Any discussion would be very biased since everyone here obviously has the interest. But a collection of experiences are equally valuable!
I imagine most religious topics through history would be tied to various events, like religious tension would probably spark debate over over differences and similarities.
Given that society is increasingly secular fewer and fewer aspects of our lives are linked to religious doctrine, making it more a curiosity rather than a direct concern in our everyday lives.
These are the musings of a non-religious person living in one of the most secular countries there are. Experiences should vary.
Perhaps the disinterest is due to higher standard of living and state aid in modern 'global north' countries – of which the Scandinavian countries are the best example?
They say:
There are no atheists in a foxhole, when the bombs are falling. It is probably in desperation, when there is nowhere else to turn, that a person first turns to God. It is when God responds, in a way I recognize, that God becomes a reality --
the reality -- to me, beyond philosophical reasoning. And beyond dispute. From now on the only way to get through the day is to let God take over completely.
Once I have had the direct experience of God, there’s no use telling me God isn’t there and using rational arguments to support it -- because now my whole life is centered by the knowledge that God
is there.
God doesn't care what religion I am. God only knows my soul. God meets me where I am, imo. The monks end their prayer services with the words:
May the divine assistance remain always with us.
But my human freewill means God’s angels have to wait for my own invitation before they can do anything to help me. They may watch and weep, but in a strange way it means that even the God who made me, needs my
permission to interfere in my own petty human existence.
When I do ask, I may find the angels respond first by requiring me to chuck-off a lot of the material and emotional dead weight I carry. It may be painful, while it is happening. But the ‘narrow door’ and ‘camel through the eye of a needle’ saying means that the soul finds God through turning away from the material world.
A person cannot get on a hot air balloon carrying a grand piano. It must be left behind, for him to rise. He cannot go through the narrow gate in the wall carrying a wagonload of baggage. Perhaps on the other side of the gate, where a whole new vista opens, he may find all the stuff waiting for him there, that he had to leave behind – if he wants to pick it up and burden himself again, and start the whole process again.
So it is like the hourglass: the nexus of loss and the horus of expansion.
When a person has had direct experience of the divine, there’s no longer any question in his mind: God, not the world, becomes the true reality. He is living in spirit. In the world but not of the world.
The great house of Spirit surrounds and contains and permeates the room of Nature, whose walls are time. There may be many other rooms/dimensions, perhaps infinite other rooms.
My Father's house has many mansions.
We hear vibrations and get glimpses of what’s going on beyond our dimension of Nature – through a glass darkly. It’s Plato’s cave: we see the shadows, not the full reality. The greater wheel of Spirit turns the lesser wheel of Nature, but is not turned by it, imo.
But perhaps a person has to be in a fairly desperate position before he really turns to God. Before he finds the humility to let God take over completely? And in societies which provide everything, from cradle to grave, there’s seldom enough reason anymore, for people to
need God?
Just my own musings ...
