Asklemmy @lemmy.ml

1y ago

People of Lemmy, have you ever had what some would consider a "spiritual" experience?

If so, what triggered it and what was it like?

99 comments

Only on acid - my buddies and I got lost in a maelstrom and clung to a raft to survive. Two of us woke up on a serene island and made a beautiful community with the indigenous peoples of the island.
The other two found another island and created a futuristic industrialized society.
The ideological differences eventually formed physically into a great barrier called The Schism. They began polluting our lands and forced us into a hundred year war and many lives were lost.
Peace was found when emissaries from both tribes travelled to the caldera of the great volcano at the center of our island and met with the Keeper of the Scrolls who revealed to us that The Schism was invisible - we took that to mean that the only thing truly separating our people was our perceived differences.
But we were really, really trippin
- Mine was also on acid, only ever done it once and now you can miss me with that shit... I fucked up hard. I did it solo but also ended up 4 or 5 brownies deep along with drinking all night. It was going great at the start but after a few hours it all went wrong, I'm not sure if I passed out and was dreaming or just walking around but I was no longer human. At one point I was mold in a petri dish and so was my wife and when we grew and touched each other we made a mutated mold and that was our kid.... anothet point I was ink and my life was being drawn on a page and as time passed the page turned and me, the ink was drawn. The worst part which was unbearable and I think lasted the longest was that I was a everything and everything that had ever existed or would exist all happening at the same time, kind of hard to explain this one, I wasn't really a physical entity at all, more like time and space but all in a tiny dot. Needless to say not being a person for what felt like forever was kind of a big ego death... not sure how i kept a job down I was basically psychotic for the next 18 month. I wasn't sure if I was real, I wasn't sure if my kid was real. I never got suicidal but I was constantly afraid I was slowly losing my mind and I could become suicidal, there were days that's all I could think.
  Definitely not my jam
  
  One perspective I've heard before and I find interesting is (paraphrased) that we, as humans, are the result of a universe yearning to know itself. (I'm sure there's more but that's the jist of it.)
  It could be that our consciousness isn't specifically human, it just inhabits the bodies best able to experience and learn about the world we exist in.
- Could you please drop a pin on the map for the Keeper of the Scrolls? He seems like a good dude to know.
  Maybe we can encourage him to start c/askthekeeperofthescrolls so that more people have access to his wisdom?
  
  Unsurprisingly, last I heard he’s living in a van on a river in Texas.
  I miss that guy.
- man, exactly what substance did you get? asking for a friend

I was in college, it was night, and several friends and acquaintances of mine had lugged a case of beer to a giant empty wire spool that sat next to our campus at the time. The spool on it's side made for a good table.
Having completed an entire class about world religions, we were set to debate whether Buddhism or Taoism was a more reasonable philosophy.
The girl to my right was definitely engaged in the conversation, but she hadn't said anything yet. I asked her "so what do you think about all of this?" She looked at me, crossed her arms, and fell backwards into the ground. I immediately said, "holy shit, did you guys just see that?" Nobody else saw the girl. As it happened, the wire spool was on the lawn between the campus and a graveyard.
Maybe I'm nuts or maybe I saw that. Never saw anything like that again though.
- “As it happened, the wire spool was on the lawn between a graveyard and an abandoned/haunted giant spool factory.”
- How did that affect you?
  
  At the time, I approached it from the perspective that consciousness in some capacity was possible after death while acknowledging that I had no evidence on the questions of how, why, how frequently, for what duration, etc. I hypothesized that ghosts were whorls of consciousness like the whirlpools in water after the passing of an oar.
  I was raised Lutheran, but had been approaching my understanding of existence from what I thought of as a logical perspective. For example, I reasoned that heaven, if it existed as a joyful reward state, must either be essentially finite in duration or must involve eternal dementia based on the notion that eventually you would run out of novel or interesting thoughts or experiences. To remain joyful, heaven would have to either have the individual be dissolved back into the universe/almighty or would require forgetting earlier novel experiences.
  These days I tend to just anthropomorphize the universe itself, as the wants of an omniscient and omnipotent being would be indistinguishable from the natural rules of the universe. To quote Roger Waters: "what God wants, God gets (God help us all)". I figure God wants matter to be attracted to other matter and for electromagnetism to be a thing (amongst other rules of the universe).

