I only stumbled across this forum. About fifteen years ago, Something stumbled across me, and my life has not been the same since. In sum, I was taken over by that Something and turned everywhichaway but loose. Still going on. I am not in charge, except how I respond to what that Something does to me, gives to me to field, etc. My wife is in the same boat, now, although she initially believed it was not her boat, or anyone else's boat, but mine.

Along the way in my own trip through the Something's raging seas, generated within and without, unceasing but sometimes more raging than at other times, I have developed a much different viewpoint of what I was raised to believe. I started out Baptist, then went Episcopalian, after my mother left the Baptists, which she despised, as they had, she often told me, made her feel like she was evil incarnate, simply for being female. Her parents, her minister, and others.

Anyway, I will try out some things here, to see what comes from it.

If Jesus did ride into Jerusalem on a donkey before the raving populace, identifying himself and proclaiming who he was to one and all, how, then, did Judas later betray him by idendifying him with a kiss? Had not Jesus already betrayed himself before everyone? Was he not already known on sight?

If Jesus was perfect and without sin, as is now claimed, why, when addressed as "Good Master," by a man, did Jesus rebuke the man by asking, "Why do you call me good? There is only one good, and that is God."

If Mary, Jesus' mother, was perfect and without sin, why, when she and his brothers came to see him one day where he was teaching, did he not even go and greet them, but and instead, he said to the audience, "Who is my mother? Who are my brothers? They are those who do the will of God." I doubt anyone in the audience believed that Jesus saw his mother or brothers as doing the will of God.

If Jesus actually died on the cross, why, therefore, did Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathaea blow their cover, put their lives at risk, and turn themselves into fugitives, by going to Pilate to ask permission to take Jesus down early from the cross? And why did Pilate agree? And why, then, did Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathaea then salve Jesus' body with one-hundred weight of aloes and myrrh, and then wrap him in linens - bandagaes -- a burial not described anywhere else in the Bible? Aloe is a potent wound healer, myrrh raises white cell count to fight infection. This much of that salve cost these two men a bundle. Would they have done that if they believed Jesus was dead?

Sloan

(Passing for now on commenting about what stumbed across you, or vice versa!)

If Jesus did ride into Jerusalem on a donkey before the raving populace, identifying himself and proclaiming who he was to one and all, how, then, did Judas later betray him by idendifying him with a kiss? Had not Jesus already betrayed himself before everyone? Was he not already known on sight?

Yes, but you have to know where he is to see him. That's what Judas told them: where he would be.

If Jesus was perfect and without sin, as is now claimed, why, when addressed as "Good Master," by a man, did Jesus rebuke the man by asking, "Why do you call me good? There is only one good, and that is God."

Since Jesus is the Son of God, there's no contradiction, here. He was confronting the man for his flattering language.

If Mary, Jesus' mother, was perfect and without sin, why, when she and his brothers came to see him one day where he was teaching, did he not even go and greet them, but and instead, he said to the audience, "Who is my mother? Who are my brothers? They are those who do the will of God." I doubt anyone in the audience believed that Jesus saw his mother or brothers as doing the will of God.

But the Scriptures don't say that he denied that they were. He was merely making a point about spiritual kinship.

If Jesus actually died on the cross, why, therefore, did Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathaea blow their cover, put their lives at risk, and turn themselves into fugitives, by going to Pilate to ask permission to take Jesus down early from the cross? And why did Pilate agree? And why, then, did Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathaea then salve Jesus' body with one-hundred weight of aloes and myrrh, and then wrap him in linens - bandagaes -- a burial not described anywhere else in the Bible? Aloe is a potent wound healer, myrrh raises white cell count to fight infection. This much of that salve cost these two men a bundle. Would they have done that if they believed Jesus was dead?

These were the usual burial ointments because they are preservatives and do help to reduce the stench of dead flesh. I don't understand what's so confusing about Nicodemus', Joseph's and Pilate's behavior.

You could have obtained these replies by talking to any priest or minister. I'd encourage you to do so with other questions you might have.

[alt][macro][faulty exegesis]: REPLAY:

I don't think the Evangelists were trying to either write a biography or sketch an historical record. There is, nonetheless, an historical foundation to the Gospels. Still, they were not trying to prove the Resurrection of Jesus. They and their readers believed in it already. They are trying to show what meaning the Resurrection has for the community for which they are being written. The fact that they believed in the Resurrection and that they were otherwise credible witnesses to the events surrounding same is compelling but doesn't amount to conclusive proof. Point is, these are, inescapably, matters of faith, and were not intended to be strict historical retellings.

Phil,

I have received these answers, of yours, from various ministers, already. Yet the Holy Spirit and the Order Melchizedek, to my distress, have asked me to ask such questions and say much more, actually, because, They say, there is much in the Bible that is not seen correctly and there is much truth that was withheld from the Bible by those who compiled it, because that truth was discordant with their points of view and/or agendas.

I certainly once believed just as you believe. Yet and to my astonishment, all of my traditional Bible beliefs were slowly and sytematically shattered, even as Jesus went about slowly and systematically sharttering the ancient Jewish beliefs held by his disciples and anyone else who would listen to him.

During his ministry, Jesus was systematically attacked by demonic forces from the spirit realms directly and through other people, as the Gospels clearly reveal. This was his most reliable indicator that he was doing God's will, when he spoke.

I assure you, Phil, that it was unheard of in Jesus' time, for a man not to get up and greet his mothers and brothers, and leaving them standing off somewhere, embarassed before no telling how many people.

As did people must believe Jesus was nuts when he said that unless they hated their mother, their father, their siblings, their spouse, and even their own life, they could not enter the kingdom of God. By that, he meant, hate the attitudes and beliefs and ways of living that had passed down for those people, all of which Jesus was trying to destroy in his disciples by showing them that not even his very own mother deserved the traditional Jewish treatment by her son.

