examples of spiritual experiences

[mackles]

I think the question of what a spiritual experience is may never be answered the way people want to understand it. God, spirit, and belief are all things that are personally unique interpretations, I would almost stretch to say that no one person's idea of any of these descriptive words mean the same thing. At one time when I shed my belief in god, I also shed belief in all things entailing. It wasn't until I gained a strong education that I understood the importance of experience and "spirit"

[pyrrho314]

@mackles : my working theory is that the content of these experiences may share no obvious resemblance, but that I imagine the feeling, indnescribable though it may be, has at it's root some common characteristic, related to the same biochemical system and reaction, and in some way relatable. I think this diverse set of experiences already has been related, by poets and artists mostly. Further conception of what relates them is not beyond better comprehension.

[mackles]

@pyrrho314 Have you read Mircea Eliade's book 'The Profane and The Sacred'? If not, I highly highly recommend it, it has some great ideas of those same sort. What I've come to believe is something very similar to that. All religions are bound by spiritual experiences, a supernatural which transcends the natural. Eliade coins the thought that spirituality, whether evolutionarily inclined, physiological, or psychological, it is unique to human experience. We feel it listening to music,

[pyrrho314]

@mackles : everything we have ever had the pleasure of describing started out undescribable.

[mackles]

@pyrrho314 beautifully put

[mackles]

viewing art, climbing to the top of a mountain, whatever it might be, we all feel it and its indescribable. Religions I believe, with their age, have created and perfected methods of prayer, meditation, and worship which concentrate a persons ability to focus their consciousness on intensifying the experience, so much that the supernatural seems to be natural

[DesiHumanist]

I never had a spiritual experience. How does it feel?

[jaykid30]

When I said outloud one day "God i dont have any shirts!" then later my aunt came by my house and said "God spoke to me in my conscious and said you needed some shirts so i bought you some." I would say that would be a spiritual experience for me

[Mork5]

spirituality is

where there is

no me

no words

no necessities

[julesandmax]

I struggled with how to answer this question; it was very hard. I listen to my own words, they sound metaphysical as you described you did not want. Very interesting video and comments - thanks very much -

[pyrrho314]

my mistake, this is a messy subject. No, I want the metaphysical too, I'm fine with it. I just to be honest have to say I'll come up with material explanations... but I know they seem metaphysical... my own spiritual experiences have feelings which I could think of as metaphysical... they feel that way and can totally be related that way. I'm just admitting I'll look for the material thread that ties them together.

Spiritual experiences that seem metaphysical are welcome !!!

[julesandmax]

Good, okay, I understand. It is a messy subject :-)

[zilchersatya]

i can't think of one specific moment, and i haven't had any out of body experiences (at least no concious ones), but i guess i feel like catching a shooting star every now and then :)

now that i think about it... back when i was a kid, these shooting stars could feel like life-savers...

[pyrrho314]

I have what feels like a spiritual experience every time I gaze at the night sky... I once saw a particularly amazing Leonid meteor shower, and it was deeply powerful as well. I think it is in the class of experiences I'm talking about, but then... who knows, I'm not sure what distinguishes them.

[yeahwotevaman]

I under-estimated the potency of some blotter acid I bought when I was a teenager. I thought the nuclear bomb had gone off and that I was stuck in some weird underworld full of animated corpses for what seemed like a very very long time until I came out of it after jumping into a pond, thinking I had to do so in order to be reborn, which my friends found very amusing especially when I was trying to explain to them what I was doing. I think this was the most bizarre state I have ever experienced.

[pyrrho314]

recently UC did a study on mushrooms and much more than half the participants reported they had a "spiritual experience"... I think one reason is that these expand what you are able to picture the world as offering in terms of different perspectives... that tends to force you to broaden your perspective. However, drugs can't make sense of this, and put it into place, so their power is limited... you have to make sense of it all outside the intoxication or it's moot.

[f417h]

is that a bryd I Sea.

[f417h]

(º//\\//\\A=h20

:)

[Molliepet]

Spiritual experience?

If you are asking has God revealed himself to someone that's one thing....

I have a sister who literally died..was revived..has parts of her brain destroyed..proven through scans..yet those areas of the brain aren't fuctioning..BUT she is fuctioning in those areas her brain says are not...is this spritual..well many people did pray for her..is healing a spiritual experience..no it's scriptual...

[pyrrho314]

I do not think our spiritual experiences are what we take them to be, metaphysical. I think when we look closer we will find that what ties spiritual experiences together is much more tsngible than all our metaphysical experiences.

[qizalia]

Walking several miles in a long evening dress in the desert under the moonlight, eventually barefoot and no prince came.

[qizalia]

Oh, by the way i'm still having it. it? moonlight never lets you down, the clouds do.

[pyrrho314]

nice.

