9 responses so far ↓

• 1 nee // Dec 4, 2006 at 4:09 pm

  I have had negative spiritual experiences. I think the reasons for negative “vibes” are varied just as the reasons for positive “vibes” and this is why I don’t trust these experiences as so-called manifestations of a Spirit.

  When I was in high school, I spent a lot of time at the library and at a used bookstore reading various religious/sociology/psychology books. One day I happened upon the satanic bible. I pulled it from the shelf, lowered myself to the floor and began reading. I read a few pages and skimmed through several more. I felt an absolute pit in my stomach and it was a very dark feeling. It stayed with me through the bus ride home and returned whenever I thought about it, eventually diminishing over time. I believe I had those feelings because of my christian upbringing which portrayed satan as a real force with power. Had I grown up without this conditioning, I don’t think it would have freaked me out. I would have viewed it as just another sect.

  I had the same feeling reading “Pigs in the Parlor” which is a bizarre little book about possessed people. It scared the crap out of me. Again, my conditioning and lack of understanding gave it the power. I also used to feel this way about ouija boards because I was told not to mess with them, they’re evil, yada yada yada. And yet it was marketed as entertainment. There’s a segment of the population who don’t give them power because they don’t know them in that context.

  I also had very negative feelings when I happened upon the temple ceremony online when I was a relatively new member. I was totally freaked out because nothing I was reading was anything that was talked about at church. I didn’t read the whole thing and actually stopped fairly early into it because it was confusing and I felt like I’d committed a moral crime by reading it at all. Because it was secretive, because it was confusing I had the bad vibes. I did not feel that way when I actually went through though I still really had no idea what went on there. I never sought it out again online. I talked to friends who allayed my concerns and promised me it was a good place. If I hadn’t had their assurance though, I likely would have been freaked.

  If someone got a negative feeling reading the book of mormon, I would wonder what their associations with it were. What negative experiences have they had with church, with scriptures, etc. Did someone explain something to them at one time that was unsettling.

  I think we should pay attention to our “vibes” about things and people. Whether they are telling us that there is a real danger or telling us something doesn’t feel right to us right now, either way it isn’t good for us at the moment and we need disengage and figure out why.

• 2 John // Dec 4, 2006 at 10:55 pm

  Thanks, nee, for responding to this post. I think that we both agree that many of these ‘negative’ experiences are subjective and tied to our familiarity, our cultural upbringing, and other environmental factors.

  I do want to broaden this conversation into broader mystical experiences–still subjective, but which have a profound (religious) impact on how we feel (dis)connected to humanity or to the universe (and/or God).

  You might enjoy this description of a drug-induced mystical experience.

• 3 Jonathan // Dec 5, 2006 at 7:36 am

  I don’t know if this counts, but when my brother was suicidal, which was mostly unknown to me because I was away from home at collage, I began to have very awful dreams. I can best describe them as demonic. It involved the same person in each of these dreams that occurred at different nights over the period of a month. He would kill me and torture, kill, (and much worse) anyone I was close to in my dreams - it was sickening. Strangely, most of the times we came in contact with each other, he would be and act like my best friend - with only my heart shouting to me that something was terribly wrong with this person, but the rest of me was just confused. Even when he was killing me (and others) I would be so confused that I would still not hate him. I just remember crying because I could not stop him from doing anything he pleased.

  For some reason though, I would always come back to life in all these dreams, and this confused and angered him, which I remember was odd because he would never show anger before - only cool indifference or light humor.

  I remember wondering about these dreams - how could I dream of such horrific stuff? I didn’t ever see movies or read books that involve horrible torture or mutilation such as the stuff that was in these dreams. Where did it come from? Could my imagination be so sick?

  Nee’s right - who’s to know what to make of this? Supernatural evil? Demonic? Or just something random and I’m just trying to make sense of it by interpreting things though my worldview (which we all do, BTW - but who’s right?) I don’t like to assign strange things that happen to me to supernatural causes, especially demonic, even though I do believe it is possible, but the facts were strange - how is it possible that the same character (who acts and behaves in exactly the same way and looks the same way) can exist in different dreams in different nights? I’m still not sure. I’ll assign a 60% possibility to it, and the other 40% to just bad collage food or something.

  I later called out to God for help. I was loosing sleep and terribly haunted during the day. The dreams abruptly stopped and to this day have never returned. Soon after, I told my parents what was happening to me, and they rushed me to my brother at the hospital. We told him it was looking (as much as we hated to admit it) that we were under spiritual attack) He cried out to God for help that night too, and that same night, pulled out of his depression. That same night, my mother claims she saw a demon in her bedroom which got into bed with her (very scary). She cried out to God too and it was gone. My whole response to this dark time in our family is… what the HELL is going on? Were we all on drugs or something? (of course, none of us were.)

  None of us in our family like to think about supernatural evil, and assign events in our life to it AT ALL, but we were all pretty shaken up - something weird had definitely happened.

• 4 Miko // Dec 5, 2006 at 8:05 am

  I’ve sense darkness but it never really made a profound spiritual impact on me. I used to stay the night at my friend’s house & we would sleep in the same bed. Sometimes I would watch darkness steal across the room, as though it were reaching for her. I would simply tell it to go away and create a circle of protection in my mind around her. It always did. I also once saw it touch someone; it looked like the shadow of a hand, but there was no one to make the shadow. It touched a woman’s face, almost like a caress. It happened so fast that I didn’t see it coming and was horrified that I hadn’t stopped it. I’ve never felt in danger of it coming after me and I can’t really say that it affected me spiritually all that much. Maybe it made me feel like I was special, that I had this power to make it turn away.