My postings to this website, and other similar utterings by me in the same time frame, led to my suffering a horrible demonic attack, which laid me low and caused me to want to leave this world. But for my wife's prayers and affection, I wonder even now if I could have survived?

I have had many such attacks in the past, in the wake of my taking stands contrary to conventional religious, political and national attitudes, and have somehow weathered them all.

Yesterday, in my absense, she was told directly by the Spirit that, indeed, I was demonically attacked. This advisory came out of the blue, as she often hears from the Spirit out of the blue in waking revelations and dreams, during her sleep.

She is now being trained to discern the two voices, and to discern when a person is speaking and acting godly, or the other. This is a training I endured for many years, and only by God's grace did I not perish in the meantime. I only met her after the training was completed, or at least, sufficiently completed so that I was told in a dream, just after I met her, that "You are an ordained Melchizedek exorcist priest, and now you are going back into a prison where you once lived to help others who still live there."

I went into a prison, then, in the dream. The way out was open to me, but I knew in the dream that I would not take the way out, until God asked me to take it. I awoke very upset. The began yet another season in my life of being used by God to try to deliver people from Evil, which they themselves had no clue had them in its grip. My wife was one of them, as she now would be the first to admit. The others never admitted it, and I was not able to help them, beyond planting seeds for later sprouting.

What I have learrned, which is what Jesus knew, is that a demonic attack is 100 percent proof that I am doing what God wants me to do. What I have also learned, which Jesus also knew, is that the closer I get to what Lucifer truly does not want revealed, whether is merely an exorcism of one person, or of a group of people, or a nation, or a religion, the more severe are the attacks.

Only someone who has experienced the Christ baptism in fire, that is, the Melchizedek Ordination, which Jesus, a high priest in the Order Melchizedek, according to the Letter to the Hebrews, said was his baptism (not water), can know of what I speak here. For it is not comprehensible to someone who has not had such a baptism (ordination).

Even as Jesus was not comprehensible even to his own disciples, until after they were ordained by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and then they began to have spirit and worldly experiences that rivaled those Jesus had had. As he told them, they could become like him, and these things and greater you also shall do.

It may be, Phil, that you are in line to experience thhe Melchizedk Ordination yourself, to work today in ways that God wants done, as Jesus, his disciples, and Paul worked in their day, as God wanted done, as Melchizedek in Abraham's time worked in ways, as God wanted done. Different times require different work.

The Second Coming does not look anything like Jesus's ministry, as he often said would be the case. For each person, the Second Coming, that is, the Christ Baptism, resembles what the Apostle John experienced, which he scribed as Revelation. What Job experienced. The details are different, but the inside and outside Armegeddon is just as fierce.

However, believe nothing that I say to you. Instead, observe the way I operate. Did I ask anything from you? Am I trying to gain anything for myself from you or anyone who might read what I sent to your website? Do I lash out at you for not believing a word I say? Has God spoken directly to you about me, in the fashion that God speaks to my wife ongoing, about me, her, and others?

If God does not speak to you in that way, perhaps you are now ready for God to speak to you in that way, as God spoke to Abraham, Moses and the ensuing Old Testament prophets? As God spoke to Jesus and his disciples, and to Paul? As God spoke to Anthony of the Desert and Francis of Assisi, to name but a few subsequent Christian saints who heard directly from God?

I have found, Phil, that most Christians, and most people from other religions, east or west, ancient or new, traditional or occult (secret), do not really want to hear directly from God. Can't say that I blame them, acutally, for God is forever putting me to have experiences that I certainly would not choose to have. Ditto for my wife.

But then, that is how it was for all who truly walked with God in the Bible, was it not? They were uprooted, their old lives were destroyed, they were put repeatedly in harm's way, they were asked to take leaps of faith no sane person would ever take, yet God remained with them for their obedience, and that is why they are revered today, is it not?

Do you think it is really any different today? Or was ever any different?

Gotta run. Out of time on this library computer.

In Christ,

Sloan Young

Sloan,

I know you addressed your posting to Phil, but I feel compelled to respond to some of your experiences. I think a lot of us who have gone through an impaired K rising, which leds to all kinds of hyper conscious episodes of surfing through various astral realms, seeing psychic/future events, getting messages and being on the worst end of demonic attacks, have gone through some similar episodes.

Let me share a little bit more about my perspective.

I wasn't raised Catholic, instead bench warming Methodist, with a swarm of born again Christian relatives telling me that I wasn't saved for most of my life. This made me very rebellious against Christianity and when my life really starting falling apart in my late 20s, I went completely on my New Age bent, coupled with Alice Bailey (a sort of Tibetan Buddhist), energy healing, Native American shamanism, etc. I developed "healing" capabilities according to the rather famous group of energy healers that I was training with, as well as psychic abilities that rival most of any of the more famous psychics out there on the talk shows. I was filled with power and psychic information that made me think the Christian church was about the most unevolved institution in the world (followed by any organized paternalistic religions, including Tibetian Buddhist, etc., all holding back the development of the world as well), that the Bible was edited by the patriarchs who wanted to keep the populace from any info that gave them personal power etc etc. I was completely contemputous of Christianity, for the most part, though I mostly kept that attitude silent. And I was surrounded by people who felt the same way.

Then I started experiencing demonic attacks of incredible magnitude. At this point I had also been around a lot of Siddha energy, ones of whose fathers is Muktananda, whom you've mentioned in other posts. Guru Maya is the successor to Siddha Yoga, and many people have K experiences after they receive shaktiput in her presence that stimulates the K. I received the shaktiput in a group setting, though I was basically ignorant at that point of what the energy was that I was inviting into my life.

