How did you find your faith?
- Thread starter Valentine
- Start date
I've always been very stubborn, I won't do things if they don't seem reasonable to me (it's why I do blue collar work), so growing in a secular household, early in my life, I was an athiest, after I had outgrown it in my early 20s, and was more agnostic leaning. I was weightlifting and was in great physical shape, but I felt an utter sense of meaninglessness in my life. Sure, I was "improving myself" physically, but for what. I felt that it wouldn't matter if I died or not, nor would anyone care, and was apathetic about life in general.
I went out with friends for a few drinks on Friday, (I remember rejecting a woman that night, she had kids, and I was rather put off by the thought that she was out drinking rather than spending time with them. Perhaps God would have stricken me down had I acted callously then) and afterwards, had a hangover, and a bad headache I couldn't shake, went to the doctor Sunday, he gave me T3s for the pain and sent me home. My condition continues to deteriorate Wednesday/Thursday, I have a shower, and was unable to make it back to my room, I ended up passing out naked on the couch (I had just moved into this place with an acquaintance about 1-2 months before).
The following is what I've gathered from other accounts told to me.
My housemate was away all that week for work, but came home early Thursday because he had to be in court Friday. He found me on the couch, became angry at the sight, flipped the couch, when I hit the ground like a dead body, and he couldn't wake me up, he freaks out, and calls 911. The hospital does a CT scan and bloodwork, and the CT shows my brain looks like swiss cheese which they assume is cancer. The fact that I have opiates in my system from the T3's, and the city that I lived in has a huge drug problem discouraged the hospital from doing much for me, they told my parents there was nothing they could do, and were going to keep me comfortable until I passed. My talkative pious Protestant aunt ends up schmoozing with the nurses, and she ends up convincing them that I wasn't a drug user, but a healthy guy, and convinces them to try to do something, so they send me to a better hospital, do an MRI, then they cut my head open to do a biopsy, they discover the 12-14 spots in my brain(can't remember the exact amount) are not cancer, but an infection. They tell my parents that chances are that I'm going to die, and if I do survive, I'll probably have little brain activity.
.
My parents want to try anyway, so they give me a concoction of drugs to keep me in a coma, I'm on and off life support this goes by for roughly a month, in that time they do the 2nd surgery, putting tubes into my head to regulate the pressure in my head, after that 2nd surgery, my head was so swollen that I looked like Stewie Griffon from family guy, and my mother wanted to pull the plug. The doctor told her to "give him 2 weeks to start breathing on my own, and if he doesn't, then you can pull it". I managed to pull through and regain conciousness, but was entirely disoriented due to the fact that I've drug induced wild dreams for the past month, and did not realize I was no longer dreaming until about a week later.
---- End of secondary accounts
I've always been a very laid back type who's never really tried in life, and just preferred to play video games or read. I've never really expressed much interest in anything, my parents had to fight and drag me out of the house to go to things like concerts. Growing up, every report card I had mentioned that "Aboulia would do better if he tried" or "if he completed assignments", and my life is the same to this day. (Phlegmatic/INTP personality)
In the first dream, I died in the hospital that I was initially brought to, in the 2nd dream, It started exactly like the first dream, since I thought I knew the outcome, I gave up on life, and spent the rest of the dream watching my mother constantly plead with doctors to try to do something for me, She would take pills, and when the bottle was empty, she would puke them up and still try to retake them. I was brought into a lower place in the hospital, near another dead person, which was stuffy and had a bit of a smell, but that didn't stop my mother from pleading with others to help me. I spent awhile here until my aunt came into the dream, as a nurse that was with me when I was raised up to the third floor, where the air was noticibly cleaner and cooler.
I know the Orthodox don't put much faith in dreams, but this dream has entirely convinced me that hell is your conscience torturing you for eternity. Orthodoxy agrees with this view, with the caveat, that your conscience isn't a perfect judge, and will be stripped of superfluous content that may affect it, such as societal rules.
