The Shortest Thread EVER!

[Metis_LDS]

I ask for forgiveness in advance.  I am more interested in the reaction really.  If you have seen what I have written some times you will know I do not hold back about experiences.   I state most correctly and honestly that I have never seen with my eyes or otherwise anything related to the Lord or the Lord himself                                                                                                                                  SO is talking about visions socially unacceptable.  If someone says well I feel it is sacred or the Spirit tells me not to speak about it, I accept that.  Otherwise why hold back???

Edited May 25, 2019 by Metis_LDS
formatting

[Metis_LDS]

 One day I was in the Cardston Alberta Temple with some friends.  We were briefly relaxing in the Celestial room when one or our party came up and said you have to come see this Brother.  So I walked over to this man and when I got there he points to a place on the carpet of the Celestial room and says that is where his father saw an Angel.  He then stated that the Angel and his father spoke just like we were speaking to each other.  I was so dumbfounded I said nothing,  did not asked any questions.   I am glad I said nothing because afterwards I understood that he was just honouring his father.

Edited May 25, 2019 by Metis_LDS
clarification

[CV75]

1 hour ago, Metis_LDS said:

 One day I was in the Cardston Alberta Temple with some friends.  We were briefly relaxing in the Celestial room when one or our party came up and said you have to come see this Brother.  So I walked over to this man and when I got there he points to a place on the carpet of the Celestial room and says that is where my father saw an Angel.  He then stated that the Angel and his father spoke just like we were speaking to each other.  I was so dumbfounded I said nothing,  did not asked any questions.   I am glad I said nothing because afterwards I understood that he was just honouring his father.

A nice example of righteous judgement. Thank you!

But speaking of the shortest thread ever, did they really let the carpet go that long without replacing it? Sounds like gross mismanagement to me!

[Metis_LDS]

7 minutes ago, CV75 said:

A nice example of righteous judgement. Thank you!

Thanks for the compliment,  however I really was dumbfounded because it was the first someone said to me in person (even second hand) that an Angel had been seen.  Perhaps being in the Temple enables us to speak more freely of things that have been viewed.   I had some thing happen in a sealing session, but I did not see anything. I am sure some else did but they were not able to talk about it.

[rpn]

My guess is that when it first happens, people aren't sure if they're crazy and don't want to tell anyone who might think they are?

[Metis_LDS]

1 minute ago, rpn said:

My guess is that when it first happens, people aren't sure if they're crazy and don't want to tell anyone who might think they are?

Yes the crazy label is very powerful.  Is there anyone on the board who has extensive experience working with the mentally ill.  I have done volunteer work but the sample of people I saw where small. But not one of them said they saw things.  So those anyone know what percentage of the mentally unwell see things?

[CV75]

1 hour ago, Metis_LDS said:

Thanks for the compliment,  however I really was dumbfounded because it was the first someone said to me in person (even second hand) that an Angel had been seen.  Perhaps being in the Temple enables us to speak more freely of things that have been viewed.   I had some thing happen in a sealing session, but I did not see anything. I am sure some else did but they were not able to talk about it.

I don't think there are any hard and fast rules about sharing, but that it is a matter of prompting by the Holy Ghost. For me, "too sacred to share" means the Holy Ghost did not prompt, or did not confirm the thought, of sharing it. I don't think someone having had a sacred experience, and is still qualified to enjoy them, would withhold sharing when prompted. "And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart." Sometimes we let others discover for themselves, which is a joy unto itself (for both the ponderer and the discoverer).

[RevTestament]

45 minutes ago, Metis_LDS said:

Yes the crazy label is very powerful.  Is there anyone on the board who has extensive experience working with the mentally ill.  I have done volunteer work but the sample of people I saw where small. But not one of them said they saw things.  So those anyone know what percentage of the mentally unwell see things?

You are trying to make this thread short. Schizophrenics often hear things and sometimes hallucinate. Parkinson's disease sometimes causes visual hallucinations. We are talking maybe 25%. A psychiatrist would probably be better able to answer this question. Hallucinations can happen in a number of mental diseases.

