by meekster » Thu Dec 22, 2005 1:17 am
Been hanging here at RI for about a month, thought I should contribute. This may take a while, I've had my drug of choice (red wine), and I may regret this in the morning.<br><br>My comfy gay white middle class American life was shattered by 9/11. That event, which shocked me more deeply than I ever understood at the time, sent me looking for the real reasons behind this surreal event, because the official story was quit obviously (to me) not the whole story. I eventually came to believe that it was an inside job, and once I believed that, then my whole world view crumbled around me. I went into extreme depression, and as I learned more about the state of the world (Peak Oil, the environment, Capitalism, Communism, war, plagues, starvation of innocents, on and on...) it only got worse. I couldn't work, I could barely function. To me, the end of the world was imminent, and there was no hope. People I met on the street almost seemed transparent to me, because they were totally unaware of the dire peril we all were in!<br><br>Yet I still breathed, and I still ate, so I began to seek. Because of the hypocrisy of Christian churches (never even mind the Pope!), I never bothered to look there. I looked into Buddhism, New Age, Pagan, etc., and yet none of these really calmed the sense of panic I was having. I eventually found a spiritual "teacher" who was even crazier and more radical than me, and who declared that George W. Bush was the antichrist! I bit, hook, line and sinker, and for a few months, he filled my head with the craziest shit you can imagine, but he did one thing. He opened me up enough to hope and consider that the person of God really DOES exist.<br><br>So one fine day in September 2004, I was walking through a local woods, when suddenly I was taken to "heaven". I know this sounds very weird, but it is true. And my feet never left the ground. I was surrounded by the Love of God, I felt Him, and the glory of Him, and His creation everywhere. He was in me, and around me, and was indeed, everything - the alpha and the omega. I could sense Him going beyond me infinitely, and I could understand the Unity of God. There is no other. I felt like kneeling, but to what exactly would I kneel, since everything was God? I also felt very, very thankful. It is a great gift and privilege to be human - to be able to (in a small way) comprehend His glory.<br><br>This experience is pretty much orthodox with any true account of mystical experience of God, nothing unusual, so I feel pretty confident about it. In hindsight, I believe it was the Holy Spirit, "the comforter".<br><br>What happened next, is when it gets interesting.<br><br>The next day, my "teacher" was proven to me to be a fake, a total charlatan. And shortly after that, a book arrives for me in the mail. It was a gift from my sister. No one has ever given me a book by mail, so that in itself was unusual, but from my sister? She is possibly the most damaged person I have ever known. A victim of drugs, alcohol, sex... she is the type of person that you want to distance yourself from just for the sake of your own sanity. She is a user and a liar, and she is very difficult to love. When she sent me the book, she was in treatment (again!) for drug abuse.<br><br>So anyway, this book arrived, wrapped like a child did it. (sigh). It was The DaVinci Code. Yes, the book that is STILL on the NYT best seller list. I had a vague idea what it was about - some weird "heresy" involving the Catholic church, but since I considered Catholics, and in fact, all Christians, to be brainwashed idiots, the book was never on my "must read" list. And yet, because it came the way it did, and because of my recent "experience", I decided to read it.<br><br> As I read it, felt the most intense "premonition" I have ever felt. You know, that hair standing up on the back of your neck feeling - except that it was more like my head was about to vibrate off my neck! This book was WAY more than a pop fiction thriller. As I read, I became convinced that this book was revealing a belief system. In fact, the belief system of those people it talks about: the very rich, the very royal. The people that this book talks about, perhaps the people behind this book, really believe in the bloodline of the holy grail. And more than that, a feeling that this was a very great LIE grew in me. I went to Sunday School. I knew (more or less) who Jesus was, and I knew that if he didn't die on the cross, then the whole Christian message was mute. Don't ask me why I suddenly remembered this, or why remembering it made me wary about this book, not joyful.<br><br>So I read the book, I got the whole symbolism thing, the apple, the "divine feminine", the pyramids, the roses, on and on. It occurred to me that if someone, maybe someone in the near future, was to stand up and declare that they were of "the blood of Christ", that they would be claiming a kingship that no one has ever dared for 2000 years. And that the "proof" of this would at once both affirm the fact that Jesus did live, but deny that He was who He said He was.<br><br>The connection of the archetype of Mary Magdalene to the actual Princess Diana was such an obvious step for me that it almost seemed "written in the stars". Who IS the most famous and admired woman in recent history? Who was treated badly by her male "keepers"? Who was named after the great Goddess of the Ephesians? Why was she called "the Queen of Hearts"? Why did I stay up till 2:00 am to see her wedding? Why did I see her funeral? Why is she still on the cover of the tabloids? Why is the media so obsessed with her?<br><br>It is but a small step to surmise that any child of Diana, Princess of Wales, might become a Christ figure, and that his birth would make her "the Mother of God". It is interesting how an error of Catholicism later might become a dagger in its throat.<br><br>As you can imagine, this series of events led me to seek a Christian perspective. There was something going on here, and it was very much focused on Christianity. I visited a few churches, but I have to say that the experience was both wonderful and disappointing. When I went back to church as someone who appreciated the Deity behind the worship, I was moved to tears, but I felt that those people around me were worshipping the forms of the religion more than its base. I finally began to read the bible for myself, and I met a Jesus who was 180 degrees from the Jesus that I was taught in Sunday School.<br><br>So that's my story. It's interesting to watch world events unfold after that little bit of "revelation". <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=meekster@rigorousintuition>meekster</A> at: 12/21/05 10:23 pm<br></i>