------------------- back to the hospital
On waking, my parents thought my personality had changed and that I became a nice person all of a sudden, but I didn't have my usual cynical shield up, and oddly enough, I made a concious choice to put it back up, so that my mother would recognize that I'm really concious, and it isn't just the drugs talking.
it took me several days to come to terms with my condition, I had lost 50lbs in a month, my muscles had completely atrophied, I was seeing double, and couldn't speak above a whisper. When I regained enough strength, I had a 3rd surgery to remove the tubes/put a plastic bag into my head so they could inject the drugs directly. During this time, my aunt visited me several times, where she told me stories from the Old Testament, I was receptive, and she eventually brought a female pastor with her, and brought me a NKJV bible. I started reading the Gospels in the hospital bed, and cried at the beauty of Christ's teachings in Matthew 7:1-2, the morality and ethics deeply resonated with my loud conscience.
So I re-learned to walk, and was released from hospital ~75 days after I was found in a coma. The only problem being, that the hospital did not release me with any meds, the important ones being blood thinners. I started to work out, and walk more, and gain strength again, when the blood clots in my legs broke off and travelled to my lungs (pulmonary embolism). It took two trips to the hospital for the doctors to figure this out, but when they did I was hospitalized for another 2 weeks.
After this whole experience, and all the various circumstances, I have been thoroughly convinced that God will take me when He deems fit to do so, and there's nothing I can do (aside from suicide) contrary to that, It's also why I was able to see more clearly through the corona nonsense from the beginning (1, 2, 3) , as my experience has shown me to not fear death, especially not through physical sickness.
Roughly 6 months I had fully recovered, I started attending the same church that my aunt did, but doctrinal inconsistencies wouldn't let me stay there, I had to take a several year long detour before I found Orthodoxy, even then, it was the Old Calendarists whom I was with for a few years before @OrthoSerb brought a few inconsistencies before my face, but it was Fr Seraphim Rose who gave the context, and was ultimately the cause of my leaving the Old Calendarists and joining ROCOR.
I went out with friends for a few drinks on Friday, (I remember rejecting a woman that night, she had kids, and I was rather put off by the thought that she was out drinking rather than spending time with them. Perhaps God would have stricken me down had I acted callously then) and afterwards, had a hangover, and a bad headache I couldn't shake, went to the doctor Sunday, he gave me T3s for the pain and sent me home. My condition continues to deteriorate Wednesday/Thursday, I have a shower, and was unable to make it back to my room, I ended up passing out naked on the couch (I had just moved into this place with an acquaintance about 1-2 months before).
The following is what I've gathered from other accounts told to me.
My housemate was away all that week for work, but came home early Thursday because he had to be in court Friday. He found me on the couch, became angry at the sight, flipped the couch, when I hit the ground like a dead body, and he couldn't wake me up, he freaks out, and calls 911. The hospital does a CT scan and bloodwork, and the CT shows my brain looks like swiss cheese which they assume is cancer. The fact that I have opiates in my system from the T3's, and the city that I lived in has a huge drug problem discouraged the hospital from doing much for me, they told my parents there was nothing they could do, and were going to keep me comfortable until I passed. My talkative pious Protestant aunt ends up schmoozing with the nurses, and she ends up convincing them that I wasn't a drug user, but a healthy guy, and convinces them to try to do something, so they send me to a better hospital, do an MRI, then they cut my head open to do a biopsy, they discover the 12-14 spots in my brain(can't remember the exact amount) are not cancer, but an infection. They tell my parents that chances are that I'm going to die, and if I do survive, I'll probably have little brain activity.
.
My parents want to try anyway, so they give me a concoction of drugs to keep me in a coma, I'm on and off life support this goes by for roughly a month, in that time they do the 2nd surgery, putting tubes into my head to regulate the pressure in my head, after that 2nd surgery, my head was so swollen that I looked like Stewie Griffon from family guy, and my mother wanted to pull the plug. The doctor told her to "give him 2 weeks to start breathing on my own, and if he doesn't, then you can pull it". I managed to pull through and regain conciousness, but was entirely disoriented due to the fact that I've drug induced wild dreams for the past month, and did not realize I was no longer dreaming until about a week later.
