Well, we are a real Melting Pot of religions here.
I would like to understand other people's religions.

So who has had a spiritual encounter with their God or a saint or a spiritual experience that changed your life.

Me, I have had spiritual encounters with both the good and the bad.
One uplifts, the other confuses and creates fear.

Atheism is not a religion, so if you are an atheist, but have had some spiritual encounter, please contribute.
No, not really looking for lsd experiences or the like

in my experience...spiritual experiences are very difficult to describe accurately into mere words.

too open for misinterpretation...

...i think partly because it is very surreal, like it has no clear reference of which it can be based on...such that the more details you put, the less understandable it becomes.

I met a woman the other day..
. And for a brief moment I was calling out God's name... it was very Spiritual

..or this ^^ ...same difference...lol..

An Atheist was fishing on Loch Ness. All of a sudden a huge monster came out of the deep and was going to swallow him. He hollers " Oh God save me".
Time froze and everything stops. A voice booms from heaven "I thought you didn't believe in god"
He says, "Five minutes ago, I didn't believe in the Loch Ness monster either"

Existential AHA-Moments!

Another woman PHD, is not one enough for you?
Dismissed, go to Polygamy thread

I work in a historic village. A man had a timelapse.
He was at the cafe and then everything changed. He was back in 1920's.
I was hoping for that kind of thing peeps.
Never mind.
We can play....

I want to believe in the Lochness Monster. And I bet Lochy is not a monster at all.

Well once I was privileged and honored enough to be invited to a.. Pow Wow.. down in southern Alberta... I was asked to help raise the teepees.. help get ready for the powwow.. now that day the first day we started putting up the teepees.. it was late in the afternoon.. and we only had 11 or 13 tepees up.. before we called it a day... now before we left the medicine man blessed the main TP and four outer tteepees... now at around 2 o'clock in the morning the wind had picked up.. and we were called out to the ceremonial grounds.. to help secure everything.... it gets really really windy down there.. I'm talking crazy windy.... and I'm not referring to Buffalo riders son !crazy windy.. because between you and me that kid is just windy... oh my god I don't know what they feed that kid but does he ever stink ..lmao..ok.. so we all arrived at the grounds.. the medicine man calls us into the main TP.... to perform some type of ceremony... in regards to asking the grandfathers to quiet the wind... now I am white I'm an Englishman.. so this is all very bizarre to me..lol... they have a fire going there's about 12 of us around the fire the medicine man starts burning sweet grass and sage and starts chanting.. meanwhile the wind outside is ferocious.... two men are beating on drums the medicine man is chanting loudly methodically.. Oh yo yo yo.. he starts speaking.. in their natural tongue.. all this is going over my head..lol. but the hair on the back of my neck is standing up.. the wind is still blowing outside.. now we come to the end of the ceremony the chief cries out really loud.. at that instant the drummers stopped drumming.. hand on heart swear to God.. at that exact instant the wind stopped immediately....... now the hair is really standing on the back of my neck.. okay this is where it gets interesting.. we leave the main TP .. and the only teepees that remain standing we're the ones the medicine chief blessed earlier that day.. go figure that out..

Freaky, I believe you. Thanks for sharing.

Once I lived in a supposed haunted house. I always used to sit in one chair at the kitchen table. I stood in an alcove and just looked at the table and chairs, in a bit of a pondering state. When I moved towards my chair, it jumped off the floor and rattled, like someone had got off it.
That was weird, I was not frightened, just interested.

hey was this during night? were you tired .. alone ? my experience is generally these are the reasons we imagine stuff , i not really judging ur experience, but we should not get carried away by unreal ones and look for a genuine stuff. I strongly believe spiritual experiences are real, and not ghostly/ haunting.....

I have have heard experiences first hand of people seeing their dead loved ones and remembering the lives of past births ...

there are several Indian books accounting much greater and true life experiences " autobiography of yogi" is one such example. reading it will increase your faith and confidence as well...

now back to the previous programming!

wow looks like elephants are more intelligent species , fooled us all

I had a psychosis some years back.
Paraniod schizophrenia, i believe, it is called in western doctrine.
I had the strong believe that magic is possible and some unknown human wanted to hurt or kill me bad with it.
First, i tried to protect myself with various methods, some from fantasy books, some from personal conversation.
But nothing helped...
Then, i tried to counterattack with my own magic ability, just to find out, i had none.
Then serious minority feelings up to considerations of suicide set in.
Then, i just tryied to relax and get distracted with tv cartoons.

After some months the feelings of paranoia, fear and threat just went away...

Traditional shamanism has strong resemblances to this experiences of mine
and indeed after that, i took up my studies again and excelled at many occasions and now feel so confident in myself, as i never would have been able to believe beforehand.

I have never seen a ghost or spirit but have had several unexplainable things happen. The most important to me was after my dad passed away. Over the next 2 years 3 times when I was at an all time low emotionally I would suddenly smell Brylcreme which has a very distinct scent and something my dad used when I was really young. He hadn't used it in probably 25 years but I instantly thought of him and felt at peace like everything was going to be fine. Whether his spirit was in the room with me or it was my mind playing tricks on me.. who knows I only know it worked.

I can't offer anything wildly dramatic, though I've had a few..odd things happen over the years.

But spiritual? I'll go with little things. Most recently, a friend and fellow Mingle member resurfaced in my life, with good news of her own, at just the time I most needed to hear that someone was finding positives in the world.

That kind of hope-inspiring occurrence is more spiritual to me than the various esp-like things I've experienced, or the premonition dreams I've had. Those only qualify as "weird" or "nifty."

Finding positives in the world. Hmmm, I have started thanking God for every little good thing for each day before I sleep. So I can end the day with positivity and not the things that do my head in.

Thanks for sharing fellow Minglers

That sounds like the right kind of spiritual encounter to me.

�t's not always freaky or spooky ...
Long time ago ... in Indonesia my mom, me and an Indonesian friend went to a man who made krises. The traditional Javanese swords. They're made like katanas are made, lots and lots of layers using various types of metal, and they only work on it after meditating and when the energies are good, favorable planetary positions etc.
No tourist ever gets there, it was truly an honour that we were allowed there (thanks to our Indonesian friend).

Now we got tea etc., it was all very formal, almost like visiting a High PRiest that you aren't even to address directly. Our friend talking to this old Javanese master in old, high Javanese.
I had never ever heard that language, didn't even know it existed to be honest. So me and my mom sat there, occasionally our friend told us in normal Indonesian or English what the man was saying, then continued the conversation in high Javanese.
And suddenly I found my mom telling what they were talking about. Somehow I had tuned in to them and the language and I could understand what they were saying??
Our friend noticed after a while and said "You can understand us, can't you."
"Errr ... yes, I can."

Still don't really know how. I think my higher self tuned into theirs or something. Probably because the setting was highly spiritual and solemn.