It was horrendous, the demonic and psychic episodes I experienced were as severe anything I could find medically documented about the K. And I also went through a couple zillion medical tests myself to make sure it wasn't organic. In the end, NO ONE, even in Siddha Yoga, though I even met with Swaimi Kripnanda, who has written a major book on K awakenings, really had much to say to help me, except to live through the energy, greet it, etc. all the typical smoothing over. Supposed experts, like a K yogi from India, had dire assessments of my situation.

In short, I was hosed.

It has been 8 years now. Though the K certainly more balanced now than ever, it has had the most eroding impact on my life imaginable and has been almost unbearable, mentally and physically, at certain points. It has negatively impacted both my career and my personal life because I was so ill. And no spiritual walk had any answers for me until I returned to Christianity and it gave me the hope of grace through Christ. And the more I investigated, which included talking to scholarly priests who have combed through the Vatican libraries studying various versions of the bible, as well as a trip to Israel and years of reading about the gnostics, the Dead Sea Scrolls,e tc., as well as beefing up on comparative religion, talking to all kinds of shamans, monks, etc. in other walks, it took all of that and more, the sincere prayers of many fine Christians to pull me back, in complete humility, and realize I had it all wrong. The information I thought I personally received, was, in fact demonic. In fact, if you study such revelations as received through time, and the number of people getting such personal revelations that are so part of a new reality that isn't supported by the bible, the saints, etc., you'll begin to see the comparisons with your own experiences. (and your wife's.) I recommend that find a good Christian spiritual director to help you both distinguish the voices, and also, I hope you've also gone the medical route. We always encourage people on this forum to make sure they aren't suffering a true chemical imbalance or brain dysfunction that is aiding in creating these experiences.

Learning to discern, learning truth is all part of the true spiritual path. I know you probably won't appreciate a lot of what I've had to say ,but I really am relating it because I have been where you are, and I know its a place to get out of, not to put energy into, and certainly no place to stay.

Moreover, though I've wr itten that the K is an individualized experience, there is a universal truth operating in Christianity and that is Christ and the Holy Spirit, the fire that consumes but doesn't destroy. You are experiencing the most negative elements of the impaired K, the overall destruction. This is not the Holy Spirit at work. When the Holy Spirit "took" over my tilted K rising, the entire experience took on a new vibe - the light and salvation of Christ. No other path offered that and in fact, were more assuring of continued darkness, if not complete idolatry.

God really loves you. Our Christian God hasn't fingered you for all these experiences, please believe me. We are not living in the Old Testament. Christ smooths out the path for us through the Holy Spirit. The book of Acts assures us of that, and if you study Christian awakenings of the K, over those of other paths, I think the journey is actually smoother, at least in discussions I've had with Christians who have had a K awakening. ( Sure, there are certain saints, like Theresa, who went though physical suffering, but there can be other explanations for that.)

Please take care of yourself. A lot of your suffering is completely needless. Linda

Yes, thanks for posting again, Sloan. I completely concur with Linda's points and sentiments, although my story is somewhat different from hers, of course.

Suffice it to say that there's just absolutely, positively nothing about the kundalini experience and the requirements for its integration which negates what orthodox Christianity and the Bible teaches. I'll just leave it at that rather than replying to all the many kinds of exceptions to orthodoxy you're taking.

Phil

I see that now I can use this forum, today anyway.

I was struck yesterday by the fact that, for all that appears, none of you who responded to what I had put up said you took any of it directly up with God, or that you heard directly back from God. Each of you seemed to have expressed your own personal views, as if they were ironclad.

I myself would never do that. Indeed, I asked the Spirit before posting each posting into this forum, whether to post it. And I got YES. I did not get WHY, as that inevitably is revealed later on, in my work. Sometimes I am tempted to post into a forum, and I get NO. So I don't post, in case anyone is wondering about that. And in case any of you is wondering, I got several immediate spirit and 3-D affirmations after making the posting.

So what is it? Are you folks unable to hear directly from God? Or, are you not sure you want to hear directly from God? I ask those two questions often, online, in letters, on the telephone and face to face. Nearly always, I don't see much enthusiasm for communing directly with God, but and instead, there is a strong preference for using familiar crutches, such as the Bible and other books, ministers, gurus, channels, astrologers, tarot readers, crystal pendulum diviners, etc. All are pale images of the direct revelations God is eager to provide, if we but ask for them.

Last night I mulled the human feedback I was getting here, and marveled at how much it resembled the human feedback Job got, which he rejected and which God also ultimately rejected, putting the ones who presumed to understand Job's experience into their proper places. And then God put Job into his proper place. And then God restored Job.

Jonah was an inverted Job. Jonah was asked to do something, by God, and he refused to do it because he figured it would get him killed. So God swallowed him, an experience I have often had, as have many people well known to me had it. We are swallowed to get out attention, to get us to do God's bidding. When we agree to do it, we are spit out of Leviathan and we get on with it. And then, if like Jonah did, we get uppity about how God then does God's part of it, not to our liking, we get taken to the woodshed again, until our attitude matches God's attitude. Except and unlike Jonah, God never stops asking us to do stuff like Jonah was asked to do, and we end up rather unpopular more often than not.

I also marveled at how the people on this forum, like just about all Christians and other Abraham-descent religious people I have encountered, seem to be able to read with reverence stories of men and women in the Bible and other scriptures, and of the lives of saints in their religions, but when someone comes along today having comparable experiences, well, they say there is something wrong there. As if God ceased to play an active role in more modern times?

I have a number of ways, beyond being demonically attacked, to know when I am on track with God. Internal and external ways. I need these ways, because, yes, I am so far out on a limb, like the aforementioned people were in their days, that I would probably go insane or kill myself but for the ongoing reassurances when I am doing what I am trained and commissioned to do. Also, I get slammed PDQ when I get off track, in ways that are very unpleasant, and there is no mistaking those corrections for demonic attack, such as I have experienced due to my arrival and input into this forum. I am not experiencing those corrections lately, if you are wondering.