---- End of secondary accounts
I've always been a very laid back type who's never really tried in life, and just preferred to play video games or read. I've never really expressed much interest in anything, my parents had to fight and drag me out of the house to go to things like concerts. Growing up, every report card I had mentioned that "Aboulia would do better if he tried" or "if he completed assignments", and my life is the same to this day. (Phlegmatic/INTP personality)
In the first dream, I died in the hospital that I was initially brought to, in the 2nd dream, It started exactly like the first dream, since I thought I knew the outcome, I gave up on life, and spent the rest of the dream watching my mother constantly plead with doctors to try to do something for me, She would take pills, and when the bottle was empty, she would puke them up and still try to retake them. I was brought into a lower place in the hospital, near another dead person, which was stuffy and had a bit of a smell, but that didn't stop my mother from pleading with others to help me. I spent awhile here until my aunt came into the dream, as a nurse that was with me when I was raised up to the third floor, where the air was noticibly cleaner and cooler.
I know the Orthodox don't put much faith in dreams, but this dream has entirely convinced me that hell is your conscience torturing you for eternity. Orthodoxy agrees with this view, with the caveat, that your conscience isn't a perfect judge, and will be stripped of superfluous content that may affect it, such as societal rules.
------------------- back to the hospital
On waking, my parents thought my personality had changed and that I became a nice person all of a sudden, but I didn't have my usual cynical shield up, and oddly enough, I made a concious choice to put it back up, so that my mother would recognize that I'm really concious, and it isn't just the drugs talking.
it took me several days to come to terms with my condition, I had lost 50lbs in a month, my muscles had completely atrophied, I was seeing double, and couldn't speak above a whisper. When I regained enough strength, I had a 3rd surgery to remove the tubes/put a plastic bag into my head so they could inject the drugs directly. During this time, my aunt visited me several times, where she told me stories from the Old Testament, I was receptive, and she eventually brought a female pastor with her, and brought me a NKJV bible. I started reading the Gospels in the hospital bed, and cried at the beauty of Christ's teachings in Matthew 7:1-2, the morality and ethics deeply resonated with my loud conscience.
So I re-learned to walk, and was released from hospital ~75 days after I was found in a coma. The only problem being, that the hospital did not release me with any meds, the important ones being blood thinners. I started to work out, and walk more, and gain strength again, when the blood clots in my legs broke off and travelled to my lungs (pulmonary embolism). It took two trips to the hospital for the doctors to figure this out, but when they did I was hospitalized for another 2 weeks.
After this whole experience, and all the various circumstances, I have been thoroughly convinced that God will take me when He deems fit to do so, and there's nothing I can do (aside from suicide) contrary to that, It's also why I was able to see more clearly through the corona nonsense from the beginning (1, 2, 3) , as my experience has shown me to not fear death, especially not through physical sickness.
Roughly 6 months I had fully recovered, I started attending the same church that my aunt did, but doctrinal inconsistencies wouldn't let me stay there, I had to take a several year long detour before I found Orthodoxy, even then, it was the Old Calendarists whom I was with for a few years before @OrthoSerb brought a few inconsistencies before my face, but it was Fr Seraphim Rose who gave the context, and was ultimately the cause of my leaving the Old Calendarists and joining ROCOR.
I will fuzz a few details here out of desire for anonymity, but I'm glad to have this place to share my own story as it has played out so far. Thanks to the admins and @Valentine for making this thread!
My story starts with my parents. Dad's family is Catholic and my Mom's family are Jews. Neither side is religious in the slightest, but my Mom's relatives clearly didn't like that she married outside the faith. My cousins made a ton of comments about my mother daring to marry outside the faith, and were very transparent about treating me lesser because of it. None of it was remotely subtle, even to a kid. When I hit my teens my grandparents started explicitly talking about how I needed to find a nice Jewish girl to have Jewish babies with. I wouldn't have described myself as an anti-Semite or redpilled on the JQ, but that ethnic division among the Jews is very transparent. Meanwhile, to my Dad's family, faith was just a matter of getting me baptized as a child and that was it. It wasn't something they felt strongly about in the slightest, and they certainly didn't hold it against me.
Through my teens and twenties I "identified," to the extent that I considered myself to be anything, as an agnostic. I felt like my mother's Jewish family pushed me out of ever being of that faith, and at the same time I just bought into everything that media says about Christianity being uncool. I never considered myself an atheist, because it was clear to me that God did exist. The insistence of "evangelical atheists" that Jesus didn't exist, contrary to historical records, and science not explaining the How behind creation, mean that any arguments for the nonexistence of God were wrong and hollow IMO. However, as a rebellious kid I just didn't follow any faith.
