Experiencing Religious Symbols - You?

[oddbird1963]

I had an interesting experience while I was walking in the park today.

 

There's been some strife in my marriage and it was pretty intense today. I just had to get out of the house. So I grabbed my iPod with the audiobook "Collapse" by Jared Diamond and headed to the park, fed the ducks and was just walking along, attempting to reduce some tension and that hot-brick-in-my-gut feeling.

 

 

As I walked by this tree I was admiring, I got this vivid image of the Taoist Yin/Yang symbol in my mind. It stayed with me for quite a while.

 

It had a calming influence on me. I tried not to focus or concentrate on the symbol itself. I just let it "be" in my mind without trying to exert my will over the image or my reaction to the image.

 

My response to that was to remind myself of some things

1. Don't fight the change going on in my life. Don't anticipate trouble. Don't "borrow trouble." Just flow with the moment. Respond the best way I know how and trust myself to have the internal resources to deal with things.

 

2. Peace. Peace is accessible to me at any time as I allow myself to "be" in the moment.

 

These responses were real and significant to me and what I needed for the moment.

 

 

1. Do you atheists and agnostics who don't really formally practice a religion experience symbols like that in your life?
   
2. I wonder if Christian symbols still do something for people even though they no longer believe in god.
   
3. Any thoughts? What do you make of this experience?
   

[florduh]

That doesn't seem odd at all.

 

An image that symbolizes a constructive thought or behavior is a powerful trigger. I can't stomach anything that reeks of religion, but I have some images in my head that are shortcuts to meditative, calming or reflective states. Imagery is how we think, especially in the abstract, and symbols or pictures that have been impressed into the mind present themselves when you want to embrace those things they represent to you.

[Shyone]

That doesn't seem odd at all.

 

An image that symbolizes a constructive thought or behavior is a powerful trigger. I can't stomach anything that reeks of religion, but I have some images in my head that are shortcuts to meditative, calming or reflective states. Imagery is how we think, especially in the abstract, and symbols or pictures that have been impressed into the mind present themselves when you want to embrace those things they represent to you.

I absolutely agree. We are a symbol oriented species, and symbols, like pictures, can speak 1,000 words (or more).

[♦ Fuego ♦]

I had a spontaneous and very brief vision of a glowing pentacle while listening to a Hindu monk play music on an instrument I had never seen before. The vision was calming for me also. I am not one to wear any religious symbols, just because it seems like I'm wearing my beliefs on my sleeve. In some ways this symbol represents a complete break with my former Xian life, and the start of a new path of balance, so I imagine that is why it burst into my mind's eye that day.

 

I used to feel good when I saw church crosses lit up at night across the city. Now they are reminders that many still embrace what I have rejected, though I am starting to see them more in the light of those that used to worship Zeus and such. The anger at having been duped is fading and is being replaced by observation and pondering why I once believed and why they still do.

[Astreja]

Oddbird, I live in that kind of symbolic world. There's a lot of weird stuff that I experience, largely because I have a very busy mind and am always playing connect-the-dots with ideas and events.

 

A couple of days ago, for instance, I dreamt of a black scorpion. The next evening, in search of some metal screws for a project I was working on, I went down to the workshop in the basement and dumped out a jar of hardware. There, among nuts and bolts and brackets and other stuff, was a pendant with an actual black scorpion sealed in plastic. (My partner had found it several years ago in the course of her wanderings, and in the course of tidying up the house it had ended up in the hardware jar.)

 

I'm not sure what the scorpion symbolizes to my unconscious mind, but extremely interesting to not only remember a symbol from a dream but find it in physical form less than 24 hours later.

 

Slightly more commonplace than scorpions-under-glass, I frequently see clouds shaped like Norse runes, or like dragons.

[Franko47]

I can sometimes be a bit of an "omen" freak. When I'm down, I'll trip out on some casual occurrence that strikes me as bizarre or surrealistic. It just helps remind me of how fascinating our existence is, and that it's not worth being depressed or frustrated because of trivial problems that will pass or resolve themselves anyway.

 

I also like looking for patterns in clouds, too. A childhood joy I still sometimes engage in.

[par4dcourse]

I have a large yin-yang symbol tattoo on my left shoulder. Been there for decades. I like what it symbolizes: everything has a good/bad nature, and there's even a little good in the bad, and a little bad in the good.

That's life in a nutshell, not the black/white, us/them, good/evil, either/or world of xianity.

[OpheliaGinger]

It's just a coincidence. Just today, two coincidences occurred to me: I was listening to David Bowie when looking up a picture to use as a texture came up a picture search for David Bowie, and I was singing Room of Angel and looking at new fan created Tomb Raider levels when a demo for Silent Hill 4 level came up.

[SWIM]

It's just a coincidence. Just today, two coincidences occurred to me: I was listening to David Bowie when looking up a picture to use as a texture came up a picture search for David Bowie, and I was singing Room of Angel and looking at new fan created Tomb Raider levels when a demo for Silent Hill 4 level came up.