Sort of. I was trying to get a medical issue more under control and was using cannabis, but worried the CBD was contraindicated with one of the meds so I dropped that out and did straight THC oil.
After a few days of that I was playing a video game and got a strong sense of a divine interaction (which was weird given I was Agnostic) and that a Yes/No popup selection would occur but that what it would really be asking was if I consented to learning the mysteries of the universe and everything that would entail.
Indeed, a popup appeared (FFXIV: Shadowbringer main quest - not exactly unexpected), and I selected Yes.
I later learned (a) that CBD is an effective antipsychotic, and (b) a lot about the literal mysteries of antiquity.
- Please try this again now that FFXVI is out and report back. For science!

I’ve had experiences with religious people trying to force me to have a spiritual experience. Would not recommend.
- Was this at a Linux user convention?
- Jesus is in the room with you right now, can't you feel him breathing down your neck?!?
- Gotta dim the lights, light the candles, and play some soft guitar.

I was raised in a religious house. I went to church every Sunday until I was about 20. I played guitar for the church. Everyone else always talked about "feeling" the holy spirit, especially when I specifically played the music for the church.
I tried so, so hard, but never once in my life did I feel a damn thing. I prayed and prayed and prayed, but nothing. I was good friends with the pastor, and he would give me tips on listening for what God was telling me, but I never heard anything.
And eventually I gave up.
- That's what it's like if you are honest with yourself. I had the same youth (except I played trumpet in the church band). They try so so hard to convince you it's happening. I think some people want it so badly, they make themselves believe all sorts of things. When you want it, but don't want it to just be you telling yourself it's happening. It just doesn't. I of course only speak for myself and my experiences but I watched it happen so many times, and wanted it so badly when I was young. Not to mention the people who I connected up with again years later that seemed like they had all those experience tell me it was all just going through the motions, faking it until you make it. I actually had a pastor tell me that one time. He knew I was struggling to have a genuine super natural experience.
- I find it fascinating that you were able to help others feel a spiritual connection through your music all the while it was eluding you. Thank you for sharing.
  
  I am truly grateful that church wasn't my first experience with live music. Music is powerful, and the churches around me tried to co-opt that by convincing you that the experience you just had was Jesus when it was actually just live music and group energy.
- That’s how I felt growing up in the church until about last year. You can’t feel the holy spirit unless you give up all of the sin in your life to Jesus.
  “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” ‭‭1 John‬ ‭1‬:‭9‬-‭10‬ ‭
  People can be born in the church, but Jesus said you must be born again. Only then will the Holy Spirit live inside you.

A few times on psychedelics I did. On mushrooms I had a strong sense that I was in harmony with nature, on lsd felt more in harmony with myself, and on mdma in harmony with the people around me. Haven't touched the stuff in years but I do feel like my experiences shaped my outlook on life in some ways I never would have thought of before.
- I absolutely love how you summarized the different types of harmony you were able to experience. Thanks for sharing!

Closest I can think of is sitting in an onsen (hot spring) in Arima, Japan, and suddenly feeling like I am one with the world - totally relaxed, without a single worry in my mind and feeling that everything will be ok. Can't say how long it lasted, 5-15 minutes? Haven't experienced that sort of peace ever since.
- Wouldn’t it be nice to have access to such a deep sense of peace for more than a few minutes per a lifetime?

I was very sick, and praying for relief, and I felt the hand of God heavy upon me, and my body flooded with warmth and peace. The next morning I was fully recovered.