During this time, I was aware of Roosh's secular career and lurked on the old forum. When he returned to Christ, I just felt a general feeling of well-wishes and compassion for him. Shamefully, I didn't feel any motivation to seek Christ for myself from it. Around the same time, after a long phone call with one of my cousins on my mother's side, I decided to give Judaism one last try. However, I neither felt nor saw any greater truth at those services. The most charitable interpretation of Judaism is as an ethnic social club, and the least charitable...well, we all know what evils are going on there. It felt spiritually dead; I could tell I would find no value in continuing down that path. That gave some more credence in my mind to Christianity as the true covenant continued by Jesus Christ.
A little while after that, I read the Gospels and felt the same truth that the Jews lacked. It was like the scales fell away from my eyes. I couldn't understand -- I felt deceived by everything I was told about Christianity. I'd like to expand upon this, but I really don't have the words to express the greater feeling of truth that's given to me upon reading the Bible, and I believe that's natural, as God is beyond us and our flaws.
Concurrently, the push of transgenderism in the MSM made me question a lot. I always felt weirded out, on a very primal level, by trannies, but the. If you follow what leftist groups, the single unifying issue they all have is accepting trannies. They're allowed to disagree on anything else, but they all fall in line when it comes to pushing. That really convinced me of top-down evil, and if there is a unified presence pushing evil upon us, then there must be a greater top-down good. And what else could this top-down good be but Jesus Christ?
Recently, I started attending an Orthodox church near me. Beyond the welcoming of my pastor and congregation, I simply feel the same truth that I did when reading the Gospels for the first time. I am not looking for axiomatic proof, but deeper spiritual truths. I have not been baptized into the Orthodox Church yet, but I feel deep down to the very core of my being that this is the correct path. It's my hope that I will have the strength to continue along this path and deepen my faith.
My story starts with my parents. Dad's family is Catholic and my Mom's family are Jews. Neither side is religious in the slightest, but my Mom's relatives clearly didn't like that she married outside the faith. My cousins made a ton of comments about my mother daring to marry outside the faith, and were very transparent about treating me lesser because of it. None of it was remotely subtle, even to a kid. When I hit my teens my grandparents started explicitly talking about how I needed to find a nice Jewish girl to have Jewish babies with. I wouldn't have described myself as an anti-Semite or redpilled on the JQ, but that ethnic division among the Jews is very transparent. Meanwhile, to my Dad's family, faith was just a matter of getting me baptized as a child and that was it. It wasn't something they felt strongly about in the slightest, and they certainly didn't hold it against me.
Through my teens and twenties I "identified," to the extent that I considered myself to be anything, as an agnostic. I felt like my mother's Jewish family pushed me out of ever being of that faith, and at the same time I just bought into everything that media says about Christianity being uncool. I never considered myself an atheist, because it was clear to me that God did exist. The insistence of "evangelical atheists" that Jesus didn't exist, contrary to historical records, and science not explaining the How behind creation, mean that any arguments for the nonexistence of God were wrong and hollow IMO. However, as a rebellious kid I just didn't follow any faith.
During this time, I was aware of Roosh's secular career and lurked on the old forum. When he returned to Christ, I just felt a general feeling of well-wishes and compassion for him. Shamefully, I didn't feel any motivation to seek Christ for myself from it. Around the same time, after a long phone call with one of my cousins on my mother's side, I decided to give Judaism one last try. However, I neither felt nor saw any greater truth at those services. The most charitable interpretation of Judaism is as an ethnic social club, and the least charitable...well, we all know what evils are going on there. It felt spiritually dead; I could tell I would find no value in continuing down that path. That gave some more credence in my mind to Christianity as the true covenant continued by Jesus Christ.
A little while after that, I read the Gospels and felt the same truth that the Jews lacked. It was like the scales fell away from my eyes. I couldn't understand -- I felt deceived by everything I was told about Christianity. I'd like to expand upon this, but I really don't have the words to express the greater feeling of truth that's given to me upon reading the Bible, and I believe that's natural, as God is beyond us and our flaws.
