Hi guys, newbie here, wondering if any converts have experienced religious ecstasy in the past and wish to share those stories. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_ecstasy)
My story: I'm 20 years old living in the uk. I was brought up in a family who didn't consider themselves as religious. However, due to enrolment into scouts and youth groups, I came to believing in God from around 10 years old. I regularly attended youth groups up until I was around 17.
When I was 15/16 I went to Soul Survivor, a biiiig Christian festival style weekend event. During the evenings a huge gathering of everyone at the festival (around 10,000 people) was held in a giant marquee with a centre stage. There were the usual hymns, songs and Christian rock performed by a band during the evening.
However nearing the end Mike Pilavachi, the main speaker, called on the Holy Spirit to "fill those with feelings of loss and sadness happiness and grace". Many people soon began to speak "in tounges" and some fainted etc. Having recently felt loss of a very close member of the family I "tried" to contact the Holy Spirit aswell.
All I remember after that is closing my eyes and waking after having a strange lucid dream of me seeing myself in 3rd person apologising to nothing (everything was white). I then proceeded to cry uncontrollably. I mean a real cry your heart out cry.
After I'd calmed I felt a bit better ( apart from exhaustion from emotional trauma) and found I had been "out" for over 30mins.I also found had large carpet burns on the backs of my arms and upper back where I had been apparently shaking the entire time.
It was a very strange experience. Hard to understand and hard to explain. it's kept me from being able to think of myself as a gnostic athiest due to lack of understand what on earth biologically/spiritually/whatever happend.
Sorry about the extreme length of the post.
I hope some of you might share some stories on here and how it's effected you post conversion to atheism.
<3 Thall
My story: I'm 20 years old living in the uk. I was brought up in a family who didn't consider themselves as religious. However, due to enrolment into scouts and youth groups, I came to believing in God from around 10 years old. I regularly attended youth groups up until I was around 17.
When I was 15/16 I went to Soul Survivor, a biiiig Christian festival style weekend event. During the evenings a huge gathering of everyone at the festival (around 10,000 people) was held in a giant marquee with a centre stage. There were the usual hymns, songs and Christian rock performed by a band during the evening.
However nearing the end Mike Pilavachi, the main speaker, called on the Holy Spirit to "fill those with feelings of loss and sadness happiness and grace". Many people soon began to speak "in tounges" and some fainted etc. Having recently felt loss of a very close member of the family I "tried" to contact the Holy Spirit aswell.
All I remember after that is closing my eyes and waking after having a strange lucid dream of me seeing myself in 3rd person apologising to nothing (everything was white). I then proceeded to cry uncontrollably. I mean a real cry your heart out cry.
After I'd calmed I felt a bit better ( apart from exhaustion from emotional trauma) and found I had been "out" for over 30mins.I also found had large carpet burns on the backs of my arms and upper back where I had been apparently shaking the entire time.
It was a very strange experience. Hard to understand and hard to explain. it's kept me from being able to think of myself as a gnostic athiest due to lack of understand what on earth biologically/spiritually/whatever happend.
Sorry about the extreme length of the post.
I hope some of you might share some stories on here and how it's effected you post conversion to atheism.
<3 Thall