[bwhahrhr]

for me an example of a spiritual experience is the moment all those silly theists and atheists stop their bullshit and become agnostics.

[pyrrho314]

spiritual for you or them?

[bwhahrhr]

for me ;)

[SSanf]

For me it would be a spiritual experience to find that avowed nonbelievers have finally acknowledged that there are people who actually know things that they, themselves, have not yet learned, read about, studied or experienced and that just because they don't know something and science has not explained something does not mean that it is untrue.

[jogayot]

"does not mean that it is untrue."

for god's sake check your dictionary for meaning of the word agnostic!

[pyrrho314]

I find the negative reaction very telling, what is so scary about asking what spiritual experiences really are?

[pyrrho314]

to some, scary to some...

[SSanf]

I don't think people are in the least bit scared. They are annoyed. See above.

[pyrrho314]

you fear I'm being disingenuous by asking is what I read.

[HumanTruth0000]

Have had some with aspects of nature like u have. Many human moments-some very simple ones with people in different parts of the world. A near death experience. Moonlight Sonata. Many moments can be personally spiritual without being full of metaphysical or religious BS like u have discussed.

[julesandmax]

I have, many times. Always with people, though. I mean, I love to be out in nature, but nature is always silent. It never reaches back, I can't get it to.

[USACitizenJames]

Years ago I was in an apartment fire.

There was a moment in which I was frantically trying to escape when I realized that my effort was failing, time slowed down and I experienced a feeling of separation from the body and it was as if my body was acting on its own and I was observing... not in control of myself, and without getting too detailed, I managed to get everyone out including myself.

[pyrrho314]

awesome

[angryislander56]

The comments so far seem to confuse spirituality

with fantasy.And the fantasies aren't very

spiritual:)

By spiritual do you mean some experience of an

other? Something inexplicable?

[pyrrho314]

I let the individual define whatever they merely call spiritual. After we had such examples we could extract what the analytic meaning is, that is, what we identify as connecting the experiences.

[angryislander56]

I left a stock pot on the stove and passed out

one xmas(WAY too much Grand Marnier).Several

hours later I woke up yelling WHAT? WHAT DO YOU

WANT? I had jumped off the bed.The room was full of smoke.Almost burned the place down but didn't.

What woke me up?

[USACitizenJames]

Interesting...

I too awoke from a dead sleep unexpectedly yelling quite literally, "What the fuck!"

I still don't know what woke me up that morning.

[Ceadem]

the smell of smoke?

[angryislander56]

Maybe.Believe me when I say I am not in the least

inclined towards the supernatural shit.

Why was I standing up yelling? I suppose that it

is possible that was my response to the smell in

a dream.But there was a lingering feeling of....

[PuppyHate]

I'm curious to know what you were on when making this video...

[strav12]

This is a really interesting development - a materialist presentation of spirituality - doubt if you will get too much here - spirit, soul, emotions are very tender, personal aspects of ourselves - even the hint of derision or humiliation and we crawl back in - will be interesting to see how this one develops tho....

[Loreleila]

There is nothing which is not.

[dnHooligan]

drugs have almost always been involved in my spiritual experiences. i could only describe it as a 'sense of connectedness.'

[HarveyHopkins]

your definition is already on point yo. - a moment when you shift to a larger frame of reference.

[jogayot]

e is pretty neat.

[qizalia]

Not every minute, but everyday..well mostdaze.

[LimpLoser]

this is my Spiritual experience

I had you gagged and bound tied to a chair. Previous to this you had begged for your worthless life.

I then proceded to pour Gasoline over your thrashing body and burn you alive.

[yeahwotevaman]

No that was Mr.Blonde

[LimpLoser]

teehee. yeh

[cloudmonkeys]

LimpLoser this my Spiritual experience: I watch as you are raped by 200 elephants and then drowned in a vat of lions urine. Your urine soaked corpse is then used as a scarecrow.

[pyrrho314]

interesting reaction

how is it explained

[pyrrho314]

by the way I don't believe you, and you ought to know right now I don't take threats lightly, even over the internet. You better be willing to explain yourself to police if you are going to play threatening games with me limp. For one, I myself will call you to account for it.

What's the meaning of your putrid little internet tough talk exhibition?

or can you? is it pathological and beyond your conscious recognition?

[LimpLoser]

pyrrho. its a joke.

[pyrrho314]

I didn't find it funny, but fine.

[Ceadem]

I was just chilling in the shallow shores of some beach, there was a shack, in the windows of the shack colourful lights were flashing, a party, i looked down and my arm was a claw, shiny and browny like a crabs and then i was in a castle and all the knights were singing and chanting, i caught a glimpse of my friend but i could make no sense of a cougar in mario-world, i told him so and he laughed. though i could never shake the legs off of my body I cannot wait till my next shroom encounter

[SSanf]

Have I had spiritual experiences? Yes. Am I willing to share them with you? No.