I have felt a sense of awe, I have felt a sense of smallness in the universe, I have felt a sense of connection. Staring at a starscape, or across a vast landscape, being in a still and quiet serene moment of zen.
Nothing I have experienced have I classified as a spiritual experience, and I certainly won't allow organised religion to prostitute my sense of wonder for their own ends.
- That idea, the sublime, is considered by some to be of a spiritual nature, but ultimately I suppose it depends on how you choose to frame the meaning of 'spiritual'.
  I could see how those who believe in a higher power might attribute a sense of awe in nature to a spiritual connection with the creator deity they believe created it. But an atheist can likewise experience that same sensation just due to the majesty of nature and the thought of how improbable it is that we even have eyes to see naturally-occurring things of beauty.
  
  The fact that I am in a position to experience, appreciate, and be overwhelmed by the reality of the world I inhabit beyond just existing in it, is certainly quite something.
- I think I am in what seems to be a small minority of people who are anti-organized religion but pro-spirituality.
  
  Spirituality is, at least, very open to interpretation and could mean a different thing to every person. The feeling of looking out from a hill across a rolling landscape, feeling a wave of calm and appreciation of the experience, could be considered a spiritual moment.

Not sure if this is what you’re looking for but sure, there have been times when I’m in nature and I see a view or a tree or a river or whatever and things seem so beautiful and so connected and so awe inspiring that it gives me an overwhelming sense that there is more to all this than I’ll ever understand or comprehend.

I have schizoaffective disorder, so I've had a lot of "spiritual" experiences, some I still can't totally shake off how real they felt despite being well medicated for years.
I once met a god in my dreams. He never spoke to me, but I could sense what he wanted to say. He told me I was actually two people, one was destined to destroy the world, the other was me, who was actually the creator of the world. Apparently I was asleep and all of reality was just my dream, and this other person inside of me was destined to wake me up, ending existence as we know it.
I also had a shadow woman with glowing green eyes who would show up constantly (while I was awake this time.) I thought she was also a god, who was in love with me. That's been one of the harder ones to shake off. I met somebody who claimed to be psychic a few years ago who described the shadow woman exactly as I remembered her. He claimed she was protecting me. That was unsettling, because I'd not mentioned her to him even once.
Besides that I used to see ghosts a lot before I was on my meds. Most of those aren't very interesting though. Just a person or animal who wasn't supposed to be there and nobody else could see.

One cannot have a "spiritual" experience without having a shared definition of spiritual that isn't just a deepity.
I would urge anyone who wants to share their "spiritual" experience to give a solid definition for the term first.
- I upvoted you but I totally disagree - the idea that one can’t share their own “spiritual” experience without defining and agreeing (with others) on the definition doesn’t hold water for me.
  Spirituality is inherently subjective - my wife feels it when she gives gratitude…my comment above is for sure more stupid but still valid
  
  Do you mean "spiritual" as actually feeling a connection with the rest of all life, or understanding that each person is a tiny speck in an incomprehensibly vast universe, or imagining a connection with a personal deity, or imagining a connection with the dominant deity of the area, or feeling a peaceful satisfaction of connecting with yourself?
  Religious people are likely to experience a different interpretation of the word spiritual than non-religious people. The use of the word spiritual at all will likely turn off a large part of the audience.
  
  Thanks. Respectfully, though, it sounds like you are saying it's OK to take an event that happened to you and arbitrarily decide that it's going to be called "spiritual" without knowing what that means?
  And then other people can take their own definitions that might be different, and read your story and be like, "Oh, I understand what this person means," without actually knowing.. potentially adding or removing their own meanings to it (the implication of the existence of a dirty, say) when that wasn't part of the original person's construct?
  Because if that's right, I don't think I can go for that.
- Does it feel spiritual? Then it was.
  
  If by spiritual you mean "hurt my teeth" then sometimes eating ice cream is spiritual for me.
  Otherwise, I'm not sure what spiritual means, as I said.
- The funny thing is, for all it’s descriptions in Yoga literature, if I tell you I had a partial kundalini awakening you still won’t know what I mean unless you experienced it yourself.
  So no, a definition does not help to get a shared understanding.
  
