Your experiences of spiritual attacks

cloudyday2 said:

What is the mechanism or explanation from the Buddhist cosmology? Is it that I and the coffee cup are actually the same mind and the same matter and my localization is delusion?

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In Buddhist psycho-cosmology, there are three major planes in samsaric reality, involving the 1) consciousness, 2) mind, and 3) body (physical matter). The three planes shade into one another (e.g. a higher mind is essentially lower consciousness), but we talk about three planes for the sake of practical reference. These are both cosmological & psychological planes of existence, they are one and the same (again, they shade into one another), just in different aspects. The consciouness animates the mind, and the mind animates the body.

The highest entities (aka deities) possess only consciousness. Mid-level deities possess consciousness and mind. Low-level deities, humans, and animals possess consciousness, mind, and body. Those in the lower, painful planes possess body, but with progressively lesser minds, and even lesser consciousnesses the further "down" they go.

We all possess various degrees of consciousness, and we can work to increase our existing light of consciousness through application of will and wisdom, or decrease it through practice of weakness and ignorance, greed, and aversion. (Many deities fall from their lofty positions as a result of such ignorance, after spending their lifetime indulging in the sensory pleasures of their heavenly realms.)

The coffee cup possesses its own body, with little to no mind or consciousness. However, another powerful consciousness can potentially possess the body of the cup with its own consciousness and mind.

- Was there a warning sign first?

Feeling of unease. Felt like I couldn't control my thoughts. Negative emotions.

- How did you react?

Realized it was all in my head and took control of my thoughts until the feeling went away.


- How did the experience affect you long-term

Made me realize how important it is to 'be the boss' when it comes to your mind.

cloudyday2 said:

The key is whether the divination and magic is seeking aid from God or some Gentile lowercase god (IMO).

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I don't use divination or magic to seek God's aid. I just pray.

In some churches they burn incense or light candles. However, that is not magic. It's a symbolism of lifting up our prayers to God. I know candles and stuff like that are sometimes used for magic in some religions but not in my church. Hope this helps.

cloudyday2 said:

Thanks, yes that sounds pretty normal. That is how I do it too. But then the question arises of how to discern God's guidance (if any).

Let's say you are thinking about switching jobs and possibly relocating with your family to a new city and church. You aren't certain if this change is what God wants for you. So you pray and then you wait hopefully for guidance from God. Ideally you hope to feel a clear urging from the Holy Spirit like so many Christians claim to feel at times. Nothing happens so you keep waiting and hoping and praying. Finally you are walking on the sidewalk and see a piece of trash with the name of the new city caught in a patch of beautiful flowers. You take that as a sign that you should go ahead and change jobs and relocate. ... What you have done there is pretty similar to divination. In the time of the conquest of the Promised Lands the Canaanites who faced similar decisions might go to a priest and draw an arrow from a bundle of arrows. The length of the arrow you randomly selected would allow the priest to give you guidance. There was an assumption that the god would guide your seemingly random selection.

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What your describing here seems more like intuition to me.

cloudyday2 said:

Thanks, yes that sounds pretty normal. That is how I do it too. But then the question arises of how to discern God's guidance (if any).

Let's say you are thinking about switching jobs and possibly relocating with your family to a new city and church. You aren't certain if this change is what God wants for you. So you pray and then you wait hopefully for guidance from God. Ideally you hope to feel a clear urging from the Holy Spirit like so many Christians claim to feel at times. Nothing happens so you keep waiting and hoping and praying. Finally you are walking on the sidewalk and see a piece of trash with the name of the new city caught in a patch of beautiful flowers. You take that as a sign that you should go ahead and change jobs and relocate. ... What you have done there is pretty similar to divination. In the time of the conquest of the Promised Lands the Canaanites who faced similar decisions might go to a priest and draw an arrow from a bundle of arrows. The length of the arrow you randomly selected would allow the priest to give you guidance. There was an assumption that the god would guide your seemingly random selection.

So my point is simply that some of these things are not easy to categorize. Maybe God sometimes gives guidance to Christians through seemingly random events that the Christian sees as significant and communicative. Maybe not all Christians can feel the Holy Spirit due to their spiritual immaturity. Just some ideas.

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But flowers do not last long, they wither and die,

So pick up the trash and throw it in a bin.

Make yourself useful.

cloudyday2 said:

Maybe the intuition is the pure inner self as God intended us to be.

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^This!!!

I do not put too much stock in pre-modern forms of psychology, including religious and occult traditions: they lack too much vital data about neurophysiology, brain chemistry etc. to be reliable in any way.
It's basically the equivalent of trying to heal a fever by opening an artery to "get rid of the excess fire element contained in the blood", in 2019.
It made sense to do so with the limited amount of medical knowledge available in centuries past, but it lacks any foundation today. We just know better.

That said: I don't consider such traditions *entirely* worthless. Their practices, in particular, may render worthwhile results - even if their explanation for the efficacy of these practices is based on false assumptions.
For example, meditating with a mantra is effective, but not because of the magical power of the particular words spoken. You achieve exactly the same effect with any word or phrase, especially if it's not part of your everyday speech.
Thus, "Rama-lama-ding-dong" might be just as powerful as "om mani padme hum".

cloudyday2 said:

I was curious if anybody wanted to share their experiences that seemed to be spiritual attacks. I may have experienced such things in the past, and that is one reason why I call myself a "generic theist" instead of an atheist. I feel there is something more than the natural world, but I am pretty confused about it - especially now that I lack the Christian metaphysical framework. I suspect these things happen more often than skeptics realize, but those who experience them prefer not to talk openly due to the giggle factor and a desire to forget and return to normalcy afterwards.

Here are some of my questions:
- Was there a warning sign first?
- How did you react?
- How did the experience affect you long-term?

To be honest, this type of thing bothers me, because it adds a lot of uncertainty and confusion to an otherwise tidy naturalistic model of reality.

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Spiritual Attacks? Yeah...............................................they've gone something like this :

cloudyday2 said:

Maybe God sometimes gives guidance to Christians through seemingly random events that the Christian sees as significant and communicative.

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Sometimes that's possible. But Christians would check the scriptures to make sure what they think they have heard from God, does not go against the Bible.

cloudyday2 said:

One problem with modern medicine and psychology is the desire to exclude placebo/nocebo effect.

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I think you misinterpret the intent of modern psychology and medicine here.
The placebo effect needs to be excluded when studying whether a specific treatment has got any real effect or not, otherwise the result will be affected by the bias of everyone involved.
But that does not mean medical practitioners seek to avoid the beneficial effects of placebo in their treatment of patients in other contexts. Bedside manner, taking the time to converse with patients or even giving them placebos (with or without the patients' knowledge) are all common practices tying directly into the psychic potential for healing.

Places like America are often very busy. we don't got time to be person-to-person, we got to just hand you stuff and send you off.

If you find a doctor that takes time with you then s/he is a keeper. I think some doctors mostly doctor because of the status and the wealth that's possible. Some doctors are probably very much living in their heads and might not be very extroverted or compassionate. It's not always wrong and they are very busy and important people and it's hard to learn everything in that vast section of human knowledge.

Kind of makes me wonder how South Korean or Japanese doctors are like. those people are obsessed with working.