Concurrently, the push of transgenderism in the MSM made me question a lot. I always felt weirded out, on a very primal level, by trannies, but the. If you follow what leftist groups, the single unifying issue they all have is accepting trannies. They're allowed to disagree on anything else, but they all fall in line when it comes to pushing. That really convinced me of top-down evil, and if there is a unified presence pushing evil upon us, then there must be a greater top-down good. And what else could this top-down good be but Jesus Christ?
Recently, I started attending an Orthodox church near me. Beyond the welcoming of my pastor and congregation, I simply feel the same truth that I did when reading the Gospels for the first time. I am not looking for axiomatic proof, but deeper spiritual truths. I have not been baptized into the Orthodox Church yet, but I feel deep down to the very core of my being that this is the correct path. It's my hope that I will have the strength to continue along this path and deepen my faith.
On Finding Christ
It started on the year 2017 when Zakir Naik visited my country, YouTube's algorithm recommended almost all of his videos to me. I watched several of them but I disliked his hardcore Islamist views and the Islamists comments on his videos. So I began to search for rebuttals to his views on the Internet. From searching I accidentally found Ali Sina's personal blog and his Faith Freedom website. For those who did not know Ali Sina is one of the forerunners of anti-Islam movement, he started writing since early 2000's far before the time of David Wood, Sam Shamoun, etc. Ali Sina was born as a Muslim in Iran during the time of Shah Pahlavi (and he is even related to the Prophet Muhammad through his mother's side), he eventually leave Islam and become an atheist.
Now when reading through Sina's articles I found out since 2013-2014 he had already accepted Christ. Although he stated that he found Christ not because of the church or the bible, but in spite of it. Sina found undeniable proofs of Jesus's real existence through studying hundreds of near death experience stories, almost all people who had NDE meet Jesus in the afterlife.
Through Sina's conversions, I see there are no reasons not to accept Jesus myself. But my acceptance of Jesus is through Sina's and NDE's viewpoints.
On Finding Orthodoxy
My first exposure to Orthodoxy comes from reading Samseau's RVF post around 2017. Paraphrasing from memory he said that "Orthodoxy is the only incorruptible church today, that is why when the devils want to destroy it they use external force such as persecution and demolishment of the church building. Catholicism and Protestantism in contrast can be corrupted from within its ranks by the devils". After that my second exposure is through Roosh's conversion to Orthodoxy.
In 2020 there is Sina's article in which the topic is about an ex-Muslim who have left Islam, and he asked Sina in what ways can he know more of the teachings of Jesus. Sina replied that it would be best to go to a Protestant church, since Catholic church is already corrupted from the top. But at the bottom of the article a reader commented that there is another choice other than Protestant or Catholic, that is the Orthodox church. And many ex-Muslims have found a good home in the Orthodox church like Fr Daniel Byantoro http://orthochristian.com/80185.html.
After finding out about Fr Daniel Byantoro I watched many of his sermons on YouTube, and ordered some of his church's prayer books through an online store. Since late 2020 I have always prayed using his prayer books.
Now I wanted to come and join Daniel's church, but I found out he has joined the Greek Genuine Orthodox Church which is an Old Calendarist church. I also learned that there are Ecumenical Patriarchate and Moscow Patriarchate churches in my country. Not knowing which church is the right one I continued to just pray using the prayer books without going to church.
Through pure coincidence, on April 2022 when randomly messaging with my post-graduate friend, I found out he is an Orthodox. I then asked him what church should I attend since there are three churches, he suggested that I go to the Russian church since he is a parishioner at that church.
Since late July 2022 I started my first step into being a catechumen, and in January 2023 I was baptized on the eve of Christmas. At the time of this post it's been one and a half year of my baptism.
It started on the year 2017 when Zakir Naik visited my country, YouTube's algorithm recommended almost all of his videos to me. I watched several of them but I disliked his hardcore Islamist views and the Islamists comments on his videos. So I began to search for rebuttals to his views on the Internet. From searching I accidentally found Ali Sina's personal blog and his Faith Freedom website. For those who did not know Ali Sina is one of the forerunners of anti-Islam movement, he started writing since early 2000's far before the time of David Wood, Sam Shamoun, etc. Ali Sina was born as a Muslim in Iran during the time of Shah Pahlavi (and he is even related to the Prophet Muhammad through his mother's side), he eventually leave Islam and become an atheist.