So once again, as a training exercise in having direct dialogue with God, I invite each and all of you who read my words to take them up with God directly, and hear what God says back to you. I promise you that God will rebuke or correct or amend anything I tell you that does not suit God, and you will hear it loud and clear in a way you can believe it is God speaking to you. And if you hear nothing, then that is God's answer to you also.

More than that, I invite each and all of you, henceforth, to query God directly, and query no other person, about anything you have a mind to do that is important: buy a home, go back to school, get a divorce, stay with your present spouse, move to another city, attend a spiritual retreat, stay in your current church, attend church at all, change jobs, stay in your present job, charge money or suggest donations for spiritual work, and so forth. You might be very surprised at some of what you hear back from God. Just as all the righteous people in the Bible were always surprised by what they heard back from God.

God's will, not ours, be done, is the way Jesus taught people to live, was it not? If you are not hearing directly from God, ongoing, then how can you be sure you are doing God's will? George W. Bush believes he is doing God's will, in his war against Evil and terrorism. But such a war violates every last principle Jesus taught, does it not? Yet George finds authority in the Bible nonetheless for that war, as do a large majority of American Christians, who seem to have forgotten that Jesus said those who call him Lord but do not do what he says to do are like the foolish man who built his house on sand and when the flood came the house fell down and how great was that fall! Meaning, that man would have been far better off not to have ever met or heard Jesus utter a word, than to hear it and then not live it.

So I am agreeing that God's Word is found in the Bible, if you really want to find it. But why should George W. Bush or similar Americans take that gamble that they are not just guessing? Why don't they all go into their prayer closets and ask God to tell them how God wants them to respond to 911? I think they will be shocked at what they hear. Don't you agree?

Just as several ministers I was sent to for help, by some pretty high-powered Christian intercessors and healers, ended up becoming so afraid of me that they could not do what I asked them to do: Deliver me from Evil. I told them that their fear was evil, for if they truly were doing deliverance work, then they knew God would protect them in all events. As you see, it was I who was being used to try to deliver them, as it came around that it was I who ended up being used to deliver the people who sent me to these ministers in the first place.

I had many similar "reversals" with various high-powered spiritual types from just about any spiritual tradition you ever heard of. I became quite exasperated, because I had gone to them, I had paid some of them money and others not, to help me. And yet here I was again and again, discovering that I was there to try to deliver them out of something they had out grown into something larger, which their soul's were calling for but their history and minds usually would not let them receive.

God is so huge that we cannot fathom it. To confine God to the Bible is to shrink God down to one grain of sand, compared to all the sand in all the oceans and on all the beaches and in all the deserts on this world, is my point about orthodoxy. But if you insist on staying orthodox, then I hope you will live Jesus teachings to the letter. Thos outlined above, and those found in Matthew 6:19-34, another passage I find very few Christians willing to live, because it guts capitalism, totally.

If you live Jesus' teachings, you will enter the kingdom of God in this life, as he said was his point of giving humanity those teachings.

In Christ,

Sloan Young

Sloan, I appreciate and understand what you are saying. God does call and speak to us as individuals. Inasmuch as He created us as radically social beings, it is also true that he calls us and speaks to us as a People, too. It is a truism that we invoke because we have been convoked [I stole that from some lady on another bulletin board, recently, but it is very good] both because of our sociobiological heritage (the nature-nurture influences) and because of our ecclesiologies (models of church) and Christologies (understandings of Jesus). From this perspective, it follows that the discernment of spirits and voices in our lives is going to be mostly a communal enterprise. This is true, too, even as we affirm the primacy of conscience, which is the belief that a person must follow her conscience even if it contradicts church teaching, although this is a highly nuanced and developed conception that places great emphasis on consulting reliable, credible and trustworthy eccelesial authority in the formation of an upright and mature conscience.

I share your optimism regarding the Holy Spirit's presence in our lives and about how God's voice speaks to us all in the depths of our hearts! When I take this optimism and leverage it, that is to say extrapolate it to a logical conclusion, how much more optimistic I am that this voice can be discerned where two or more of us gather in His Name. Finally, what joy and hope fill my heart when I think of how this further extrapolates into a belief in the reality that is expressed in my own tradition's conservation of Scripture and Tradition and Magisterium.

Too much emphasis on the individualistic approach is, contrastingly, a very pessimistic view, one that suggests that it is only the rare gnostic prophet who happens to get it all right while almost everyone else is getting it all wrong. There is far too much evidence, to the contrary, of the Spirit alive in the lives of the masses (see the fruits of the Spirit discussion below) and, notwithstanding your rather cursory assessment, in the archives of this bulletin board.

My suggestion is that you have gained an insight into how the Spirit can and does speak to us individually. My hope is that you can recognize the wisdom in our long-established and time-honored tradition of discernment, that you can recognize that communal discernment is, perhaps, a redundnacy. An overemphasis of one value to the exclusion of competing values is a very perilous path insofar as one can wrench something from its context in the whole and swell it to madness in its isolation. Below are a few resources to help us avoid such.

