The pondering of a dream that led to deconversio
By Kelsey ~
Since birth to the age of 16 I was 100% convinced that God existed, he was my father, we had a deep personal relationship, and that nothing could tear me away. Being so caught up in this belief, and having so much faith, I often spoke to God (vocally and in my head) almost every second of ever day, with the best intentions to better know my creator.
It took three years, a random dream, the most painful emotional torment my mind/body had ever experienced and intellectual honesty for me to come to my senses, and to learn what I had been denied as a Christian.
[ Here is the dream ]
I was walking barefoot in the sands of Egypt, When I came upon four monuments sitting side by side.
They came to life, and stood before me alive.
I approached them, curious and in awe.
They walked into the desert, and I followed.
After many hours, we came upon a rope hanging from the sky.
I looked up the rope and did not find a connection, it simply faded into the atmosphere.
The closest monument reached over and pulled, sending a storm of acid raid to destroy it.
The second and the third did the same, but as the fourth reached I screamed for it to stop.
I did not want it to kill itself, because I valued its existence in general.
It gave me a calm smile, pulled the rope, and crumbled into a pile of rubble before me.
I was confused about this, and wondered off to ponder what had happened. I realized that I was dreaming after a while, and in that moment the dream shifted to a wormhole.
I was in middle of a wormhole... with a liquid metallic ball in front of me the size of a basketball, and liquid colours streaming the walls so beautiful and vibrant that I do not see them awake. There was no sense of time, and I could not remember or even 'feel' when I had arrived, or when I would be leaving. A place where there was no sense of time... A glimpse of what eternity felt like.
Somehow, it ended. When? I don't know.
Remember, no time...
I was sitting in middle of space, looking out at distant stars. A giant explosion took place in front of me, trillions of miles away and sucked into itself forming a star. I looked at my right hand, where flakes of skin were stripping off and being manipulated by gravity (or something like it) into a tight ball in front of me, which then converted into stem cells and grew into a heart.
The heart beat once, and I started to think things that were not coming from me...
1. Do not fear death, death is natural.
2. When you die, what you are composed of will be recycled into the universe and in this sense, you will not die.
3. You are the universe observing itself, and in this way you are studying yourself.
I woke up after this, literally speaking out load what I had listed.
Remember, I was a full-hearted-God fearing-Christian when this dream happened, and this was the most impacting and vivid/Surreal dream I had ever experienced.
For the first time, ever, I questioned if maybe my thoughts on God and the bible to which I based my existence was inaccurate.
I thought: Maybe God is trying to speak to me? But why would God deny hell/heaven? Why would God say something so out of line with the bible...
Then I thought: What if Satan is doing this to me? What if he is trying to turn me against God? Oh-no...
Bringing Satan into the picture put a dead-stop on my curiosity of the dream in that moment, I was deeply afraid.
Slowly, it sunk in as to how opposite God was to me.
My love was unconditional, his was conditional.I prayed, and prayed, and prayed and begged God to give me clarity on the issue. None was given.
In my desperation to not let this dream tear my beliefs apart, I researched all that I could to prove the existence of God, Jesus Christ, and the biblical events that had been sworn to be the truth.
Honesty was my greatest virtue, and I would defend the 'truth' to the very fiber of its being.
As well(in the course of three years) I read the bible front to back, out loud to myself to dedicate as much memory as possible to the text. It was within reading the bible, that I discovered that I disagreed with God's morality.
Slowly, it sunk in as to how opposite God was to me.
My love was unconditional, his was conditional.
My love was based off of trust, and the desire to improve the quality of other human beings / Animals / Others in general through the act of Empathy, patience, and continuing support and understanding. His love required belief without evidence, and obedience without question. All the while still claiming to love those whom he threw in an endless torment of hell, and refused to assist or improve the quality of life of those who dwell in this life. Even when the most faithful reached up to beg him for assistance. (Something about this was very wrong.)
I valued who I was, and who others were.
He devalued humanity all together, claiming we were sinful by nature. (If this were true, why did he make us this way? Why does he continue to allow it? How could you create something imperfect and then turn around and punish it for being so?).
This alone was enough for me to be upset. To be angry, and feel betrayed. I still believed him to exist, but I was disappointed, and hurt.
So I took a lonely walk into the woods one night, sat on the foot path for about an hour pondering on what to say, wondering if my deep sense of morality and intellectual honesty were more important than the threat of eternal damnation.
And I thought... A loving God would not damn me for being honest. A loving God would not condemn me for standing up for the truth and for wanting to be sure of me decisions.