Now when reading through Sina's articles I found out since 2013-2014 he had already accepted Christ. Although he stated that he found Christ not because of the church or the bible, but in spite of it. Sina found undeniable proofs of Jesus's real existence through studying hundreds of near death experience stories, almost all people who had NDE meet Jesus in the afterlife.
Through Sina's conversions, I see there are no reasons not to accept Jesus myself. But my acceptance of Jesus is through Sina's and NDE's viewpoints.
On Finding Orthodoxy
My first exposure to Orthodoxy comes from reading Samseau's RVF post around 2017. Paraphrasing from memory he said that "Orthodoxy is the only incorruptible church today, that is why when the devils want to destroy it they use external force such as persecution and demolishment of the church building. Catholicism and Protestantism in contrast can be corrupted from within its ranks by the devils". After that my second exposure is through Roosh's conversion to Orthodoxy.
In 2020 there is Sina's article in which the topic is about an ex-Muslim who have left Islam, and he asked Sina in what ways can he know more of the teachings of Jesus. Sina replied that it would be best to go to a Protestant church, since Catholic church is already corrupted from the top. But at the bottom of the article a reader commented that there is another choice other than Protestant or Catholic, that is the Orthodox church. And many ex-Muslims have found a good home in the Orthodox church like Fr Daniel Byantoro http://orthochristian.com/80185.html.
After finding out about Fr Daniel Byantoro I watched many of his sermons on YouTube, and ordered some of his church's prayer books through an online store. Since late 2020 I have always prayed using his prayer books.
Now I wanted to come and join Daniel's church, but I found out he has joined the Greek Genuine Orthodox Church which is an Old Calendarist church. I also learned that there are Ecumenical Patriarchate and Moscow Patriarchate churches in my country. Not knowing which church is the right one I continued to just pray using the prayer books without going to church.
Through pure coincidence, on April 2022 when randomly messaging with my post-graduate friend, I found out he is an Orthodox. I then asked him what church should I attend since there are three churches, he suggested that I go to the Russian church since he is a parishioner at that church.
Since late July 2022 I started my first step into being a catechumen, and in January 2023 I was baptized on the eve of Christmas. At the time of this post it's been one and a half year of my baptism.
Would you mind sharing at least one of these NDE videos?
I was raised strict Catholic but i was young and dumb, also my cultures church's have some issues I don't approve of but those are because of people not because of the faith itself.
As I became older I realized how important faith is and how important it is to be close to God, how important Christ is to guide you in life and how important it is in this clown world we live in. I'll still call myself a bad Catholic but I'll never shun my faith, I need my faith.
As I became older I realized how important faith is and how important it is to be close to God, how important Christ is to guide you in life and how important it is in this clown world we live in. I'll still call myself a bad Catholic but I'll never shun my faith, I need my faith.
For me it was a long journey in search of truth hampered by no small amount of foolishness.
In my late teens my exploration of truth was essentially "if I can get high, listen to cool music, chase pretty girls etc. Surely I can attain happiness?" It took a long while of trying to turn up the dial a few notches before I realised that this alone actually made me pretty miserable. So I started to look for spiritual answers, which for me took the form of Buddhism. I started to meditate, I quit drinking, became vegetarian for a while. Something didn't sit right though, I felt like I couldn't really muster any strength for the asceticism that Buddhism prescribes. At some point it lost its grasp on me.
Around this time, somehow I'd started to watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos. This was around about the time when the New Atheism stuff was kicking off on YT. I quickly adopted this worldview with zeal. I had a phase of being an angry atheist, but eventually this faded away and I kinda just became absorbed in a regular secular lifestyle. Got a job, got a long term girlfriend. I was still an atheist but I didn't really care about it.
Then came the inevitable breakdown of my relationship when she wasn't excited anymore and the drudgery of life kicked in so she immediately thought the solution was to chuck the whole thing away and chase excitement once more. I, of course, began to recall the necessity of some kind of spiritual practise. It started with meditation in a purely secular sense, just to get my head straight. Then I started to play with certain ideas. I began to experiment with the notion that God exists undoubtedly at least in the form of an idea. Once this notion took hold of me I began to be less rigid on other notions. Slowly weird experiences added up and my materialism began to crumble.