[Metis_LDS]

1 minute ago, RevTestament said:

You are trying to make this thread short. Schizophrenics often hear things and sometimes hallucinate. Parkinson's disease sometimes causes visual hallucinations. We are talking maybe 25%. A psychiatrist would probably be better able to answer this question. Hallucinations can happen in a number of mental diseases.

Would you agree that seeing things are just one symptom of these disorders and not always present. If so how did we get from that to anyone seeing things being unwell?

[RevTestament]

1 hour ago, Metis_LDS said:

Thanks for the compliment,  however I really was dumbfounded because it was the first someone said to me in person (even second hand) that an Angel had been seen.  Perhaps being in the Temple enables us to speak more freely of things that have been viewed.   I had some thing happen in a sealing session, but I did not see anything. I am sure some else did but they were not able to talk about it.

A member of one of my prior wards told my father in law that he had visitations while trying to figure out genealogy. Once he was awoken by a visitor who said "my name is John" which he repeated. I think he had tentatively written down the name as James or something like that, so the angel was correcting it. He said "this happens all the time." 

Personally, I have had a few dreams which I interpret as being induced from heaven. I have also heard the Lord speak to me - once was during my first temple visit. But I can't claim any "visions" per se. I have never told anyone what was fully related to me, except for my wife who I did tell about my temple experience - except I left out part of that. No one in my extended family would believe me anyway with the possible exception of my brother. The messages were meant for me. Why hold back? Some things aren't meant to be shared.

[mfbukowski]

5 hours ago, Metis_LDS said:

 One day I was in the Cardston Alberta Temple with some friends.  We were briefly relaxing in the Celestial room when one or our party came up and said you have to come see this Brother.  So I walked over to this man and when I got there he points to a place on the carpet of the Celestial room and says that is where my father saw an Angel.  He then stated that the Angel and his father spoke just like we were speaking to each other.  I was so dumbfounded I said nothing,  did not asked any questions.   I am glad I said nothing because afterwards I understood that he was just honouring his father.

As a long time temple worker, I have heard many many such stories, and I believe them.  Some recent ones were related to us in our preparation meeting for temple workers last week, by one of the temple presidency - the experiences happened a week before.  It is common place for people to come and tell the temple presidency when they have had such experiences.   

I am sure sometimes people make them up, but there are so many it is hard to think they are all made up.  And why go to the temple president with a made up story?  I have known one member of the presidency for 30 years, been to his house, know his family, worked with him in the ward  etc and trust him totally

 But this is what a famous philosopher said about such phenomena.  I know you are interested in this sort of thing- this is a little technical, but I will post it anyway.

There was a very famous and influential philosopher named William James who had these opinions.  There is an excellent summary of William James' view of religious experience in the Encyclopedia Britannica and how such experiences are fully "real".  I am going to post it in one other thread as well today.  It starts our speaking about regular daily "experience"- just walking around, observing events that you remember etc, perhaps an "experience" might be recounting a story or conversation you had recently.  Were such events "just in your head" or were they "real"?   This is the way James would answer the question:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/religious-experience#ref421288

Quote

 

Views of experience in general

Religious experience must be understood against the background of a general theory of experience as such. Experience as conceived from the standpoint of a British philosophical tradition stemming from John Locke and David Hume is essentially the reports of the world received through the senses. Experience, as a tissue of sensible content, was set in contrast to reason, understood as the domain of logic and mathematics. The mind was envisaged as a clean wax tablet (tabula rasa), on which the sensible world imprints itself; and the one who experiences is the passive recipient of what is given. It is possible to distinguish and compare these sensible items by means of understanding, but the data themselves are available only through experience—i.e., the sensation of things and reflection upon thought and mental activities, feelings, and desires. According to this classical empiricist view, all ideas, beliefs, and theories expressed in conceptualform are to be traced back to their origin in sense if they are to be understood and justified.