Perhaps, Sloan, you resonate with this:

quote:

So when we talk about why you go through spiritual exercises, a good way to think about it is, I'm going to go through these exercises in order to discover what God is hoping in me: for me and for my life and for the whole world, because God's project is now written in the human heart .
Inigo's insight at the Cardonere is that God wants for the world what the best human hoping expresses. So you have to take yourself very seriously. You have to take everyone else very seriously. You have to recognize that the person making these Exercises is just as much being acted in by God as the holiest person who ever lived. One of the marks of Ignatian discernment is this great reverent respect for the person you're helping or talking with.

by Father Joe Tetlow, S.J. in How the Exercises came to be

I especially encourage you to consult RULES FOR PERCEIVING AND KNOWING IN SOME MANNER THE DIFFERENT MOVEMENTS WHICH ARE CAUSED IN THE SOUL and RULES FOR THE SAME EFFECT WITH GREATER DISCERNMENT OF SPIRITS.

quote:

One of the greatest riches of our Catholic Church is its tradition of discernment . St Paul clearly enunciates the criteria by which the Christian community might recognise the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in their midst: "...the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" (Galatians 5:22). The Spirit's absence is also highlighted by Paul as he laments the desires of the flesh against the Spirit (Galatians 5:17). In early Christian centuries, St Cassian offered a series of Conferences in which he clarified the rules for discernment of spirits, providing guidelines for how the Christian might recognise the presence of the Spirit, as well as the lack of the Spirit's presence. And then there is the great legacy of St Ignatius Loyola on the discernment of spirits. Many approaches to discernment in our tradition, however, tend to be a bit too focused on the individual's personal relationship with God, perhaps at the risk of becoming too individualistic . The structures of the Church, its order of worship, prayer, ministry, teaching, its requirements for Catholic life in the Church and in the world, all provide means for judicious discernment, as well. I would like to suggest that one of the greatest needs of the Church today is for the establishment of structures to help our lay faithful in the gift and task of discernment, what might be called communal discernment ...

by His Eminence Cardinal Roger Michael Mahony

quote:

When someone comes to experience the reality of the spiritual world and discovers that God is a personal being who is vitally interested in every aspect of their life, they soon discover that they need to learn to recognise promptings which come from God. They know that God is completely good and completely self-giving, and they know that everything that comes from him is beneficial.

Such a person yearns to hear God�s voice, to receive his guidance, and to do his will.

They discover, however, that discerning promptings from God is not straightforward � there are many �voices� competing for our attention. These spiritual �voices� are quite subtle. Perhaps we had not even been aware of them before � how do we know which voice comes from God?

from Discernment: Recognising God�s Voice by Brian Incigneri

Also see: DISCERNMENT OF SPIRITS by Wm. G. Most and Rules for Discernment of Ordinary and Extraordinary Phenomena

Thanks, Sloan, for contributing your piece of the cosmic pie. I will pray for your ongoing journey of transformation in the company of the indwelling Spirit of Jesus.

pax, amor et bonum,
jb

sloan, there are no restrictions on your posting on the forum. If you continue to have troubles logging on, contact me and we'll troubleshoot it as best we can.

This exchange brings up the larger question of the relationship between individual inspiration and a religious tradition. Johnboy has provided some great reflections and quotes about this, I believe.

I can surely go along with your point on the importance of listening to God speak to one's heart and mind, sloan, but do believe it's essential to bump this up against the wisdom of the ages found in a religious tradition. For one thing, it's all too easy to be deluded about what God's voice is, considering that Satan often manifests as an "angel of light." Then there's the influence of the human unconscious, which is an admixture of both light and darkness. Those who go too far the other way and discount inner guidance in deference to compliance with external tradition are also taking the easy way out. Responsible conscience formation and spiritual discernment isn't always an easy task.

Another day, another dollar. Just joking. I don't get paid money for this job of mine, at least not in any way that looks like the way the community says I should be paid, that is, earning my keep, as Paul advocated.

I was subjected to a full-blown assault yesterday and last night in my sleep, after making yesterday's two postings. But my morning, after about a two hour talk with my wife, I had finally gotten to the bottom of it. Once again, I saw that something external had been used to trigger something internal in me, and also in my wife, that needed to be worked through, with the Spirit's necessary help.

I suppose I have had this sort of inner augering experience about 5,000 times, since the changes began in early 1987. I have no control over the next round of auguring onsetting. What I can control is how I receive and deal with it. Some days I do better than other.

As each purification proceeds, I get increasingly uncomfortable, in body, emotions, mind and soul. Then there is always the breakthrough point, the revelation now needing to manifest that occurs, I am flooded with reverence and gratitude, and I fall asleep like I'm drugged.

I fully agree about the need for outside backup, in spirit discernment. This is precisely why Jesus paired his disciples. It is also why he himself had a backup, but it is not readily apparent in the Gospels.

I truly hesitate to say more about that here, because I flat do not want to go through another whomping such as I experienced as a result of yesterday's postings. So I will not take that any farther, unless one of you asks me to do so. Ask knowing that what I will say is not going to agree with you at all.

Back to discernment of spirits. Once upon a time, 14 months into a terrible suicidal dark night which onset just after a most ominous dream, in which I was playing footsy with the nose 12-foot, black hammerhead shark in a warm sea, I had a rare dream in which I was told, "The reason you are having this experience is because you once were Judas." I awoke immediately.

I had already heard a few times, in various believable ways, I was once Judas. But this was the first time I had gotten any meaning for it. Yet what was the meaning?

I was moved to visit the priest of the Episcopal church in which I had grown up. "That dream could not possibly have come from God!" was the first thing out of his mouth. Rather than tell him about my previous revelations, or debate the various parts of the Gospels in which reincarnation is clearly being discussed by Jesus and his disciples, I simply asked if we could put reincarnation aside and could he tell me his take on Judas?

For my take then was that Judas did exactly what Jesus had asked him to do, when Jesus gave him the bread to sop the gravy. And although it looked like a betrayal, it really was not, but was simply part of the act Jesus knew needed to be played out. And since Judas did not like the act, and since he believed he had been put to killing someone he did not want to see die, he took his own life.

Anyway, this priest said that he believed Judas' only real mistake was killing himself and robbing God of the chance to make him great, as God would make Peter great, and Saul of Tarsus great, both of whom had also seriously betrayed Jesus. As, the preist said, had just about all of Jesus' close followers, all of whom went on to greatness.

