the bible. Then one night I heard the exact same voice again, except this time the voice asked me a question, and the question was “What is man?” and I also felt an inner voice asking me “what are you?”.

Over a period of time of about 6 to 7 months I began to realize inwardly, that I was a part of the living God, spiritually speaking (It was only about a year later that I discovered that a similar question, was written in the “Gospel of Thomas”!)

As I began to work my way through reading Jesus words, I slowly began to believe that God was speaking through Jesus (and I still do today).

Somewhere around that time I experience a tingling sensation in the center of my forehead, where my third eye is located. Although at that time I didn’t know anything about the 3rd eye, still don’t know much about it, except the basics. It only happened 3 times, once when I was outside, another when I was at home reading a book. The other time I woke up in the middle of the night, and the sensation in my forehead, was so intense, that I couldn’t stop laughing out loud. I even went to the doctor lol but I was told there was nothing wrong with me…

During my research into just about every Christian denomination out there, I began to believe in Jesus, but not in a completely standard orthodox Christian way. Then one night while I was reading John 14 I received the Holy Spirit and literally experience what is described in John 7:38.

Anyway, recently through watching some of the Buddhist videos, I have learned that there core teaching, is that question of “What Am I”, or “What are you?” Which is same question that God asked me. This is why I have become more drawn to it recently.

I will still never forget the day when I first read that line in the Gospel of Thomas…..Having already answered it, prier to discovering it…

“When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty."

Sorry for rambling on…just had to get it out there lol

There’s a lot more detail to the story, that I could have added, such as the crazy Synchronicities/Revelations, which kept leading me in a specific direction, which I now believe was Gods plan, all along.

Originally posted by wildtimes
I'm not lonely in the least. I happily spend most of my days in solitude (apart from my 5 animal companions), and silence - without TV or radio. I don't make many calls, nor do I receive many. I suppose that my "ATS life" is my social circle for now!

IMO I think your doing just fine; the big part of my own spiritual journey involved roughly the same things, i.e. no TV, no Partying lol etc…


- JC

reply to post by Joecroft

Thanks, Joe! Excellent story for the archive here. I hear you, totally.

reply to post by wildtimes

Total isolation, though, I don't think is real healthy.

I like to study things and what I get into is difficult so I need the isolation to be able to form complex strings of thought to understand what I am studying. "Isolation" meaning not someone else in the house bothering you every five minutes.
What I figured out is that I need physical exercise to stay healthy and it is also good for the mind. I dusted off my kayaks and use them to that purpose, and to push myself, have joined kayaking groups, and that can also serve the purpose of some social interaction.

reply to post by jmdewey60


I totally get what you mean. It takes a lot of focus and concentration to study and form thoughts around complicated issues.

reply to post by wildtimes

. . . a lot of focus and concentration . . .

Serenity? That probably sounds funny. To be a serene being, at peace.
Not so easily achieved when you have people causing conflict around you.
Anyway, yes, If you can spend an hour in that state of no worry, then you can have clear thought.
Of course you have to spend a lot of time putting things in there to think about, first, that helps in getting usable results..

reply to post by Cancerwarrior


Cw, I came back and re-read your story here, and I am moved beyond words.
I have not endured the physical kind of suffering that you have, and to be honest, it sounds hellish. Your story about coming back from military service is not unusual. My husband is a veteran as well, and suffers acute PTSD, and he saw NOTHING compared to what you did.

A person's sensibilities can cause PTSD even in much less extraordinary conditions - actually, we've figured out together that his experience in basic training caused incalculable damage, as well as his family's responses to him enlisting to begin with.

I want to tell you that I appreciate you participating alongside me in the threads where you have done so, and perhaps you can think of your advocacy on ATS as a 'calling.' I, too, have left the workforce after 'failing' to be as cold-hearted and unempathetic as my job(s) expected me to be, both as a helper and as a supervisor.

I value very much that you shared your story here, and I consider you one of those people on ATS who has a lot of worthwhile things to say. Thank you again, and peace and strength be with you.
~wild

reply to post by wildtimes


I think alot of the guys (and thanks to that coward Panetta girls also) coming back from these wars are going to be mentally damaged and not even know it. I knew something was wrong with me but had been living in the "tough guy" mentality for so long that I just kept denying it to myself. I don't know how my wife put up with me for as long as she did when I got back because I was not a very nice person to anyone.

And like you pointed out with your husband, you don't have to see innocent people and your good friends get shot and blown to pieces to be affected by it. There are many aspects to being on a battlefield that go against everything that any person with a sense of morality feels.

The side effects from last years ordeal are getting better for me though, I am eating everything in sight and putting weight back on but not being able to exercise like I need to is making it the soft kind of weight and not the strength I had before. However I am determined to get my body back as close to what it was as possible. The brain tumor affected my short term memory so I am even more forgetful than I used to be.The Dr. said that the headaches are probably permanent from where that sinus tumor destroyed alot of tissue and bone up there but maybe/maybe not the neuropathy would start going away around 24 months after my last treatment. So far it has been 12 months. So I am really having to learn to be patient and take things as they come which is something I have never been very good at.

Also something else that would not have happened if I had not had the cancer is I found my birth mother after looking all my life. Turns out I am Swedish (mostly) and I have a little sister who is a model and she has a little boy and another on the way. So I have more family now which is a good thing. Its interesting because my sister was in the Army also, and she likes Archery and outdoors stuff like me. Its weird to see some of my physical traits in other people. I look and act very differently than my adoptive family. So there were several good things that came out of the whole cancer ordeal and I can't really call it an all bad experience because of that.