Hume, DavidDavid Hume, oil on canvas by Allan Ramsay, 1766; in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.Fine Art Images—Heritage Images/age fotostock

The above view of experience came under criticism from two sides. Immanuel Kant, an 18th-century German philosopher, who still retained some of the assumptions of the position he criticized, nevertheless declared that experience is not identical with passively received sensible material but must be construed as the joint product of such material and its being grasped by an understanding that thinks in accordance with certain necessary categories not derived from the senses. Kant opened the way for a new understanding of the element of interpretation in all experience, and his successors in the development of German idealism, Johann Fichte, Friedrich Schelling, and G.W.F. Hegel, came to characterize experience as the many-sided reflection of the individual’s multiple encounters with the world, with other individuals, and with himself.

A second attack on the classical conception came from American pragmatist philosophers, notably Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, for whom experience was the medium for the disclosure of whatever there is to be encountered; it is far richer and more complex than a passive registry of sensible data. Experience was seen as a human activity related to the purposes and interests of the one who experiences, and it was understood as an interpreted product of multiple transactions between humanity and the environment. Moreover, stress was placed on the social and funded character of experience in place of the older conception of experience as private content confined to the mind of an individual. On this view, experience is not confined to its content but includes modes or dimensions that represent frames of meaning—social, moral, aesthetic, political, religious—through which whatever is encountered can be interpreted. James went beyond his associates in developing the broadest theory of experience, known as radical empiricism, according to which the relations and connections between items of experience are given along with these items themselves.

Critics of the classical view of experience, while not concerned exclusively with religious experience, saw, nevertheless, that if experience is confined to the domain of the senses it is then difficult to understand what could be meant by religious experience if the divine is not regarded as one sensible object among others. This consideration prompted attempts to understand experience in broader terms. Cutting across all theories of experience is the basic fact that experience demands expression in language and symbolic forms. To know what has been experienced and how it is to be understood requires the ability to identify things, persons, and events through naming, describing, and interpreting, which involve appropriate concepts and language. No experience can be the subject of analysis while it is being had or undergone; communication and critical inquiry require that experiences be cast into symbolic form that arrests them for further scrutiny. The various uses of language—political, scientific, moral, religious, aesthetic, and others—represent so many purposes through which experience is described and interpreted.

 

 

[Metis_LDS]

7 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

It starts our speaking about regular daily "experience"- just walking around, observing events that you remember etc, perhaps an "experience" might be recounting a story or conversation you had recently.  Were such events "just in your head" or were they "real"? 

Both sides of my ethnic heritage are very visionary.  I was born into French Canada in Quebec.  I have spoken with a missionary who laboured there in the late Seventies.  If they started with the First Vision people would say oh! yes my mother had a vision or my friend or etc.. etc... and then the people being taught by the missionaries would politely say Joseph had a vision not disputing that he had but saying well lots of people have visions.  So the missionaries  decided to start with the plan of salvation, bringing in the First Vision afterwards to establish authority this worked much better.

[Tacenda]

First off, I wonder all the time why members of the church, like my husband for instance, don't believe in Mediums (my niece is one) but then they somehow believe in the veil being very thin? Strange that it's so hard for members to not be skeptical, I know there are fakes, but I believe there are real ones, because they've been able to connect far better. And that's what I think has happened to those people in the temple. They are able to connect much easier than others. Their spirit or soul or ? is closer to the other side.

A few years ago, at the first of my faith crisis, the 1st counselor stopped by to ask me if I wanted a Primary calling, I had just been released along with the whole RS presidency from our callings. This was during the year of learning the D&C or church history. And I knew that I'd have to tesitfy to those children of my belief about it, and I just couldn't. So I told the 1st counselor the truth. 

