Nov 23, 2011
Glossy Eyed Spirituality
Darin and Aimee talk about how mystically crazy some people’s idea is of true spirituality is. Coming from a world were we were constantly taught to focus our eyes on what is unseen rather than what is seen, it is easy to lose sight of normalcy. Many honest and sincere Christian people can get so caught up in what it means to be “spiritual” that they lose their humanity in the process. The path to inner healing, for countless Free Believers is a path back to the real YOU. It is more a process of unlearning then it is of learning. Authentic spirituality is marked by a person’s ability to connect and relate to humanity; not by a persons rejection of it.
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Good podcast. I have a mouth like a sailor yet I still encounter people who apologize to me for cursing when they're around me. I hate it!
Darin, seriously! are you reading my mind or something? this is EXACTLY where God is taking me. WOW.
An answer to your question as to where we get this spiritual warfare stuff. I have been doing some digging around in the Charismatic movement. Much of it comes from Hindu, Gnosticism, and the Mystery Religions. IT goes deep.
Great podcast. Aimee I so appreciated your comment in regards to becoming this way when we disconnect from people and start to live in our head and become too spiritual and too sensitive to God. That brought such clarity to a time in my life when I did exactly that. As I have looked back I thought how did that happen in my heart I have always valued relationships and said it's about people, but how did I lose hearing that in my heart? So thank you, for the enlightenment. I didn't have words for what I have experienced and that was it for me! So thank you!
Loved the podcast. I have a question for everybody. Have you ever seen a friend of yours or someone you care about heading down the super spiritual weird path and try to rescue them out of it. How did you go about it and how did it go? I hate to see people get that way because it is very off -putting to the normal people we are meant to impact.
All of these podcasts are fitting together so well. The mindless chatter, the spiritual warfare, the devil, and this one. It is this hyper sppiritual believerism that makes our religion wierd and unattractive to real people. The spirit of Christ draws people, the works of man repels them.
We have made the supernatural to require a spectacular twist. This is problematic becasue people that a superspiritual miss the gentle works of the spirit. I can't ever be around this again and is probably the biggest reason I obstain from church, I protect myself and my family from from it. The majority of believers are normal, but the few make it too interesting.
I notice the Bible uses very sparing language when discussing Heaven, Hell, demons, angels, etc....and most of it is dedicated to life here and now on earth and how we live day to day. For some reason, many churches, especially Charismaniacs reverse this.
My observation is that people will do anything to avoid reality. The real world kills all the garbage we prefer in our lives, instead of having the character it takes to live in the truth that reality presents to us. People want to blame others and control their life circle to minimize reality's impact on themselves, instead of owning up and controlling their own behavior, to maximize their impact on their life circle. If we would live in the flow of the real world, we would do what Daryn so often mentions in his experiences: I saw that for what it was and decided I didn't want to be like that. But most of us are too afraid to live without a mask for a season, as we journey towards being ourselves. We still believe its wrong to be naked, so we fight to avoid the shame. Yet, we were created by God to live that way.
LOL so true what you guys said about Halloween. I agree many meetings in Charismania are scarier than any candy, costumes or even gross decorations.
re Cleansing Streams - I remember God did meet me at CS and I did get something there I needed, but still amidst a great deal of stress, fear and trauma. I believe God meets us in places we go sincerely seeking him even when they are fundamentally flawed. That said, I will never participate in any of these traveling circuses ever again.
Aimee your comment about the idea of needing to "hear God's voice" so popular in charismania. We have the Holy Spirit guiding us and it may or may not come through any kind of voice. I find that it's usually not for me.
I agree that a litmus test is when normal people feel like they can't talk to you anymore. Hyper-spiritualizing is contradictory to the whole truth of Jesus coming to hang out and be human with us. If God made himself accessible to normal struggling people, shouldn't we!
I also really liked this podcast. I definitely agree that there are many extravagantly mystical folk out there. However, I myself have a history of being overly literal and while the mystical has always greatly intrigued me, I tend not to give much into it unless it is something I've had a personal experience with. I have had personal experiences with the demonic. That is why I was a little put off by some of the absolute certainty that both Darin and Aimee were expressing in this podcast, but I may have misunderstood. My first two demonic experiences were when I was not yet a Christian; I didn't even have any real insight into what was or wasn't considered demonic. The second situation involved an act of uninvited, attempted possession on me by a spirit entity. Many of you might find that the only way you can reason through something like this is to assume that I have psychological conditions which might lead me to imagine these types of things, but I can assure you I do not.
