Have you ever had a spiritual, paranormal or religious experience?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I voted “I have had a non-sensory exerience (a presence or feeling) that I believe was a supreme being”. Here’s what happened.

In the late 90s, my wife died. At the time, I had been an atheist for many years. A friend of an acquaintance called me out of the blue and invited me to have breakfast with him. This was a guy I didn’t know, had never even heard his name before, but for some reason I agreed to meet him. We met at a local diner, chatted a bit while we waited for our food, and then he asked if I minded if he prayed. I managed to refrain from rolling my eyes and agreed that he could go ahead and pray. I don’t remember what he said, but it was off the cuff and personal and seemed like he was really talking to a being he believed in.

He told me that he had called me because he had heard about my loss and felt led by God to try to comfort me. He then proceeded to tell me a story from his early life that involved a personal crisis and what he believed had been the intervention of God in his life that led him away from a really bad outcome. While he was telling me this story, something happened to me. I didn’t hear a voice, but I felt a conviction that was almost like a voice, a powerful thought that consisted only of “He is telling you the truth.” My attention to what he was saying increased dramatically, and his words had a powerful effect on me. I wanted what he had.

I think of what happened to me that day as a spiritual experience, a direct contact with something outside of me. I later came to believe that this was God. I have since had numerous similar experiences during prayer and meditation. These experiences are the primary “evidence” on which my Christian faith is based.

22

This is going to sound sappy and naive.
When I had ARDS I was fighting for my life yada yada. Literally suffocating to death. I fought to breathe for a long, long time. (While having no idea what was going on so you can imagine my panic.) Finally I reached the point where I just couldn’t go on and decided to “let go” to set myself free of the misery. This is where everybody’s going to say Bullshit.
As soon as I let go, God came down and scooped me up in his arms like a baby. Then everything went blank. The next time I “woke up,” (still in a coma,) I could breathe a little easier. Not well…I still couldn’t get a real breath. But it wasn’t as horrendous as before. And I continued to get better and better.
God saved me when I quit trying to save myself.

23

Crotalus, thank you for sharing that. I have no trouble believing or relating to your experience because it seems to line up with my own.

I attend church regularly, and pray daily. There are times when I feel as if I’m “in the zone” when I’m praying about a specific situation, and am finally able to shut out all the noise of my daily life. I don’t hear God speak aloud, but I feel connected and inspired. To me that’s a spiritual experience, but doesn’t fit neatly into any of the poll options.

24

You wouldn’t say it was a feeling or presence of god?

25

Nope. Shit just doesn’t happen to me. Not even when I was a child being raised in a religious/superstitious family, and I kind of wanted it to.

I’ve had emotional experiences that I think some people would describe as spiritual, but since I’ve never intuitively understood the concept of spirituality as seperate from the concrete physical world, my body, and the sensations that emotions/experiences cause - I don’t think of them as spiritual.

26

I don’t believe in God, but that sounds a lot like my experience.

27

I voted that I’ve had a spiritual experience not described above. I am with Crotalus and gwendee. On more than one occasion I have prayed and received an answer. I haven’t actually heard a voice or sound, but I have had the words of an answer manifest in my head (usually very specific phrasing that I hadn’t been previously thinking of). I like to think of it as the Biblical “still, small voice” that I attribute to God.

28

How is that not experiencing a feeling or presence of god?

29

Iheard a voicethat I believe was a Supreme Being

30

Last night I was watching some Queen on youtube and would have sworn that Freddie Mercury was a god. Other than that, no.

My mother (when she insists on bringing it up) insists that it’s because I’m not “open” to the spiritual. I say it’s because there’s a logical explanation for every “unexplainable” phenomenon that’s ever happened. The two of us discussing religion is like a cagematch between Spock and a narcissistic pagan, except way less sexy.

31

I guess I was interpreting the “presence or feeling” to mean that you felt that you were actually “with” or “in the presence of” God. What I experience is more “receiving a message” from God.

32

In grad school I had a studio in a big, old building. One day when entering the bathroom, I saw a guy in the mirror as clear as day. When I went around the corner, nobody was there. I would also hear old time country music, when I was the only person in the building.

Ghosts, spirits, I don’t know. It was just weird. Never scared me, and I loved to work when nobody was around so I just went on with my life.

33

For my entire life I have had periodic tidal wave nightmares. The last one I had was the night of the earthquake/tsunami in Japan. I saw it on the news the next day. I believe it was a coincidence, but it was certainly an eerie one. It’s not like I have that nightmare every week.

34

I’ve had three vision experiences with various levels of visual, auditory or quasi-auditory, and emotional components that definitely felt like a message being popped into me. I believe that this is one of the things that a human brain does and therefore don’t interpret them as proof of anything.

If you’re interested, I could describe the two I had as an adult. But as comforting as they all were, I never interpreted the later two as anything but one part of me taking care of the part of me that was hurting and worrying. So none of the categories apply.

(According to my Grandma, God told her “Drop!” It was suitable to the occasion.)

35

…I was present at an undersea, unexplained Mass-Sponge-Migration, does that count? :wink:

I’ve recently started having lucid dreams, dreams I haven’t had since I was in college, identical to the dreams I had in college, met the same dream-people, same dream-events, and they felt so real that I would wake up wondering which environment was “real”, my vivid, “awesome” dream that I don’t want to leave, or my sucky real life…

my dream-verse I KNOW is my DreamVerse, and once I realize I’m in DreamVerse, I can take control of it
in DreamVerse;
I got up the courage to ask “Chiana” out before my other friend “D’Argo” did, so I ended up in the relationship with Chiana, not him
Chiana never flunked out of college, her parents actually liked me (the opposite was true in real life, Chi flunked out, and her parents hated “D’Argo”), I ended up owning a chain of warehouses filled with cool stuff, I even built a themed house inside one of the warehouses, with different independent themed rooms, a massive home theatre, and all the tech toys I wanted, Chi and I ended up married, then she became a vampire (a REAL one, not a wussy Meyerverse “Sparklepire”), turned me into one, and I then turned all my willing friends as well…

I know it sounds bizzare and strange, but somehow in DreamVerse, it all made perfect sense, yes, even the Porsche 911 Monster Truck made sense…somehow

Last night, it got even stranger though, my wareHouse computer system somehow turned into GlaDOS from the Portal series, and I spent the whole evening planning evil pranks to play on people with the help of GlaDOS

but as far as the OP goes, no, none of the above

36

Growing up I had a handful of experiences that are hard to explain if ghosts aren’t real. I don’t really believe in ghosts, so the fact that they can’t be explained leaves me vaguely uneasy.

37

No one has.

Ever.

38

Hallucinations are not spiritual events.

39

That was helpful.

40

I am.