  ... you are correct that if I'm unfamiliar with your terminology, I will not know what you mean.
  You are incorrect that if I understand the definition of a "partial Kundalini awakening" I will not have a shared understanding. I can't imagine why that would be true.

TL;DR at the bottom.
I’ve had several. I think the most recent and one of the most profound was during and after the deepest meditation I’ve ever done.
I used to meditate quite a bit during covid and after, but fell out of practice a couple years ago. Fast forward, I have a new job, moved across the country, bought a house, and I am about to get married (this was a couple months ago). I didn’t realize that I had been depressed for a few months. So I decided to take some shrooms up in the mountains in the snow.
That gave me the headspace to really think about my life and what marriage means and to connect with nature away from distractions. I was finally able to find a level of peace and clarity.
That was on a Saturday. On the following Monday is when I had the meditation.
I did a quick home workout and it just kind of struck me that I should meditate and set some time aside to just be and feel and process after the experience I had over the weekend.
So I laid down on my back in the dark and put on some ambient relaxing music. I’ll try and summarize how I got to this spiritual place as best I can (highly recommend reading the untethered soul, it was the inspiration for this).
Basically, I think that the voice in our head, even the one that logically thinks about how we are feeling and logically reasons and thinks through things isn’t really who we are. That voice is just a product of all of our experiences. Who we are, at our core, is truly the being and presence that created that voice. So I told the voice that kept popping up to shhh.
That’s it, just shhhh. And eventually it stopped.
What happened next was a feeling of connection and being and grounding. There were any thoughts there was just this core being a part of this amazing, huge universe, and I felt a part of it. I felt what I can only describe as pure love. I will say I do believe in a higher power and that is the form the sense of universe took for me, but it was equally feeling connected and a part of everything in this world.
I sat with that and just felt until the timer I set went off.
I slowly opened my eyes, took a few breaths, and just came back to awareness. This was what was wild, I could feel every fiber of the carpet I was laying on, the individual strands of my hair, the fabric of my shirt, the way the light shone through the crack in the door. I took a shower and water the light reflect on the water and felt every rain drop on my head. It was the most intense feeling of connection I’ve ever had and that includes during any trip.
For me, it solidified that at the end of the day we are beings of love. Deep down beneath it all. And it’s a choice to lean into that and to not close off. To feel. The positives and the negatives. To love everyone and everything around us even when we don’t agree. To give and spread love.
TL;DR Depression sucks, our voice in our head is not who we are, we are a part of something larger, we are at a core, love.

Mine was pretty spontaneous. I was studying psychedelics at the time (just because they're fascinating) but I've never done any before or since.
It was... hard to describe. It lasted several days at least, but my sense of time was greatly altered and it's hard to say how long exactly. I remember feeling like my mind wasn't fighting against itself the way it usually did. It felt like everything I did, my whole brain was all working/pulling in the same direction. Pretty much all I wanted to do was meditate for hours on end, and doing so was a wild experience with some very interesting visuals. I also came to some revelations about the nature of reality. (Though looking back, those revelations were the logical conclusion of several beliefs I had held before this experience. I think this experience just brought those multiple unrelated beliefs together and crystalized them into one cohesive worldview.) I did experience some synesthesia during the experience as well. The kind wherein seeing somebody else experience something, you feel it in your own body. I was watching a dancer on TV and feeling the proprioceptive feelings I imagined she was feeling.
Edit: I should add that it never really "ended." It tapered off over time until I was (in some ways) back to normal, but I couldn't identify really when I was back to normal. It was more like asymptotically approaching normal. And, I'll also say that in other ways, I'm still changed by that experience. And only for the better.
- I like the way you phrase "asymptomatically approaching normal" 👍. I think i know the feeling, almost like you have to iterate a brand new personality to interact with the world. Previous normal is just kind of shattered into fragments that inform the new normal, but there's a real uncomfortable space in between.