I stared long and hard at the star filled sky that night, and I reflected on my dream about being apart of the universe observing itself.
That is when I realized who God was, where he was, and why it was so difficult to let go.
God was me.
This whole time... I was talking to myself.
It took three years, a random dream, the most painful emotional torment my mind/body had ever experienced and intellectual honesty for me to come to my senses, and to learn what I had been denied as a Christian.
[ Here is the dream ]
I was walking barefoot in the sands of Egypt, When I came upon four monuments sitting side by side.
They came to life, and stood before me alive.
I approached them, curious and in awe.
They walked into the desert, and I followed.
After many hours, we came upon a rope hanging from the sky.
I looked up the rope and did not find a connection, it simply faded into the atmosphere.
The closest monument reached over and pulled, sending a storm of acid raid to destroy it.
The second and the third did the same, but as the fourth reached I screamed for it to stop.
I did not want it to kill itself, because I valued its existence in general.
It gave me a calm smile, pulled the rope, and crumbled into a pile of rubble before me.
I was confused about this, and wondered off to ponder what had happened. I realized that I was dreaming after a while, and in that moment the dream shifted to a wormhole.
I was in middle of a wormhole... with a liquid metallic ball in front of me the size of a basketball, and liquid colours streaming the walls so beautiful and vibrant that I do not see them awake. There was no sense of time, and I could not remember or even 'feel' when I had arrived, or when I would be leaving. A place where there was no sense of time... A glimpse of what eternity felt like.
Somehow, it ended. When? I don't know.
Remember, no time...
I was sitting in middle of space, looking out at distant stars. A giant explosion took place in front of me, trillions of miles away and sucked into itself forming a star. I looked at my right hand, where flakes of skin were stripping off and being manipulated by gravity (or something like it) into a tight ball in front of me, which then converted into stem cells and grew into a heart.
The heart beat once, and I started to think things that were not coming from me...
1. Do not fear death, death is natural.
2. When you die, what you are composed of will be recycled into the universe and in this sense, you will not die.
3. You are the universe observing itself, and in this way you are studying yourself.
I woke up after this, literally speaking out load what I had listed.
Remember, I was a full-hearted-God fearing-Christian when this dream happened, and this was the most impacting and vivid/Surreal dream I had ever experienced.
For the first time, ever, I questioned if maybe my thoughts on God and the bible to which I based my existence was inaccurate.
I thought: Maybe God is trying to speak to me? But why would God deny hell/heaven? Why would God say something so out of line with the bible...
Then I thought: What if Satan is doing this to me? What if he is trying to turn me against God? Oh-no...
Bringing Satan into the picture put a dead-stop on my curiosity of the dream in that moment, I was deeply afraid.
Slowly, it sunk in as to how opposite God was to me.
My love was unconditional, his was conditional.I prayed, and prayed, and prayed and begged God to give me clarity on the issue. None was given.
In my desperation to not let this dream tear my beliefs apart, I researched all that I could to prove the existence of God, Jesus Christ, and the biblical events that had been sworn to be the truth.
Honesty was my greatest virtue, and I would defend the 'truth' to the very fiber of its being.
As well(in the course of three years) I read the bible front to back, out loud to myself to dedicate as much memory as possible to the text. It was within reading the bible, that I discovered that I disagreed with God's morality.
Slowly, it sunk in as to how opposite God was to me.
My love was unconditional, his was conditional.
My love was based off of trust, and the desire to improve the quality of other human beings / Animals / Others in general through the act of Empathy, patience, and continuing support and understanding. His love required belief without evidence, and obedience without question. All the while still claiming to love those whom he threw in an endless torment of hell, and refused to assist or improve the quality of life of those who dwell in this life. Even when the most faithful reached up to beg him for assistance. (Something about this was very wrong.)
I valued who I was, and who others were.
He devalued humanity all together, claiming we were sinful by nature. (If this were true, why did he make us this way? Why does he continue to allow it? How could you create something imperfect and then turn around and punish it for being so?).
This alone was enough for me to be upset. To be angry, and feel betrayed. I still believed him to exist, but I was disappointed, and hurt.
So I took a lonely walk into the woods one night, sat on the foot path for about an hour pondering on what to say, wondering if my deep sense of morality and intellectual honesty were more important than the threat of eternal damnation.
And I thought... A loving God would not damn me for being honest. A loving God would not condemn me for standing up for the truth and for wanting to be sure of me decisions.
I stared long and hard at the star filled sky that night, and I reflected on my dream about being apart of the universe observing itself.
That is when I realized who God was, where he was, and why it was so difficult to let go.
God was me.
This whole time... I was talking to myself.