Skip to main content

The Recipe for Spiritual Experiences

By Carl S. ~

It‘s not unusual to find individuals testifying to their spiritual experiences, while others describe  themselves as “spiritual” persons. We can be sure, with the new pentecostal movements in the  Christian religion alone, that churches are loaded with those sharing personal testimonies of spiritual  experiences. Have you had your “spiritual” experience yet, and aren't you tempted to join this fad - movement? Wouldn't you want to experience just one of those moments that in current parlance,  “changed your life forever”? Well, drugs have brought many to experience the “spiritual,” the  “transcendental,” and  opened the doors of sensory perception to a hyper-reality. (Henry James, in  his book, “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” cites alcoholic beverages as also causing them.) we  hear of ordinary people describing some experiences as “surreal.” You don't need admittance to an  American Indian peyote-included, religious ceremony, or money to pay for a sweat lodge gathering.

This recipe for “spiritual experiences” does not involve drugs. It is something anyone can do who can  stand it. So many of those spiritual experiences, commonly described by the “spiritual” people in our  culture, are like bland watered-down beverages, compared to the “real thing.” Here is the recipe, the  Tradition, the Access, of prophets, John the Baptist, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, St. Anthony of the  Desert, isolated monks, and Peter the Hermit, whose sermons inspired the crusaders to die for the faith:

Go off alone. Cut yourself off from all human contact. The typical minimum amount of time for this  isolation for the experiences to take hold is forty days and nights. The desert is the ideal, and the usual environment.

It is absolutely essential that you enforce sleep deprivation.

Severely deprive yourself of food, especially nutritional foods.

Physical punishment is a must. This may include scarring yourself and not bathing, banishing evil  thoughts about physical pleasures, most especially, sexual thoughts, and any other “urges” fighting with  your soul for control of your body are to be warred against for the purification of your soul.

You must pray continually throughout to spiritual beings for wisdom, understanding, enlightenment  and assurance, all the while opening yourself to receive their messages, in all these practices.

If you persist, you will receive “spiritual understanding” surpassing all human understanding. Perhaps  you may hear the very Voice of God speaking to you. Nevertheless, profound experiences will come to  you, convictions of truth and personal contact with the Divine. There are many who can attest to these  things. Some are well known as charismatic founders of faiths, others merely as charismatic speakers.  All will attest to their profound experiences and utter convictions of Truth derived from personal "spiritual” experiences triumphing over everyday ones.

Now maybe you are thinking, “Why, the Recipe sounds like the tortures practiced at Gitmo, in the  Inquisition, etc., without the ‘spiritual’ quest.” You are right. In fact, though the ends may be different,  the means to achieve the ends are the same. The difference lies  between other-inflicted and self-inflicted tortures. (It is not known how many have become completely or partially insane as a result of them.) And believe it or not, even those “personal spiritually-intense-life-altering -experiences” we commonly hear about (thank you, Francis Collins and Barbara  Ehrenreich) can be attributed to natural extreme stress on the body/mind!

So, if you want to convince yourself that you're having a spiritual experience, just mess with your body.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

On Living Virtuously

By Webmdave ~  A s a Christian, living virtuously meant living in a manner that pleased God. Pleasing god (or living virtuously) was explained as: Praying for forgiveness for sins  Accepting Christ as Savior  Frequently reading the Bible  Memorizing Bible verses Being baptized (subject to church rules)  Attending church services  Partaking of the Lord’s Supper  Tithing  Resisting temptations to lie, steal, smoke, drink, party, have lustful thoughts, have sex (outside of marriage) masturbate, etc.  Boldly sharing the Gospel of Salvation with unbelievers The list of virtuous values and expectations grew over time. Once the initial foundational values were safely under the belt, “more virtues'' were introduced. Newer introductions included (among others) harsh condemnation of “worldly” music, homosexuality and abortion Eventually the list of values grew ponderous, and these ideals were not just personal for us Christians. These virtues were used to condemn and disrespect fro