Regarding spirits, I've had my own fair share of "crazy" experiences. I'll just share a couple, though, because they involved more than one person. (You know, besides myself.) My girlfriend lived in a shared house with a married couple several years ago. She called me up one night saying that she was experiencing a very uncomfortable feeling, and hearing footsteps down the hallway when the couple had gone out for the night. Knowing she was the only other person in the house, it freaked her out. We didn't think much of it, though, because at the time we dabbled a lot in witchcraft, so we were kind of used to hearing knocking on walls, seeing things fly across the room, or watching objects smash on the floor in our family's kitchens. I went over there to spend the night with her, and could not even begin to describe how sick that house made me feel. That night we both stayed up in her room sitting on her bed while hearing someone stepping down the hall in heavy boots, and then something scratching on the floor and on her door, when the married couple was out for the night. We couldn't explain it. I checked the house multiple times. I looked through every door trying to find the source, but it was quite literally a phantom sound. It could have been mice I suppose, but for the amount of times it happened in the same routine manner, and how loud and heavy it sounded, it sure didn't seem like mice. We never saw any real evidence of scratching, but it was loud enough to wake us both up. That same night when I finally managed to get some shuteye, I had a horrific nightmare, which was a first in a very long time. It only made me that much more nervous about the whole scenario. She later invited her friend over, about a week since our scratching occurrence, and he reported hearing strange footsteps out in the hallway, and getting a generally "uncomfortable" sensation even without us saying a word to him about what was going on.
A more recent experience happened a couple of years after my girlfriend (now wife) and I moved into an apartment together. I woke up and got out of bed in the morning to turn on the lamp, and the moment that I did, I heard a distinct, three-tone knocking, clear as day, on our bedroom door. It was so audible that even my wife woke up to it. I was actually quite scared, because I thought that someone had gotten into our house. Just a few days previously, we'd been interacting with a metaphysical seller online who had sent us a package full of what she claimed were haunted items. We sort of put two and two together.
As far as the soul goes, that gets a bit sketchier. I couldn't prove any past lives, of course, but I'll just say I've had way too many coincidences happen in my life that make things add up in a certain manner, so I believe in the afterlife to an extent for sure. Reincarnation is a touchy subject, as I stated, even among my "crazy" community. XD A lot of us actually take the mundane approach to situations first, and try to rule out reason and scientific thought before we blame anything on the spiritual world. But some things, like my scratching story and the knocking, just can't really be explained, especially when more than one person was witness to it.
But it's all relative, of course. To many of you my stories may just seem fabricated. There's no way to prove what I say is ultimate truth, unless my honey were to make an account on here and confirm everything I guess, without knowledge that I'd shared our stories, lol. That's the unfortunate side to online communities. You can't really take anything at face value.
As far as religion goes, you can't really prove any religion. That's something that you have to feel in your heart. Why did I choose the Pagan path? To be quite honest, I was in deep meditation one night and could have sworn I heard the voice of a god speak to me, call my name, and tell me that he wanted to work with me. I later had quite an intense dream detailing how I should respect him and ask for his guidance. My mother decided to join the Mormon religion because she was reading the Book of Mormon one day and said she almost physically felt a hand reach through her and close around her heart. She took that as a sign that it was the "right" religion for her. My sister decided to become Bhuddist because she started praying for a sign of what religion to join, and for the rest of the week she kept stumbling across images of Bhudda. Everybody finds their own religions through personal experience. In my opinion, there is no right or wrong religion. I was once a part of a Pagan group, and my high priest would always say "everything is a truth, but nothing is the truth." In other words, every story is connected. We all originate from a single Source, but whatever that Source is, it's simply described differently in each religion. Some say it's the molecules in the universe, others say it's God, some say we were molded from the clay of the Earth, some say we were created from the elements and given life by a big, flying serpent (Quetzalcoatl). In theology, it's quite interesting to see how so many religions match each other in story. In a way they're all kind of connected. That, in my opinion, is what makes them all so interesting.
In response to the last post, that's what I see dogma as. Even those in the metaphysical community sometimes consider dogma as the downbringer of man. Created to control the masses. I have a lot of personal opinions on dogmatic religions, being of an anti-dogmatic one myself, but I'll keep those to myself for now. XD
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~Lu
11 May 2016, 5:00 pm