I'm the opposite of spiritual so the closest I've experienced is that euphoric feeling you get when you see unparalleled beauty in nature. Places like the Grand Canyon, Grand Tetons, Yukon, Alaska, volcano in Guatemala, and some waterfalls in Mexico are a few that spring to mind.
- I have never been to any of those places. It’s pretty cool that you were able to tap into that sensation so many times!
  
  I think I rattle off the fancy places because they're the big ones that stick out in my mind, but I've also had that feeling just being out in nature close to home. Feeling the stillness of the forest can be just as powerful in your backyard.

I'm an atheist
Find yourself some mescaline (peyote or San Pedro extract)
Trust
- I would not even know where to start looking. So many people here are sharing experiences on Mushrooms, LSD, MDMA, etc. How are ya’ll getting your hands on it lol.

My girlfriend has a lot in the past, she saw a lot of things and smeled perfumes of ppl already dead, later she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder
- Yeah, some spiritual experiences can be classified as psychiatric conditions. Normally, these conditions are not considered problems unless they interfere with life functionings or if they bother the person.
  
  There is no spiritual world, so all spiritual experiences are occurring only in one's mind. Whether they're troublesome or not can depend on whether the observer agrees with the delusion or not. If a person's delusion aligns with the dominant religion of the area, then chances are good that most of the observers will not consider the delusions to be problematic.

ITT: yes, using drugs.
I cant disagree though, ive theorized that when our consciousness is in the right “state” we become more sensitive for “things we have yet to understand”
Next to make you high, drugs (and meditation, strong emotional experiences) do alter the state of our consciousness.

Yes - I feel it sometimes when I'm in church. A feeling of being connected to the others. And I felt it when my wife and I lost an unborn daughter - that was actually the time I became religious again :)

Tripping acid at a dead show during drums > space. I felt one with the universe.

Kind of? I was in college walking on campus in broad daylight. I pass under this skywalk, with nobody in my general vicinity. As I do, I feel what feels like someone was walking past me coming from the opposite, locking their arm into mine. I got pulled back enough to stumble.
Sure enough, nobody nearby, no objects right near me or anything I could have accidentally gotten caught up on. Still have no idea what happened there. And for the record, this was before I ever had tried alcohol and I don’t really do drugs, so I can’t blame those.
- I'd like to think that that 5 second interaction kept you from getting run over or something later on
- How did that affect you?
  
  It was weird, but I haven’t really made heads or tales of it. Hadn’t really encountered anything like that before and haven’t since, but it was just bizarre.

I had a weird revelatory experience when I was 14 or so about the nature of God, and how in order to define something you must include certain characteristics and exclude certain characteristics. From that I drew the conclusion that any definition of God must be woefully incomplete, as how can one exclude characteristics from the definition of a thing that is all things and entirely beyond comprehension. From there I decided that any way of acknowledging something greater than ourselves is as valid as any other way, and that's guided my spirituality since then.
- Ive always enjoyed Godel's ontological "proof" (although I disagree with it's conclusion "proving" catholic God)
  "God, by definition, is that for which no greater good can be conceived. Therefore, God exists in the understanding.
  If God exists in the understanding, and is that for which no greater can be conceived, than he can be imagined greater by existing in reality. Therefore, God exists"
  Im an atheist, but I really like this quote in the context of Eastern Philosophy (like the Tao) over western philosophy
- Interesting, about half a year ago I asked to myself why echo chambers could possibly happen. After this I've been discovering multiple unrelated books and have been reading them, each with different relatively unconnected topics, but eventually their knowledge all fitted together perfectly, even supported by examples in my own life, and eventually I reached the same conclusion.
  Knowledge has a dark side, what we know and say about something (definition) decides the very way we look at it. Everything we define can never encompass every case, and every system we build can never encompass all of reality. Just look at the system of language, just saying the sentence "This sentence is a lie" leads to a paradox, and paradoxes are just the signs of an incomplete system. Therefore, if God is everything, God escapes our definitions.
  I suppose reaching for God is then seeking out the great undefinable, in love, in experience, in knowledge, or whatever else, and broadening your own limits.
  