Well, there was the reason why I was under constant suicide impulse: the suicide karma of Judas. I did not say that, but simply said I was under constant suicide impulse and that was the meaning of the dream and the interpretation of Judas given by the priest was God's way of telling me not to go the way Judas went. The priest exhorted me to hang tough, not take my life. I left.

About two months later, a series of very interesting things happened, including a Christian intecessor being bowled over, she said, by something more powerful than she had ever before experienced. She was forced to write it all down. It began, "Sloan . . . You have fallen into secular thinking until now . . . " It was couched as coming from "I, the Great I AM." That was in her handwriting.

It said that, despite what others may think, I was then crazy. (I was under psychiatric care and was nearly dead because of that alone.) That I was actually in a dry season, part of my being remade. As the inside healing proceeded, the outside work would increase. I had all gifts of the spirit except discernment of spirits. I was going to stir up healing in my profession (law), in the mentally ill (with which I then had intimate dealings), and "In the body of My believers," The Great I AM said. On and on it went. How I was going to confound the wise, and so forth. I wept deeply, as did the intercessor, who knew a little of my ordeal.

This was not the first jolting phrophetic revelation of this magnituded I had received, but, at the time, it was certainly the most welcome one, because I had months before concluded that God had left me and was never coming back, and I was doomed to live out my life in that way. That was some hell, my friends, after having spent the previous few years in direct communion with the Holy Spirit, Archangel Michael and other angelic forces aligned therewith.

Yet even then, I was in a dark night, which I felt was going to kill me. But it was a baby dark night compared to the one described above, which lifted about two months after the intercessor received the transmission for me, which I knew was going to really stretch me, if there was anything to it. And boy did it stretch me! That's when I heard twice in my sleep, "Sloan-Jesus." Then the kundalini erupted in me. Then a bunch of other things erupted in me. And I went places I had never heard of, nor have since ever heard of.

There were human several witnesses to all of this, each of whom was hearing directly from the spirit, some moreso than others. One heard daily, as he was my nurse for the next 18 awful months, which, in some ways, was worse than the acute dark night just lifted. Then he fell away, and others came along, and yet another kind of remaking began. This season was clarly about the Judas karma, starting to be dealt with in earnest.

Then that season ended, and another one began. And in the middle of it, there came my wife. There are so many coincidences that there is no doubt our relationship was being set up even in our youths, even though she lived in Indiana and I in Alabama. She and I are paired, as Jesus' disciples were paired, as all people I have introduced into this discipline, even before I vaguely knew what it was meant to bring off, were also paired -- a man and a woman, selected by the Spirit for each other. Adam and Eve, returning to Eden, being purfied by the two Cheibum, with their fire swords, every step of the way. Oweee!!!!

I have had five such Adam and Eve- poetntial relationships now, each one building on the preceeding one. The first four mating partnerships failed when the woman peeled off, after she reached her endurance limits. Or so she thought. Each of those women then went into a black hole. As have others in this training gone into black holes, after they peeled off. Others personally known to me, men and women. This black hole is alluded to in the Letter to the Hebrews, as the peril of turning back once God takes a personal interest in you.

So back to discernment of spirits. Obviously, the intercessor's transmission was telling me that what lay ahead of me was a course in discernment of spirits, as I had already, the transmission said, all other gifts of the Spirit. Also laying ahead of me, I certainly knew from Paul's writings, 1 Corinthians 12-13, was faith, hope and love being the ultimate goal, and the gifts of the Spirit being perhaps vehicles for getting there.

So after I came out of the black hole, with my next three mating parthers given to me by the Spirit, including this one now whom I love so dear and know not what I would do without her, I began the gruesome process of discerning my own spirit, other people's spirits, and disincarnate spirits.

There is no way to describe this experience, which was relentless, day and night. There is no way to describe the sickness I experienced, physical, emotional, mental and in my soul, over what I was seeing and being asked to address. Everyone important to me, living and dead, was laid bare before me. I was shown all of their secrets, known and unknown to them. I was asked to bring their secrets to their attention. I lost everyone of them still living, because of that, even this current mating partner. But then something happened that caused her to believe that I was telling her enough of the truth about herself that she came back around.

Each day now, she sees more of the truth, during her "retreat" imposed on her by the Spirit, in her hometown, where many of her woes in this life began. Woes she has yet to fully see the root cause of, even though they have been shown to me and I have passed that along to her, but she believes it not -- yet. But she will believe it, if she hangs in there with it. Just as the others came to believe it, up to the point they hung in there.

Having said this, I come back to this forum, to each of you. I have yet to hear any of you say that you asked God to evaluate me. I hear each of you talking about hearing from God but giving excuses as to why you do not trust hearing from God. Some of your excuses are reasonable, others are fluff, in my estimation.

I say this in all affection, because each of you has the ability to hear directly from God, even as my wife and I do it. This is not a severe request. All holy people in the Bible heard directly from God. They did not rely on what someone else had to say about what they were hearing. They did not go before the community to get an evaluation of whether it was God or the devil. The knew where it was coming from when it was God. When it was from the devil, they were not sure: it could be from God, it could not be from God. They waited on God to make it clear.

This is the "bigger" I am being put to offer each of you to enter. I am not saying you should give up what you have that has taken you this far. Gosh, people who open their Bibles and start reading, or share an experience with someone else, often get revelations, see something in a new way, or have put to them for the first time a teaching of Jesus that they heretofore have yet to be able to live, but right now, in their life, there is an experience that is crying for that new way of responding to something that heretofore was responded to in a way not in accord with Jesus' principles.

Or perhaps there is a passage out of the Old Testament that needs to be obeyed for the first time, or it is there to show you what you are presently experiencing, in equivalence, now, in this modern time. You are asked to use that passage as your current road map, for this season of your life. You are asked to share your experience with others. But, my friends, you are not asked to let others bend you away from the experience God has put to you, which is the point of Job and of Jesus saying to Peter, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" and of his saying to his mother, "I was about my Father's business."

