Back when I was a Mormon, I prayed hard for a confirmation that God was even there listening to me. I prayed every morning and every night, but I never got an answer the way that others of my faith described it to me. Some said it would be a "Burning in your bosom" and others claimed it would be a "Still small voice". Others even claimed small to large-scale manifestations of the Holy Ghost, and I wanted something like this so that I could more fully root myself in the faith of my parents.
One night I knelt down and prayed for 3 hours straight. I could have sworn that about 2 hours into it that I was starting to feel something. I thought, "Is that the burning in my bosom?" The feeling went away, and I continued. Soon, I was seeing images come to my mind: vague, ghostly apparitions with no apparent rhyme or reason, but there, all the same. I dismissed it as my mind playing tricks on me, but I soon felt I needed to accept these ambiguous feelings and images as signs of something supernatural listening to my prayer. I continued on, and soon enough I was hearing a full-on conversation in my head, as if there was someone there talking to me, telling me what I wanted to hear and know all along.
When I finished, I thought I would feel more fulfilled, for I had accomplished what others before me had done. Instead, a new feeling was nagging at me. The feeling was doubt; the rational, human part of my brain was telling me that there was no way to verify if what I had experienced was of god, or of the devil, or even of myself. It was this realization that the whole process was so uncertain that helped deconvert me from Mormonism, and eventually to deconvert me from god entirely.
One night I knelt down and prayed for 3 hours straight. I could have sworn that about 2 hours into it that I was starting to feel something. I thought, "Is that the burning in my bosom?" The feeling went away, and I continued. Soon, I was seeing images come to my mind: vague, ghostly apparitions with no apparent rhyme or reason, but there, all the same. I dismissed it as my mind playing tricks on me, but I soon felt I needed to accept these ambiguous feelings and images as signs of something supernatural listening to my prayer. I continued on, and soon enough I was hearing a full-on conversation in my head, as if there was someone there talking to me, telling me what I wanted to hear and know all along.
When I finished, I thought I would feel more fulfilled, for I had accomplished what others before me had done. Instead, a new feeling was nagging at me. The feeling was doubt; the rational, human part of my brain was telling me that there was no way to verify if what I had experienced was of god, or of the devil, or even of myself. It was this realization that the whole process was so uncertain that helped deconvert me from Mormonism, and eventually to deconvert me from god entirely.