Over the next couple of years I became a kind of typical New Ager. I read a lot about Buddhism, I got into the Bhagavad Gita. All this time however there was an increasing sense that I was essentially just forming my belief system based on what appealed to me. And that this is no way to discern truth. I knew that there had to be a correct tradition out there but I didn't know what it was. Was it Buddhism? Which kind of Buddhism? Maybe it was Hinduism? Etc.
I became so confused and spiritually lost that it is not an exaggeration to say some mornings I set out having decided upon Buddhism and would have returned in the evening leaning more towards Hinduism. I knew that this was basically insanity at this point, but I didnt know how to break out of it. So ultimately I prayed. I said "whatever is out there please just come to me in a dream or something and set me on the right path because I cannot figure it out!"
To my shock that night I had a dream. Well I had two dreams to be precise. The first was ugly. It was like I was being shown everything about myself that I did not want to look at. I awoke from that one in the middle of the night sensing some lesson but as yet no complete answer. I fell asleep again. The next dream, which I will keep mostly personal, save for one thing. At the very end right upon the moment of waking up a voice very clearly said "you will find answers in Christ"
I was blown away. Not only was my prayer answered. It was answered with the one thing I didn't want to look at for all those years. The path from this point to being in the church was fairly drawn out but this was what started me in that direction.
In my late teens my exploration of truth was essentially "if I can get high, listen to cool music, chase pretty girls etc. Surely I can attain happiness?" It took a long while of trying to turn up the dial a few notches before I realised that this alone actually made me pretty miserable. So I started to look for spiritual answers, which for me took the form of Buddhism. I started to meditate, I quit drinking, became vegetarian for a while. Something didn't sit right though, I felt like I couldn't really muster any strength for the asceticism that Buddhism prescribes. At some point it lost its grasp on me.
Around this time, somehow I'd started to watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos. This was around about the time when the New Atheism stuff was kicking off on YT. I quickly adopted this worldview with zeal. I had a phase of being an angry atheist, but eventually this faded away and I kinda just became absorbed in a regular secular lifestyle. Got a job, got a long term girlfriend. I was still an atheist but I didn't really care about it.
Then came the inevitable breakdown of my relationship when she wasn't excited anymore and the drudgery of life kicked in so she immediately thought the solution was to chuck the whole thing away and chase excitement once more. I, of course, began to recall the necessity of some kind of spiritual practise. It started with meditation in a purely secular sense, just to get my head straight. Then I started to play with certain ideas. I began to experiment with the notion that God exists undoubtedly at least in the form of an idea. Once this notion took hold of me I began to be less rigid on other notions. Slowly weird experiences added up and my materialism began to crumble.
Over the next couple of years I became a kind of typical New Ager. I read a lot about Buddhism, I got into the Bhagavad Gita. All this time however there was an increasing sense that I was essentially just forming my belief system based on what appealed to me. And that this is no way to discern truth. I knew that there had to be a correct tradition out there but I didn't know what it was. Was it Buddhism? Which kind of Buddhism? Maybe it was Hinduism? Etc.
I became so confused and spiritually lost that it is not an exaggeration to say some mornings I set out having decided upon Buddhism and would have returned in the evening leaning more towards Hinduism. I knew that this was basically insanity at this point, but I didnt know how to break out of it. So ultimately I prayed. I said "whatever is out there please just come to me in a dream or something and set me on the right path because I cannot figure it out!"
To my shock that night I had a dream. Well I had two dreams to be precise. The first was ugly. It was like I was being shown everything about myself that I did not want to look at. I awoke from that one in the middle of the night sensing some lesson but as yet no complete answer. I fell asleep again. The next dream, which I will keep mostly personal, save for one thing. At the very end right upon the moment of waking up a voice very clearly said "you will find answers in Christ"
I was blown away. Not only was my prayer answered. It was answered with the one thing I didn't want to look at for all those years. The path from this point to being in the church was fairly drawn out but this was what started me in that direction.
Sure, here is some of the videos:
NDE Researcher Kenneth Ring: The Golden Rule Dramatically Illustrated
Howard Storm's Near Death Experience
Famous CARDIAC SURGEON gives PROOF of LIFE AFTER DEATH
Text NDE resources:
Near death experience archives
Ali Sina's testimony, a man who's born as a Muslim and become an atheist, after considering the proofs had no choice but to accept Jesus