The true discernment, therefore, is inside, not outside. The true discernment knows the inside voices and their fruits. The true discernment knows that what is asked of "me" may have nothing to do with what is asked of anyone else. That what others are doing, believe, are being asked, may well have nothing whatsoever to do with "me". For each of us is unique, and, thus, each of us has a unique walk with God, even though there a similarities with others' walks with God. Equivilant but different, but not necessarily at the same pace.

Had Abraham, Moses, the other holy people in the Old Testament, or Jesus or Paul, taken the approach you are advising here, then there would be no Bible, they would never have had the experiences that created the Bible. You are being invited to move into that league of characters, now. That's perhaps a scary thought, because each of you have found a comfy zone. But you look at those people: Where was their comfy zone? Their comfy zone was God alone. And you had better believe they were plenty uncomfortable otherwise, which only a superficial reading of the Bible reveals.

Jesus said something about coming to God which I do not see that Christendom has yet embraced. He said, Steep is the way, narrow is the gate. Many are called, but few are chosen. Apply that to Christendom today, and guestimate how many in Christendom (the few) are chosen, how many are not. Pretty scary thought, isn't it? Even more scary, only God knows who is chosen. Not even the chosen know.

Meaning, I do not know if I am chosen. What I know is that I am being led personally by the Spirit, as is my wife, and we are being led together. We both know there is no guaranteed result, as God only helps those who help themselves. We know we can lose what we have at anytime, and there is nothing in Christendom's belief system that can save us from losing it, if we choose to stop. Jesus said this himself, as did the scribe of Hebrews.

Do not take this as my judging any of you. Frankly, you are the most genteel bunch of Christians, by far, that I have encountered. You are willing to dialoge. You do not freak out, run off, condemn me. That is what causes me to sense that you are ready for something bigger than what you now have. I have no way of knowing what that something would look like for any of you, but I know it would not look the same for any of you, except if you have a mating partner given to you by God. Then there will be great similarities.

I also know that it will require that you are able to hear directly from the Spirit, that you do hear directly from the Spirit, ongoing, and that you are obedient to what you hear, no matter what your present community says to you about what you hear. They are not hearing what you hear, so how can they advise you on it, unless God speaks directly to them about it? If they do not hear directly from God about you, then they are out of the loop, are they not?

I may be moved to give some examples, if there are requested, of the kinds of "different" things people in this "Hebrews" discipline have been asked to do, things that their support community could not fathom but which needed to be done anyway, to stay in the training and not go into the pit, which is the consequence of bailing out, as Jesus and the scribe of Hebrews both made very plain.

I pray that I will not be flattened yet again, by posting to this forum. You cannot imagine how weary I get of living as Anthony of the Dessert lived. That is no joke.

Last spring, a woman friend who sometimes has revelations from Jesus about me, said she heard in her sleep, "Tell Sloan that he is of the lineage and Order of St. Anthonly." I'd never heard of that fellow, but I found him on the Internet, of "the desert fathers."

After reading about Anthony, the level of demonic attack increased significantly, and for the first time ever, I was attacked in my dreams, which heretofore had been God's domain alone. Even in my dreams, I now had to learn discernment of spirits. And even in the Bible. And even everywhere.

In the meantime, I hope that the next time I hear from one or more of you, it is to say that you took my words up with God directly and this is what you heard back, or you did not hear anything back. I do hope you will do that, instead of spending so much energy telling yourselves (that is who you are trying to persuade, not me) that it is not safe to have a direct dialogue with God.

Shalom,

Sloan Young

Wow. You sure have had a smorgasbord of experiences --- some formative, some deformative and certainly some transformative. I commend your journey to our God even as I have to say I lack the specific charism that might best respond to your inquiry.

You know, Sloan, I do believe that there are two kinds of revelations: (1) universal revelations, which are contained in the Bible or in the depositum of Apostolic tradition transmitted by the Church. These ended with the preaching of the Apostles and are regarded as those that must be believed by all; and (2) particular or private revelations which are constantly occurring among Christians .

Without commenting on the content of your specific experiences, at least just yet, my position is in accord with the idea that, when the Church approves private revelations, she declares only that there is nothing in them contrary to the faith [think here of the Creed, for shorthand] or good morals, and that they may be read without danger or even with profit. No one else is compelled to believe in the content of the revelations, some of which can be a great consolation and wonderful gift of enhanced faith for the recipient. Indeed, I believe that God can give this certainty to the person who receives the revelation (at least during it), by granting an insight and an evidence so compelling as to exclude all possibility of doubt.

It seems that you are generally affirming this possibility? And that you think more people should be sensitive to such promptings? If so, I can even say that I tend to agree with you there.

The Church sets forth many good criteria for the judging of revelations or visions. I am familiar with these criteria but it is outside of my competence to apply them and I especially eschew doing so on a very public bulletin board. I understand that you may not defer to the same authorities as I, but if you are interested, I can share a general list of these criteria.

Peace,
johnboy

Johnboy and others,

I believe you folks are sincere in making your input, but I have yet to discern that any of you have taken me up with God directly. If you ever do that and hear back something, or if God just offers something to you out of the blue about me, I�d like to hear of it by email, as I may not be staying on this forum and thus keeping up with your posts.

As for Johnboys� question, yes, I am convinced that anyone can receive direct revelation from God, just as Jesus and his apostles did it. I have seen it often in my own life, and in the lives of quite a number of people, some of whom were Christains, others of whom were not. The common demoninator was that we wanted to hear directly from God.

As for discernment of spirits, I myself have had many experiences with spirit phenomenon that I knew immediately, or later found out the hard way, were not of God. But they served God in my case, as it was the trial-and-error way I was taught how to discern disincarnate spirits and people.