  Jonathan: that is a powerful experience, thank you for sharing! I think we all have these kinds of psychic connections and that we’re much more suceptable to them when we’re young. I remember when my grandfather died, it woke me up and I couldn’t get back to sleep. My dad called later in the day to let us know, but he stopped and said good bye on his way out of this world, so I already knew. As nee said, it’s a matter of paying attention to bad vibes. Presumably, we have them for a reason.

• 5 Jonathan // Dec 5, 2006 at 11:00 am

  Miko -
  Some weird experiences! I’ve heard stories like yours from many others - many are not Christian or even religious at all. I originally posted this on my own site, but just for kicks I thought I’d post it here…

  It’s a strange thing - these ’supernatural’ occurrences. They definitely happen to most, if not all of us, but in my experience, we all tend not to talk about them and sweep them under the rug. We don’t want to put too much stock in them, and often for good reason wonder if they really happened. When we do talk about them, we used hushed voices and make sure no one else is looking. We are ashamed to some degree of them. Why? Possibly because we have come to a point in our culture that the only evidence that something is real is if it can be observed and repeated, or in other words, fulfill the prerequisites for scientific validity for observation in the natural world. However, there is little doubt that at some point in our lives, something supernatural has happened, but we are left without the tools to verify it, or world views to understand it, and so we sweep it under the rug, and we thus cut out a portion of reality from our lives.

  It’s too bad we don’t possess the excellent tools of observation that science allows us for observing the natural world when studying events in the supernatural or spiritual one. It seems to me a mistake to downplay things that cannot be observed in this dimension (spiritual stuff) and elevate things that can (3d stuff) simply because we have well established tools of observation for the latter. Should we live our lives on the basis that one set of tools works better than the other, so ignore a whole world of reality (not letting it impact our lives) simply because we do not possess good enough tools to observe it?

  What is it that is in us that shuts down the hunger for truth for the unexplained, confusing, supernatural phenomena that occurs in our lives? Because we have bad tools? Did bad tools stop early scientists from trying to find truth about the natural world? No. Why are bad tools stopping us from trying to find truth about the spiritual one? Is the spiritual life not mysterious and inviting, almost equally or more so than trying to understand the beauty and complexity of the physical one?

  In scientific inquiry, we try and fail, over and over, to understand things. Think of Edison - genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. This is the power behind scientific observation and discovery. Why do we throw in the towel so quickly when we come to a dead end in spiritual inquiries? Why is Edison’s necessary passion to make headway in making scientific discoveries lacking in spiritual reality in our own lives? It wasn’t Edison’s bad tools that prevented him.

  So what holds us back? Why do we suffer from lazy spiritual inquiry? Surely not the bad tools. What holds back good scientific research on alternative energy sources? Is it not big oil companies or a government friendly to them? Politically speaking, they would stand to loose money, power, and influence. Likewise, in the realm of our own inner nature, is there not also a political battle? Is there not some part of our nature that would stand to loose if we were to further investigate the wild frontier of the spiritual life?

• 6 Miko // Dec 5, 2006 at 7:20 pm

  You’re right. I’ve had so many “supernatural” experiences that I treasure and firmly believe happened in a manner similar to how I remember them happening. Most often, I refrain from sharing them because I expect people to be incredulous, roll their eyes, make fun of me, point and laugh, I’m not sure. That somehow, sharing it will cause ridicule. Other times, they are experiences that I cherish to the extent that, even in a “safe” environment, I don’t share them because I don’t want to profane them. That sharing these experiences will make them less special. Like (in Catholicism) the Eucharist which is kept in a golden box, not to be looked at except under reverent circumstances.

  To some extent, I don’t want a scientific examination of my experiences. Not because I think that they’ll define away the supernaturalness (like John’s link to the drug-induced spiritual experience: it does not lose its meaning for the experiencer to know that it was due to the drug he took), but more because I don’t want them profaned by the scientific gaze.

  In movies, people who depend too heavily on astrology are generally jokes that “everyone” can laugh at (sort of like a safe mockery joke: you can’t make fun of a race or a religion because people who belong to that race or religion or know people who do won’t laugh, but everyone laughs at silly hippies who believe the moon affects their lives), but I do read my charts. I also read the newspaper horoscope and laugh, but I know in a general sense where the moon is, where Venus is, where pertinent asteroids and planets are and how they might affect me or others. Does knowing this make MoF members think less of my intelligence? Mayhap. But, ultimately, I have no problem defending my position in this matter, especially to the people here. But this is not necessarily knowledge that I want to be common: maybe I’m afraid of being a universal joke.

• 7 John // Dec 5, 2006 at 11:04 pm

  Great responses, all, and they’ve got me thinking about this subject even more. Thank you for sharing your experiences and posing more questions. I’m going to try to respond in post format, so that we can give the “dark side of spirituality” a little more blogtime.

  Miko, when you all come over, I’ll have to brush the dust off and pull out my Tarot card collection.

• 8 nee // Dec 6, 2006 at 5:14 am

  John, what do you think of Saul/Paul’s experience? That was dark literally (he was unable to see) and figuratively. As a result his entire life was transformed with a force few will ever experience. Clearly, his soul was being prepped.

  Also, if I recall correctly, Joseph Smith was said to have a very dark experience in the grove before the light.

• 9 Jonathan // Dec 6, 2006 at 6:41 am

  Adding to Nee’s list - there was also the man born blind that Jesus later healed. It was the same guy Jesus told his disciples about and stated that he was not blind because his parents had sinned, but so that he would one day ’see’ (both physically and spiritually.) Probably some more examples are out there, but I can’t think of them.

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