  I couldn’t agree more with both of you.

Mine was intense and vivid. I suffered from depression for as long as I could remember and I thought about killing myself every day. I had super intense anxiety that never calmed down too. I prayed and prayed about it to Jesus and it never went away and that caused me to leave the church for a few years. I rededicated my life to Jesus as a last ditch effort and because I thought it would help me a little bit and I started reading my bible more but nothing with my depression changed yet. It wasn’t until a restless night I had where I was ready to kill myself that I decided to open my bible one last time and I came across this.
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” ‭‭Philippians‬ ‭4‬:‭4‬-‭7‬ ‭
These verses made me realize that if I’m not able to have that peace of God, then I must be doing something wrong. So I just started praying and repenting of any sin I could dig up on myself and nothing was working until I asked God to forgive me for wanting to kill myself and I immediately felt the blood of Jesus wash over me and I have not struggled ever since. Every day to me now is like a vivid spiritual experience, like Jesus is with me every second. This is not a feeling, but a knowing. Its putting 100% of my faith in Jesus that allowed him to change my life.
- I am glad you are in a better place now, my friend.

Visiting Makkah (Mecca) and/or Medinah for pilgrimage (hajj/Umrah). I wouldn't describe myself as a vibey/woo woo person but both cities feel either spiritually peaceful or intense due to the frenzied energy of the tens of thousands of worshippers there. Several of us on a visit began crying for no reason at various moments during the trip.
- Very interesting! I have wondered in the past if humans are able to tap into some sort of social consciousness when in large groups (could explain mob mentality and such).

Ive been "blessed" with many experiences i describe as spiritual.
Well, being around death was pretty cerebral for one. Felt sad obviously, but like a full awareness my life had suddenly changed. You sure appreciate things differently.
Psychedelics did (...or do?) the trick in my case, but your mileage may vary, what can i say. Buyer beware. I come away with profound insights that help me cultivate a sense of, or develop a "relationship" with, you know... the divine. It feels like a trip, man. And then afterwards life still seems to confirm its trippiness.
Magick is another thing i might say triggered a spiritual experience. My first real "spell" was a simple chaos magick sigil casting experiment, and it blew my mind. I had what felt like a full blown psychedelic experience from that, even though i wasn't on anything.
Also, at the rehab i went to (p m unrelated, but not not part of my experience), they offered "Holotropic Breathwork". The things i experienced in that state while totally sober were some of the most viscerally profound, and life-changing intensities I've gone thru. Far out.
Yoga & meditation are also good catalyst's. I got those as tools in rehab, too. Even with shoddy commitment to them, they seem to continue deepening the whole syndrome.
Shit can still suck but u learn to roll with it, cuz we're all one thing experiencing itself,... so i guess it's fine. 🤷

Sure. Shroms'll do that to ya.
- this, but in a way that's not flippant and dismissive.

Yes, several. I've never done drugs, I don't drink, I have no diagnosed mental disorders.
Can't really talk about it super openly here, but I would be happy to DM you. Both dark and good ones, mostly good.
The good ones were wonderful, made me feel more alive and aware than any other time in my life. Saw people healed seemingly miraculously, some other stuff that is really personal but very lovely.
The bad ones, especially the worst one was almost indescribably horrific. I'll just say I decided it would be interesting to try and contact beings that shouldn't be contacted, I was skeptical and didn't think it would actually work, and I was horribly wrong. They accepted my invitation, I wish they hadn't, terror followed.
DM me if you wanna know the details.

Hiking in the superstition mountains in Arizona made me feel like there was a god
- Noted, God exists and He is in Arizona!

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