The course was long and arduous, and, apparently, still in progress, as I still sometimes get seduced by Evil, through my own hubris. Thankfully, the Spirit watches over me and corrects me rather sharply when I get off course, and leads me back to the course I need to be on. It is also like that for my wife.

Shalom,

Sloan

Sloan,

Yours is such a severe case of an imbalanced K awakening (with such dreadful consequences, such as your hospitalization), that I think it would take a team to discern the voice you're dealing with. Transference can easily take place in intercessory prayer and my guidance is that your Christian intercessor, as divinely guided as that person might be, might have been a victim of demonic transference from you.

You may indeed be hearing from God at times, but given what you've written and where you're at emotionally and pscyhologically (as well as I can tell, and I'm sure there is far more to your story), I think you need the best spiritual help available in evaluating your situation. One source would be Intercessors of the Lamb, a charismatic Catholic group of hermits in Nebraska (www.bellweather.org.) Mother Nadine Brown, who established the order, is renowned for her expertise in spiritual warfare and has a discernment team whose capabilities I can attest to. They have prayed for me from a distance and I have also done several spiritual retreats with them. Please email them and ask for prayer and discernment.

I know you don't think highly of the organized church, but within the Catholic church, Mother Nadine herself is regarded as edgey. She's really something, loving, holy and amazing, and puzzling to many members of the conservative faction of the church because of the strength of her charism. For me, those intercessors have been more than the equivalent of spiritual boxing gloves. They embody the lightening of the Holy Spirit (and Father God himself and every warring angel) working with them.

Believe me, they told stories about various retreatants who have claimed to be receiving messages, some of which the group validated and others that were judged demonic. They don't have an immediate rejection of someone receiving such locutions, so I can assure you they will greet your information open mindedly and approach it in prayer.

Here is the other slice of my guidance about you. I suspect you have been tremendously exposed to occultic, New Age energy and there is a great deal of bondage related to this. You haven't mentioned the avenues of your spiritual journey, but I got this very firmly. (The I Am message your intercessor, got, for example, is a huge mantra in New Age and other occultic walks.) Many other things you have written have revealed this to me. You have to be spiritually purified from this contamination, among your other issues, to be set free. This can be a long process and takes someone with a strong deliverance charism. Moreover, you also need generational healing. The Judas dream - betrayal- may be part of a family curse or such. Many Episcopal churches do generational Eucharist services, which include a family tree identifying such issues. Moreover, there are specific prayers you can recite to address healing these issues. This would also be a good idea for your wife as well.

Moreover, you obviously are wrestling with bio chemical and deep seated pscyhological issues that have been even more aggrevated by the imbalanced K awakening, and may have contributed to it. YOu need continual support in sorting out what voice is God's, your own subsconscious, and/or demonic, and need to continue to submit yourself to the medical analysis necessary to determine your path to well being. Many of us on this board have had to go on that path as well. I also refer you to the Journal of Transformative Psychology because in its archives, you will see there have been many documented cases of imbalanced K risings with bio chem imbalances,mental illness, or neurological disturbances, how it was diagnosed and treated, spiritual discernment of the"voices" or messages received, etc. There is both excellent guidance avilable in those cases, as well as the names of MDs and pscyhologists who you can perhaps contact who would be more aware of how to help you than some of the medical personnel you've been dealing with.

In final, Sloan, it will be God's love that really shows you the way. Do everything you can to be grounded and surround yourself with people who pray for your complete healing and care for your well being. And stop distracting yourself with the big picture messages (and command the spirit telling you these things that you need a break. If it is Godly, it will be compassionate and let you rest. Even with Father God, your free will is always in operation.) Read Psalm 131, absorb its wisdom. In the midst of one of my worst crisis, a monk, after listening to a litany about my spiritual walk, directed me to that Psalm. Drench yourself in it.
Contain yourself and close down the voices. If you are truly spiritual part of the desert monk order of St. Anthony's, then study how those monks grounded themselves and those rituals should work for you so that you can better contain the energy of the HOly Spirit, yet live a healthier life that allows you to enjoy your day.

Blessings, Linda

Sloan, I do try to remember to pray before each post, not just for specific respondents and correspondents, but for all who may read our forums as lurkers, or later on when they are merely archives. I remembered you at Mass this evening and, though I mentioned this before, I really can only assert my own incompetence in dealing with the specific issues you raise. I can only address them generically. Even if I were a professional, your journey is far too complicated to elicit cursory feedback. I did feel led, and I believe the Spirit was moving me, to refer you to the wealth of information on our Kundalini Forum. Read through it. Pray through it. Dialogue with others on those threads (inasmuch as this thread is really drifting from the intent and mission of this particular forum). I think this inspiration of mine has been confirmed by Linda's most generous response (inasmuch as she is one of the Kundalini Forum's moderators). I've personally experienced only what I could consider to be K-arousals. I think you need the perspectives of those struggling with full blown awakenings .

Peace to both you and your wife.

pax, amor et bonum,
jb

p.s. Moderators - shall we relocate this thread?

- thread moved from Christianity Today forum -

Sloan, you asked: Having said this, I come back to this forum, to each of you. I have yet to hear any of you say that you asked God to evaluate me. I hear each of you talking about hearing from God but giving excuses as to why you do not trust hearing from God. Some of your excuses are reasonable, others are fluff, in my estimation.

You've gotten some very good feedback, but I don't think any of us would ever presume to say that our feedback is what God wants to tell you--as though it were a prophetic word for you. But the feedback you have received has come through the minds and hearts of people steeped in deep spirituality.

While I certainly do believe in the importance of inner guidance from God, I do believe things like voices and visions deserve careful discernment for reasons I've listed in a post above, and which others have echoed. There is a great deal of wisdom in the Christian tradition about how to deal with these phenomena, and we've passed some of it on to you. If you're not really interested in that, then I'm sure you've come to the wrong forum.