31 replies to this topic

[Denyoz]

I was reading some stories on this forum last night and it reminded me of something: the summer of 1982.

I was 19 years old, and found myself attending a special lecture on "Extreme Unction" that was given by a Catholic priest. I don't know if any of you ever heard of this sacrament.

Using a consecrated oil, the priest said he was authorized by the Church to give this anointing to whoever wanted to receive it, as long as you were not in a state of mortal sin. This rite of passage is very sacred to the Church and is usually given only to those who are dying. It apparently gives you the gift of the Holy Spirit and has the power to heal you. It cleanses your soul, unites you to Christ, forgives your sins, and prepares you to enter heaven.

The lecture was two hours long. The priest said that God wanted his children to put their trust in Him, not to worry, and rest in His Spirit: "God is Love, He is not a judge, not a dictator, and not someone who wants to throw you in hell."

I listened to every word he said. At the end of the talk, he invited us to come forward, and receive this anointing. He was holding in his left hand a small round golden container with the oil in it.

People got up and started lining up in the aisle. There were approximately 80 people in the conference room. I wanted to receive this extreme unction, so I got up and stood in line.

The first person stood in front on the priest. The priest dipped the tip of his forefinger into the oil, and gently touched the person on the forehead, did the sign of the cross, and said something like: "Through this holy anointing, may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit." The person fell backwards, and the two persons standing behind him caught him and let him rest on the floor.

The second person stepped forward, and the same thing happened: he was floored! Third person, same thing. My turn was coming. My heart started beating faster and I thought to myself: "What is going on here. I have never seen anything like this before." But I was ready to receive the Holy Spirit, I felt I had nothing to lose and I trusted this priest.

When my turn came, I stood in front of the priest. He dipped his finger into the oil, touched my forehead and said the magic words. He didn't even have time to finish the phrase, I felt like a gush of warm water enter my body through my forehead, and fill every cell in my body. I fell backwards into some sort of altered state of consciousness. There were waves of warm love going through my whole body. I felt all the bad stuff lifting out of me: the anger, the regrets, the sorrow, the hatred, all the negative stuff that had been piling up inside of me sinse my childhood, every bit of it was being sucked out and replaced with extreme peace, pure joy, and love. The intensity of this new awareness was undescribable, nothing like anything I had experienced before.

It changed my life. This happened exactly 30 years ago.

[mcdaddy]

Wow. The power of ......damn what's the word I'm trying to think of?......

Dammit!

[oddbird1963]

I was never susceptible to that kind of suggestion or group dynamic. Is that how you view it now?

[mcdaddy]

POWER OF SUGGESTION!!

Thank you!

[Kaiser01]

people look to toehrs to see how their supposed to act, these events are orchestrated to get a certian effect from the audience. The events escalate until people are rolling around on the ground or screaming and speaking in tongues, their based on sensationalism and group suggestion.

[Margee]

Deny, I found this article to be very interesting on the power of suggestion.... Enjoy.......

http://www.the7thfir...r_your_mind.htm

Quote: ''So, to begin, I want to share a basic fact about brainwashing: IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF MAN, NO ONE HAS EVER BEEN BRAINWASHED AND REALIZED, OR BELIEVED, THAT HE HAD BEEN BRAINWASHED. Those who have been brainwashed will usually passionately defend their manipulators, claiming they have simply been "shown the light" ... or have been transformed in miraculous ways.....Any study of brainwashing has to begin with a study of Christian revivalism in eighteenth century America''......


WE ARE BRAINWASHED PEOPLE........

[raoul]

Deny, I found this article to be very interesting on the power of suggestion.... Enjoy.......

http://www.the7thfir...r_your_mind.htm

Quote: ''So, to begin, I want to share a basic fact about brainwashing: IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF MAN, NO ONE HAS EVER BEEN BRAINWASHED AND REALIZED, OR BELIEVED, THAT HE HAD BEEN BRAINWASHED. Those who have been brainwashed will usually passionately defend their manipulators, claiming they have simply been "shown the light" ... or have been transformed in miraculous ways.''

