Spiritual experiences?

[CapnAwesome]

I can only speak for myself, but in my life I have never had a spiritual experience. I have never had a spiritual feeling of any kind. In fact I'm not sure what people mean when they talk about having spiritual experiences. The explanations given to me always tend towards vagueness, the kind of vagueness that instantly throws up my bullshit detector.

"You just can't describe it." To me this sounds a mighty lot like "It doesn't exist."

However I can't discount the possibility that such experiences do exist, mostly based on the changes in spirituality or religious feeling often associated with LSD usage, or temporal lobe epilepsy. Some change in the brain happens and people suddenly believe. Is my brain different? Do I lack something others have, or have something others lack? Are people just making it up in mass? Have any of you had a spiritual experience?

[Jackalope]

"You just can't describe it." To me this sounds a mighty lot like "It doesn't exist."

Not only that, but it smells an awful lot like bullshit.

Mind your step.

P.S. No, I can't say that I've had a spiritual experience.

[Reasonable_Jeff]

I felt deeply impressed with the phrase, "You've tried everything that you thought would make you happy, but you've never tried me," while I was recovering one morning in my girlfriends kitchen from another night of being obliterated...I knew what it meant.

I went out and bought a cheap Bible that didn't look like a Bible (I didn't want to let anyone know I was reading a Bible) and started reading. I wanted to give it an honest shot so I could say, "I've tried that and it didn't work."

I read Genesis and I discovered that the "starting line up" of God's "heroes" were horrible. I figured if God can use them, I still had a chance. Then I read Romans. When I started the book I was an unbeliever, by the time I had finished it I had given my life to Jesus and told him, "I don't want to stop having sex with my girlfriend, I don't want to stop being a pot head or stop drinking, but if you can use me then my life is yours."

After that moment the Lord began to change my desires so that I no longer wanted to be drunk or high...the "thrills" I used to love paled in comparison to the thrill of loving Jesus.

I wrote about how Jesus satisfies more than other pursuits here - http://morethanmorality.blogspot.com/201...verer.html

[Gilgamesh]

I don't want to stop having sex with my girlfriend

Me neither.

[Jackalope]

I don't want to stop having sex with my girlfriend

Me neither.

I don't want to stop having sex with either of your girlfriends.

[Gilgamesh]

I don't want to stop having sex with either of your girlfriends.

What's mine is yours... and since my girlfriend is the very same girlfriend of Jeff, what's his is yours.

[Jackalope]

I don't want to stop having sex with either of your girlfriends.

What's mine is yours... and since my girlfriend is the very same girlfriend of Jeff, what's his is yours.

Any further comment by me along these lines would be in extremely poor taste, moreso than my prior comments - so I'll just leave it at that.

[Darkstar]

I read Genesis and I discovered that the "starting line up" of God's "heroes" were horrible. I figured if God can use them, I still had a chance. Then I read Romans. When I started the book I was an unbeliever, by the time I had finished it I had given my life to Jesus and told him, "I don't want to stop having sex with my girlfriend, I don't want to stop being a pot head or stop drinking, but if you can use me then my life is yours."

Weird, I've only heard of it working in reverse.

After that moment the Lord began to change my desires so that I no longer wanted to be drunk or high...the "thrills" I used to love paled in comparison to the thrill of loving Jesus.

Addictions go away naturally after a while (especially drug related ones).

As for 'spiritual experiences', the only thing I've gotten is a feeling of purification after confession. However, I got a stronger feeling than the ones at church when dark knight Cecil from Final Fantasy IV became a paladin. I had convinced myself beforehand that confession would purify my soul, and that translated into an actual feeling. With the game, I didn't know it was going to happen, and it was someone else being purified, so that just goes to show that people can trick themselves into believeing anything, and even having physical feelings to accompany it. ("mind over matter")

[Minimalist]

Then I read Romans.

Odd. I read "The Bible Unearthed" and concluded that the whole basis of judaism, xtiantiy and islam was total bullshit.

The difference being that The Bible Unearthed actually has evidence to back up its conclusions.

[KichigaiNeko]

Posted before in another related thread...(fuck xtians go round and round in circles!

Is this your brain on god?