Why would I even want to do that? Do you think I have any interest in convincing you to believe what I do and think what I think? I have no such interest.

[SSanf]

Your curiosity is your problem and not mine. No one has any obligation to satisfy your curiosity.

[pyrrho314]

I don't remember mentioning any obligations? Why do you project and obligation onto this, instead, I think some people willingly share such experiences.

[SSanf]

Apparently not.

[pyrrho314]

no, the reason is so we could abstract from them what it means to be spiritual in a practical sense. the example I give in the description makes clear a hypothetical example of something that would be considered spiritual would do. This is a common practice, making such impersonal examples, for philosophers not wanting to reveal too much personal information.

[pyrrho314]

why do you think you have this reaction? What does spirituality mean to you exactly?

[SSanf]

It has been my experience that avowed nonbelievers who inquire about spiritual experiences have only one interest and that is to debunk what the person revealing a very personal and important incident in their life has shared. They have no interest in learning any truth beyond what they think they already know. That is both insulting and infuriating.

I think no matter what person tells you, you have already decided that they are either lying, mistaken or deluded.

[Ceadem]

you're making the assumption then that pyrrho is a 'nonbeliever' and that this video is nothing but a ruse to catch out the 'believers'. I'd say that would be an incorrect assumption.

[SSanf]

You are entirely correct about my perceptions and assumptions. That is EXACTLY how I read it.

[pyrrho314]

I'm a believer in spirituality, just not metaphysics.

[pyrrho314]

I think when we make metaphysical interpretation of our spiritual experiences that that part is an illuion, but only because by definition the metaphysical are things that don't interact with us, physics being all that can interact with us by definition. But that leaves the actual meaning of those experiences to those people.

[SSanf]

Definitions of metaphysics: * noun: the philosophical study of being and knowing

Definitions of spirituality * noun: concern with things of the spirit

Definitions of spirit: * noun: any incorporeal supernatural being that can become visible (or audible) to human beings

Definitions of spirit: * noun: the vital principle or animating force within living things

[SSanf]

That is all a bit deep for me. Things do interact with us with or without your belief. I have absolutely zero doubt about it. So, that is good enough for me. If you even have to ask the question, you certainly do not have the answers. Those who have the answers don't have to ask for verification. They already have it.

[pyrrho314]

if something interacts with us, then it is physical, that is all it means to be physical, to be able to interact with us.

Those that have answers also have questions, those with answers but no questions, do not have very good answers. Those with answers but no more questions dare not seek verification.

[pyrrho314]

you honestly think the people that write dictionaries are the arbiter of the meaning of "spirituality"... really?

[SSanf]

I think if we are not using the same words to mean the same things, there is no hope of communication. As for myself, I depend on English to express ideas and understand the ideas other people express.

Do you think no knowledge or information can originate from a non-physical source?

[pyrrho314]

your theory of communication doesn't explain how language changes, or why it needs to, nor how it works given that people obviously have their own understandings for words.

It is not just a matter of not "thinking" nothing can originate from a non-physical source, is the fact that we define what is physical, we are the model, and things that interact with us are therefore also physical by definition. If you know about it, it's interacted with you and there must be a physical explanation.

[pyrrho314]

but to be clear: that doesn't mean someone may not have communicated with their god... it just means that their god has physical representation in this world. You may see a ghost, but then the ghost is creating physical interaction with you and must have some physical component.

If it interacts with you it has a physical characteristic, it can affect physical matter, namely you.

[SSanf]

Well, if everyone is going to go around having their own meaning for words, we may as well all talk gibberish and have done with it. The fact is words mean things. If there is no agreement on the meaning, communication cannot take place. That does not exclude language evolving. However, the first part of any rational discussion is to define your terms so everyone is on the same page and understands clearly what is being discussed which is what I tried to do. That intent obviously eluded you.

[SSanf]

If my brain comprehends a ghost or whatever, a chemical reaction takes place in me. It does not follow that anything has happened to the entity or that it in any way became physical. If it was not physical to start with, there is no reason to think it has been in any way changed simply because I have undergone a change. However, I think it is a mute point. What difference does it make to the fact that communication occurred which is the important thing of interest.

[pyrrho314]

firstly, to define terms, energy is also physical. At one point it seemed matter was physical, energy, epherial, then we realize energy was also physical by virtue of interacting with matter, and then discovered matter is energy, just in a different form.

If it interacts with something physical, it is physical.

[pyrrho314]

it's true their has to be some agreement in the meaning of terms, but the agreement is obviously not exact... the fact is we do have out own unique understanding of words. Yes, this means communication sometimes goes wrong... which, in fact, it does as we can easilly see.

Did you write the dictionary you quoted?