Once again you provide an excellent academic source that I've found to be fascinating and painfully true. Thanks!

[Denyoz]

I was never susceptible to that kind of suggestion or group dynamic. Is that how you view it now?

What if what is being suggested to you is true, but you just can't see it with your eyes, nor feel it with your five senses?

I know how susceptible we can be to that kind of suggestion or group dynamic. But you can have the save experience when you are alone and are not being suggested anything. Like this one which I posted an another thread:

"I was 6 or 7 years old. It was a bright sunny day, I was walking calmly towards home, alone, coming back from somewhere. This was in my hometown. It was a normal day, nothing special had happened, I was just walking down the street. All of a sudden, for no apparent reason, I became EXTREMELY happy! It was like a powerful flash of happiness that burst inside me and all around me, including houses, trees, everything. It was 100 times more happiness I had ever felt in my whole life, for no reason at all! At the same time, it was like a flash of pure light and a flash of pure love. It lasted maybe 5 seconds, then it dimmed down gradually and after maybe one minute, everything was back to normal. I remember thinking: "What was that?" I had never experienced anything like this before. I thought some aliens in space had beamed something at me, or that maybe God really loved me and he was trying to tell me."

[Denyoz]

Quote: ''So, to begin, I want to share a basic fact about brainwashing: IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF MAN, NO ONE HAS EVER BEEN BRAINWASHED AND REALIZED, OR BELIEVED, THAT HE HAD BEEN BRAINWASHED.

Hi Margee, thank you for the 24-page long article (which I have read).

I will argue your above quote by saying that a lot of poeple have been brainwashed and have realized later on that they have been brainwashed, including probably all the members of this website, and ME included.

Is it brainwashing to become aware of the existence of Pure Love?

I still believe that Christianity is bullshit, but does that mean that love, peace and joy are bullshit also?

Does love have the power to lift up and heal: anger, regrets, sorrow, hatred, and negative stuff?

[Denyoz]

Those who have read my previous posts know how negative I am. I have written about being severely depressed, suicidal, heavily medicated, having no hope, no purpose, being sick and tired of helping people, and love being a trick of the brain.

Most of the replies I have received were more or less suggestions to be more positive. So I have searched my past to see where I can find a source of happiness and hope, something meaningful that I can start believing in and building on.

I'm not interested in churches, priests, sacred oils, magic words, falling backwards. But I am interested in finding a cure for negativity.

[TrueFreedom]

Hello, my friend
I must reply
With a simple verse
Which may catch your eye

Take a lesson
From Antlerman
And feal the peace
Emerge from within

A moment spent
Without a thought
Can make your suffering
Not

Explore your past
Accept the pain
Enjoy the moment
And smile again!

[Deva]

Its pretty strange, but I have overcome a great deal of negativity. I just think of all the beauty I still find in the world and in my own self. I am a very introspective person, so I don't know that this works for everyone. Meditation and having a commitment to Buddhist practice has really, genuinely helped me.

[lunaticheathen]

I have never experienced anything like that while in Christianity. However, I've experienced intense spiritual connections on my own, or within another framework.

I don't know what happened to you. I've never been moved by christian prayer or ritual before. Maybe they are tapping into something, I don't know. But how they act with it, I tend to object to.

[Denyoz]

Maybe they are tapping into something, I don't know.

I think Christianity has "stolen" truths from other sources and stamped Jesus' face on it to fit their own agenda. I think all that priest did was help me open up to a reality that I had not yet been in touch with.

When I had the experience, I did not have any visions of Jesus, or heard any voice say "This is the Holy Spirit." The church was not directly involved, it was a personal thing between me and something (someone) out there and/or within myself. I can interprete it as I wish. I know what I have experienced but I don't know the proper words to describe it. It was a profound awareness and the start of a long journey into self discovery. It had its ups and downs, and right now I'm going through a major down, but it's not the end yet.

I'm picking up the pieces. This is a big piece.

[lunaticheathen]

I hope you find where the pieces fit.

[raoul]

But I am interested in finding a cure for negativity.