Anyway, thank you for the kind words wild. You always seem to be very thoughtful and intelligent and I can tell you have a big heart. I have my 3 dogs and 3 cats that keep me company most days when I'm here by myself. But I don't have alot of conversations (especially any intelligent ones) with people these days because I am kinda alienated by circumstances right now but I always look forward to talking with you and hearing your view on things.

Oh and I'm gonna tell my wife you think I have worthwhile things to say....Hah! she will get a kick out of that.

..i can't believe i ate the whole thread
and something interesting and predictable happened a few pages back

So, I want to inquire to ATS members at large as to your personal "Revealed God". I believe we each have our own private methods and means to arrive at some sort of reconciliation with the great unknown, and am hoping that you will feel free to share here (or in a u2u if you prefer confidentiality) how you see your "religious" development. Was it something you were born into? If so, did you stay with it, or move on and leave it behind? If not, how did you come to prefer the "faith" or "absolute atheism" that you have now?

you're asking (at large) about a personal revealed God, you've clearly stated you're after "religious" development (i looked hard for the word "spirituality" back there, didn't find it), you went on to say something about writing a book? ..something about the conspiracy scene and religion? but you come across as a pagan, wiccan, you know what i mean?

..something interesting happened a few pages back and it seems something interesting was up from the get-go

the best part is, a few days ago i sent a u2u to someone, describing a personal experience and what motivates me, i asked if similar things had happened to them, they said they'd posted in this thread and provided a link, it doesn't matter who that person is, what matters is i am a person who RELUCTANTLY believes in the bible, the Jesus redemption story (let's be clear with one another, of the existance of this "God" we have no doubt, it's this Jesus thing that makes all the problems) but what i am saying to you is the reason i have never discarded the bible is because of ONE particular experience i had when i was about 3 or 4 years old (among many other experiences)

...which i won't be mentioning here.. the prospect that you view all this as fodder for some book, and the speculative title reference... just makes me smile my ass off.. this is a good enough indication to me that what i never typed about on an internet forum and only recently mentioned to one person in a private message, to then arrive here and see that bit about the book and its title... yeah, i'll take that as a hint..

but i will say if this 'Jesus' isn't real, we're all in a lot of trouble..

..am i yanking your chain? no way. do i believe in Jesus? kinda.. do i hope it's real? yes.
deception appears as something palatable, nyah?

..did i mention something interesting happened a few pages back?

visiting this thread all turned out far from expected only to have everything i have faith in all hammered back home to me... how's that for a personal relationship with God?

reply to post by UNIT76


Relax. I know better than to write a book without having "informed consent." I'm just trying to sort out the membership and get better acquainted with the people who frequent this forum. No biggie.

What again is your objection to the thread in general?
Are you going to share your story?

Feel free. I'm not working up an outline or anything - just sort of comparing/contrasting what I learned reading the original "Varieties of Religious Experience; a Study in Human Nature" - a brilliant book. Have you read it?

reply to post by wildtimes

Just to bump the thread, and get my foot in the door, I will repost with (edits in parentheses) what I posted in smyleegrl's thread A Thief In the Night: An Experience With Terror,

I was raised in a sect (Seventh-day Adventist) that doesn't subscribe to the pre-trib rapture, all the horrible end times stuff was the same however, eg, forced to choose or die, getting dragged out into the street and shot in the middle of the night, etc. All over whether you kept the Old Testament 7th day Sabbath or not.

Here's the thing. I rebelled quite early against the Sabbath, and was very consciously a wicked fellow from about ages 11 - 16, real juvenile delinquent. But I had it all worked out in my head:

I had the whole list of end time events laid out by the Sabbath School teachers. 1 would happen, then 2 would happen, then 3, then probation would close so that it's too late to repent, then a bunch of other terrible things would happen, then Jesus would come. So I figured, OK, I'll just wait for 1 or 2 to happen, then I'd repent!

I grew wearied of wickedness and accepted Jesus when I was 16, and began the journey toward becoming a main stream Orthodox Protestant Theologian, all the while going through the motions of being a semi kosher quasi Jewish Christian, while my friends were mostly dispensationalist Israel Firsters. So it took from 1972 to 1982 for me to openly be confirmed as a Lutheran.

------------------------------------------------------------
Switching now to something I posted here: www.abovetopsecret.com...
I better go ahead and use quote box here.

It would date to about 1993

I broke out for reasons similar to your friend, "pre-set damnation for some people".

Luckily for me, I read a lot of fiction, therefore I'm familiar with putting myself in the protagonists shoes. As I was reading the Exodus story for the 11th time, it suddenly hit me how horrifying it all really was. No way in hell would I have survived such a thing. I would have taken the first opportunity to desert. No doubt some tongue of flame would reach out and destroy me anyway.

But I pressed on, got to the part where the inhabitants of the land were to be utterly destroyed. So I put myself in the place of the inhabitants. Obviously, the god of armies had nothing good to offer me.

That's pretty much the way I read the rest of the Bible through. When I finally got to Revelation, and saw the dogs left out of the city, that's when I decided "Well if someone is called a dog, or evil, or unrighteous, then that's where I'll be too." And so I became a heathen, of a very polytheistic brand of primitive shamanism. (note:1996)

I still have to remind myself from time to time that the Old Testament god character has nothing good to offer me. And insofar as the New Testament god is identified as the Old Testament god, he doesn't either. And so I am a crypto neo Marcionite of the third splinter sect(date note: 2010) and a heathen polytheist. What a mess!

reply to post by pthena


I actually support the Trinity. It means more to me than many Christians today actually understand. It should be clearly noted that the meaning of the Trinity transcends any meaning that the Judaics would apply to it.