In fact, I was given an IQ test and psychological evaluation by a neuropsychologist that worked for the government just over seven years ago to see if I qualified for disability after an accident that left me physically disabled for well over a year. They did this because I had suffered a TBI. My IQ test results were 122 (22pts above average) and my psych eval concurred symptoms of PTSD (which I've struggled with since); but, I have never been psychologically diagnosed with ANYONE (professional or not) that would suggest that I am delusional to such a degree as to imagine or make-up spiritual beings.
I understand that blaming psychological issues is as far as some of your minds will allow you to reach, and that is fine. So, I guess my question is really for those who do not think that the "psychological community" has all the answers.
How would one looking at spirituality through the lenses set forth in this podcast rationalize with a coherant person who claims outright to have see an evil spirit? Or with a coherant person who has had a telepathic dream in which a vision of a indian demon with a tomohawk occurred at the exact same time her neighbor was decapitating a woman and cutting her into pieces as a ritual sacrifice to the Egyptian Goddess Isis? Do any of the people on this podcast or forum seriously have the authority to judge whether or not these things have happened to someone like me?
This topic is, in my humble opinion, one that I think deserves a little more of a balance of wonder and skepticism. What I hear is a whole lot of skepticism which I also hear comes from a lot of hurt from being deceived by the many who try to create these situations for themselves in order to feel "ultra-spiritual". I understand that. However, I've never been called ultra'spiritual, charismatic, new-age, mystical, etc.
So, I wonder, how does this topic frame a person like me? Or are there different categories of people who claim actual experiences with the spirit world?
P.S. - The dream I had not only involved an indian demon that I saw outside my bedroom window, but it also involved two guardian angels that were sitting right next to me that I was speaking to. I then saw the demon and woke up around 3am, right at the time the woman was reported to have been massacred. I continued to roll around in bed, trying to get back to sleep the next hour after I awoke. I was strangely anxious and even began praying that God would help me to get to sleep. I had not yet made sense of the dream nor did I know what was occurring in the building right next to me. When I came outside to go to work and a neighbor told me of the decapitation, the pieces of the puzzling & powerful dream were put together pretty quickly as I drove to my new client's house.
Also, the dream was my third demonic enounter/vision.
Hey Amanda
I think, if something is psychological does not mean the person had issues. It only means its a psychological phenomena. Like you can have it when on the edge of sleeping, just before you sleep in or wake up. Had such encounters and thought it was demons, but I came to the conclusion that it is the state where your body awakes, but your mind still sleeps somehow. That happens if you work irregular and weird hours. You wake up scared and it feels like the beginning of an anxiety attack. Now I dont have psychological issues.
And well, i dont want to put any of your experience in that box, you alone know what it was.
I for myself know, I am very sensitive to what is going on around me. I know for example if a boss is going to quit or a flatmate is moving out ahead of time. I dont think that this is due to demons or so. I just think, somehow those people send signals and I am able to receive them. So as I said, I am not judging you weather you actually saw a demon or you simply
where sensitive to what was going on next door.
Now I attended some prayer ministry and as well was just starting to get involved into deliverance ministry. If any psychologist heard the way we talked about people and their problems, I am sure we would have been put in therapy or so. Today I am very sorry for that because I know it hurt people a lot.
We prayed for people after church service and the ones that came where always the same. You could sense their problem was deeper. So you prayed whatever came to your mind, not only physical healing, but praying demons to leave. I felt so disconected with those people that it troubled me each time we did it. I could not do it anymore, because it felt like trying to do some magic tricks to fix those people. But what most of them where looking for was relationship. And thats what I could not give them.
I am glad I am not there anymore and I wont blame things on demons that quickly. But I dont exclude the possibility.
Thank you Sarah for that personal and well thought out response. It seems that you view things with a healthy balance, but always make loving relationship the first priority. I agree with that approach. =)
I am reminded of a song that was sung often in the church I used to go to ...it was called "Lost In The Presence". A line in it goes, "I'm too heavenly minded to be any earthly good"...it always used to bother me!