Everything begins in the mind or so they say. So, you have to practice positive thoughts and no negativity. I know it's incredibly hard to do but once you've mastered it then I believe postive things will flow.

[Antlerman]

It seems most people miss the real point of such experiences. It doesn't matter if it's a matter of 'manipulating' someone, it's the content of the experience itself that matters. What did it open you to in yourself? What effect did it have on you? Did it change your life? Did it expose you to something that transformed you, lifted you out of your small little world into a much larger, more positive existence? Then who honestly cares what the means to that end are?

Who we are as humans we use these sorts of 'aides' to open us to things blocked in us all the time. We are a symbolic species. We use symbols to moves us from one state to another. This is what faith and belief do in us. The oil on the head is not magic. The magic is what is in us and we simply use the vehicle of the symbol, the oil, the god symbol, as a means to move ourselves beyond the mundane and release that 'magic' in us which was there all along. We just didn't see it. If it weren't, then where did it come from?

The reaction that people have is that these same sorts of tools, these means, these symbols, these aides, were instead used to exploit the individual and use them from some purpose of the group. That is what happened in the sorts of woo-woo churches we participated in. I posted this elsewhere about speaking in tongues how that in those Charismatic churches they were like children who found the keys to a car, turn it on, then sit in it revving up the motor and playing with the steering wheel, but all the while having no idea what the stick-sift on the floor is for or does! In other words they make lots of noise but don't get it. They don't put it in gear and actually use the vehicle as a means to a destination. They make the car the thing itself. And so then they get all the other kids to pile into the car and play adult, promising them release and instead just giving them a noisy car.

That that is the experience of some does not mean that is the experience of others. Some actually do get it, and move beyond thinking the car is the thing itself. They see the car as a vehicle to take them somewhere, where when they get out of it at the other side their entire landscape and reality has changed. They actually use the car for a real purpose.

[Margee]

It seems most people miss the real point of such experiences. It doesn't matter if it's a matter of 'manipulating' someone, it's the content of the experience itself that matters. What did it open you to in yourself? What effect did it have on you? Did it change your life? Did it expose you to something that transformed you, lifted you out of your small little world into a much larger, more positive existence? Then who honestly cares what the means to that end are?

Who we are as humans we use these sorts of 'aides' to open us to things blocked in us all the time. We are a symbolic species. We use symbols to moves us from one state to another. This is what faith and belief do in us. The oil on the head is not magic. The magic is what is in us and we simply use the vehicle of the symbol, the oil, the god symbol, as a means to move ourselves beyond the mundane and release that 'magic' in us which was there all along. We just didn't see it. If it weren't, then where did it come from?

The reaction that people have is that these same sorts of tools, these means, these symbols, these aides, were instead used to exploit the individual and use them from some purpose of the group. That is what happened in the sorts of woo-woo churches we participated in. I posted this elsewhere about speaking in tongues how that in those Charismatic churches they were like children who found the keys to a car, turn it on, then sit in it revving up the motor and playing with the steering wheel, but all the while having no idea what the stick-sift on the floor is for or does! In other words they make lots of noise but don't get it. They don't put it in gear and actually use the vehicle as a means to a destination. They make the car the thing itself. And so then they get all the other kids to pile into the car and play adult, promising them release and instead just giving them a noisy car.

That that is the experience of some does not mean that is the experience of others. Some actually do get it, and move beyond thinking the car is the thing itself. They see the car as a vehicle to take them somewhere, where when they get out of it at the other side their entire landscape and reality has changed. They actually use the car for a real purpose.

***** Thank you antlerman...your posts always lift me up........

[FeelHappy]

I have no idea if there is a deity or not (although I'm mostly certain there isn't an intervening theistic one), but one thing I do know that as humans we are spiritual beings, I've personally had many "numinous experiences" (they probably were from suggestion, so what?). I've had them after completely rejecting Yahweh and Jesus, same as I had them while being a christian, so from that I can infer that being a christian has nothing to do with it. Forget Jesus and christianity, forget rules or bigotry, but if spirituality works for you pursue it.

Edited by FeelHappy, 05 July 2012 - 09:59 AM.