The basic question is this. Has anybody else here had strange effects from thinking and talking about God too much?
I was brought up slightly in the ways of the Church of England, in that we didn't go to church much, but I was christened CofE, and I went to Sunday school for a while. Also, the Vicar's wife used to look after me and other kids sometimes, although I was so young I barely remember this.
Sometime when I was very young, I had a dream about angels (complete with beards and long hair, but no wings AFAIR) comming down into our back garden and talking or singing in a strange way. This scared me, I would describe it as a nightmare really. This was the first of a few strange religion related incidents.
When I was 15, I'd pretty much given up religion, but I still had a thought that God might exist, and I was always unexplainably scared of the occult, ouija boards and the like. Anyway, I was up one night watching TV and some rubbish about Madonna having satanic messages in her songs came on. They played the parts of the songs on the TV, and I got really scared by it. I couldn't shake the fear off, life felt dark and heavy, I couldn't take any joy in anything, and even listening to rock n roll in the car on the way back from my grandmother's on the following evening scared me.
I'd recently made friends with a Jehovah's Witness at school, who I explained my fear to. I ended up having a bible study with him for 5 years, and towards the end of this period I was doing the whole door knocking thing and everything, except I hadn't been baptised. It was never really something I was 100% in, but it did serve a purpose. It kept me out of trouble (not that it stopped me getting into trouble later in life), and gave me something to battle the fear of the occult with.
Problem was, I was rather obsessed with fighting the occult, as anybody I met who was into ouija boards or anything connected with predicting the future or contacting spirits would get a mouthfull from me about it. I messed a friendship up over it at college too.
I'd never had a girlfriend and I wasn't really getting on with anybody my own age in my JW congregation. I knew at the back of my mind that I didn't really want to be baptised as a JW and live my life like that. But I carried on anyway.
Then, when I'd left college and was going through a period of only having a part-time job so I spent a lot of time in town wandering about bored, I met a girl. She and her friend claimed to be satanists. Well, I fancied her, and so what do you think I tried to do? I asked her out and preceded to try and convert her. Now, when I look back, it was obvious she had a big fantasy about all this satan stuff, it wasn't real, and she was also quite weird in other ways, but I was going through a big change in my life here, getting my first girl and not wanting to loose her due to my low self esteem. I think my low view of myself also kept me clinging to a religion that I didn't really want in my life.
There were some strange things that happened though. First, I was sat on a bench with her, talking about God and satanism and how I was going to get her out of it all. All of a sudden, I had what I can only describe as a slow-motion moment. Everything went a bit grey and a bit deja vu like, and people were walking along in slow motion. It is difficult to tell, as it was so short, but maybe this was my first little taste of DR?
Also, I was asleep one night, I think I was having a dream, but I don't think it was religious, and suddenly I woke up and it felt like my head was being pushed up to look at the wall opposite me. I started spouting a load of jibberish, like I was speaking in tongues. This freaked me right out. What the hell was going on?!?!? I suppose I'll never know. I don't believe this was a case of brief posession anymore, but at the time, it was the only explanation I had.
So, in the end, we split up but got back together when I quit the religion a few weeks later. I'd found my self confidence, realised I was letting other peopl control my life and I went for one last try with somebody I wanted. It didn't really work out, but hey...
But, anyway, has anybody else had strange 'religious' experiences like the above? Could they be DR/DP related? What might have triggerd them?
It weirds me out to this day about the speaking in tongues thing. I can just put the other things down to a dream that gave me a feeling of God's existence, and fear of the devil, and a moment of DR brought on by something in my coversation about God and satanism (although why it would make me DR I don't know).