 

Coincidences occur everyday in many ways, they are quite common. Just like flipping a coin. A coin will not come up head - tail -head -tail in order like that, sometimes its tail - tail -tail or head - head - head. Just a minor example how coincidences occur naturally in nature. since you have a 50 50 chance it should be one or the other each flip. The times of tail tail and head head are perfect examples of natural coincidence.

 

Also, our brain will try to bring order to chaos, it is why we see patterns, faces and symbols in wood grain. Combine this, with coincidence, and as symbol aware as we are as the others have said, and it's really not hard to understand.

[par4dcourse]

I checked out two unrelated books from the library last week. Turns out a major character in both has the last name Dean. Oooooo, spoooooky.

[florduh]

Oooooo, spoooooky.

That's nuthin'. I switched from one TV channel to a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ONE and they BOTH were running the SAME COMMERCIAL!

 

I guess that means I need to buy the product they were advertising, but I don't remember what it was. Coincidence sucks.

[smellincoffee]

There are a few symbols meaningful to me: the Happy Humanist and the sun are two I'm especially fond of. I'm prone to drawing depictions of the sun in the dirt if I'm reading outside and open earth is nearby. Once I used fallen twigs to create the sun on the ground, with a diameter of six inches or so.I tend to end a day's journal entry with a symbol (happy humanist, sun, peace, and the Tao are the most common ones), but I especially like setting the happy humanist against a background of the sun.

 

I'm not sure how to explain the sun's meaning for me. It makes me think of life, of majesty, of the beauty OF life.

[MultifariousBirdLady]

1. Do you atheists and agnostics who don't really formally practice a religion experience symbols like that in your life?
   
2. I wonder if Christian symbols still do something for people even though they no longer believe in god.
   
3. Any thoughts? What do you make of this experience?
   

 

I'm not an atheist or agnostic. I do experience symbols like that.

Christian symbols are something I would notice but which don't hold a lot of meaning for me now.

 

I am not too surprised when people describe experiences like that. It's my understanding that these symbols are produced by the subconscious mind and thus tend to be "hand-picked" so to speak for us by the "us" that is subconscious. I don't think it's terribly unusual for something like that to come up in a time of emotional turmoil, either.

[Guest I Love Dog]

I'm an atheist and I don't see "symbols" at all. I presume that's like icons or trademarks, etc.

 

I see life. All around me I see life.

 

Trees, flowers, birds, animals, humans, I see life(nature).

 

Today, I watched 2 newborn foals gambol across their paddock, each running to its own mother. Amazing. A few hours old and they recognize their own mother! More advanced than human babies at that age.

 

I saw a flash of red in a shrub and it was an Australian robin, flitting from branch to branch. A kangaroo sat upright, watching me and my doG, ever wary, motionless, looking as a dead tree stump; a family of Australian blue wrens suddenly appeared in a small tree, chirping madly, trying to scare my dog and I away! One male, several females. Polygamist wrens. Lucky them!

 

I looked at blossoms on trees as I walked, at trees and shrubs without blossoms, but with shiny, bright new leaves, parrots squawking, the comics of the bird World, flashes of blue and gold, red and blue, vermilion, lake, turning somersaults along the branches; doG barks! Another kangaroo, this time with a joey(baby) in its pouch, its tiny head trying to reach the new grown grass that its mother is eating. Hearing doG, mother is off, baby retracts into the safety off the pouch, clearing a 5 foot fence in a single bound it retreats to safe ground. Not that the destruction of a dog is any worry to a kangaroo. They do it easily, but retreat is the better part of valor, preferable to confrontation and battle. It's a pity that humans can't learn from animals!

 

Baby possum will be at my back door tonight, wanting her daily fruit! I am trying to cut her back to every other day and I think I'm succeeding! I don't want her to be dependent on us for food, obviously, but when she is there and I hold out a piece of banana and she takes it in her tiny fingers(claws/paws), I think of how we could have been. The mythical garden of Eden. All animals, humans included, together, as one, no fear, no slaughter.

 

Unfortunately, humans invented gods. These gods gave humans supremacy over all other animals and natural things . These gods gave humans a soul, but not animals. Yahweh/Jehovah/Christian god welcomes humans into his "heaven" but not animals and other life forms. I will spend eternity in hell with my beloved animals, trees, shrubs, plants, fish, etc. in preference to eternity in heaven with a judgemental, non-caring invented idiot.

 

Yahweh can get f****d, I'll take my chances with animals and nature any day. After all, every life form on this planet came from the same original single cell life form, every life form on Earth shares the same original DNA.

 

No wonder Darwin rethought his religious beliefs after visiting this area. Galapagos/Gondwanaland.

 

It is indeed a wonderland, the mythical Oz come true, exactly where I live!

[oddbird1963]

 

It is indeed a wonderland, the mythical Oz come true, exactly where I live!

 

Thanks for taking us with you on your journey! That sounded amazing!

[HRDWarrior]

Oddbird, the um/yang (or yin/yang depending on which country you take it from) has offered a lot of meaning for me in my life. I am not a particularly spiritual person, but I can still find a lot of meaning, and sometimes even grounding in that particular symbol. "A picture is worth a thousand words" is the perfect example - what I get from that symbol would take the better part of a book to describe. I am a very visually orientated person, so a symbol carries a lot more meaning than words ever could.