This is strange I know, but when my husband and I were leaving the house, the 1st counselor drove up to our house, and then my husband was busy visiting with our neighbor outside, so the 1st counselor asked me to sit in his car when he asked if I'd like the calling, so better than just on the driveway. That's when I told him what I'd been going through. And he proceeded to tell me that he had gone through the same thing awhile back but that recently his wife had been to the temple and had seen angels. He told me that he hadn't told many people but felt the prompting to tell me. And that boosted his testimony about temple work and therefore that the church is true. 

So that did get me for a while, but have since found that not just LDS get these visits. So there's that. Sorry for the long post. And thanks for the thread, it brings me much hope for the afterlife and being with my loved ones...oh and happy Memorial Day coming up!

Edited May 25, 2019 by Tacenda

[mfbukowski]

41 minutes ago, Metis_LDS said:

Both sides of my ethnic heritage are very visionary.  I was born into French Canada in Quebec.  I have spoken with a missionary who laboured there in the late Seventies.  If they started with the First Vision people would say oh! yes my mother had a vision or my friend or etc.. etc... and then the people being taught by the missionaries would politely say Joseph had a vision not disputing that he had but saying well lots of people have visions.  So the missionaries  decided to start with the plan of salvation, bringing in the First Vision afterwards to establish authority this worked much better.

My great grandmother was like that as well, my mom somewhat, and I have had premonitions that are very spooky..  I once woke up in the night in a panic and had to call my (then) girlfriend who was on a road trip.  The car she was riding in had just had an accident- no serious injuries but car was totaled.  I have also had dreams.... and a few religious experiences which have changed my life significantly 

The reason we do not talk about such things is that they will be scoffed upon, we say because they are "sacred" but only sacred because they are very personal and not for public consumption.  They are sacred in the same way I think that one's intimate relationship with one's spouse is "sacred"- they are just deeply deeply personal things that should not be bandied about.

Edited May 25, 2019 by mfbukowski

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, RevTestament said:

............ A psychiatrist would probably be better able to answer this question. ...............................

Reminds me of the account by Psychiatrist George G. Ritchie, Jr., being interviewed for a faculty position at the University of Virginia:  He frankly told his interviewer about his clinical death in an Army hospital in Texas during World War II, and the extraordinary visions and out of body experiences he then had.  His interviewer thanked him for his frankness and told him that he had heard of those experiences, and that he would not have hired him if he had failed to talk openly about them.   You can read his account online at http://redwheelweiser.com/downloads/mylifeafterdying.pdf . See also Dr. Ritchie's book Return from Tomorrow.

[Metis_LDS]

29 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

And he proceeded to tell me that he had gone through the same thing awhile back but that recently his wife had been to the temple and had seen angels. He told me that he hadn't told many people but felt the prompting to tell me. And that boosted his testimony about temple work and therefore that the church is true. 

It's great to see how interconnected we really are!

Edited May 25, 2019 by Metis_LDS
added past tense

[Metis_LDS]

19 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Reminds me of the account by Psychiatrist George G. Ritchie, Jr., being interviewed for a faculty position at the University of Virginia:  He frankly told his interviewer about his clinical death in an Army hospital in Texas during World War II, and the extraordinary visions and out of body experiences he then had.  His interviewer thanked him for his frankness and told him that he had heard of those experiences, and that he would not have hired him if he had failed to talk openly about them.   You can read his account online at http://redwheelweiser.com/downloads/mylifeafterdying.pdf . See also Dr. Ritchie's book Return from Tomorrow.

Yes I read his book along time ago, the detail is impressive.

[Duncan]

I was thinking about this earlier, if certain people told me they had a vision i'd be more open to the idea that it actually happened, others i'd think they were looney tunes. I think some people like to gloat about their alleged experiences

[Metis_LDS]

1 minute ago, Duncan said:

I was thinking about this earlier, if certain people told me they had a vision i'd be more open to the idea that it actually happened, others i'd think they were looney tunes. I think some people like to gloat about their alleged experiences

I understand what you are saying but why discount it if the vision is not harmful. A sincere question not trying to give you a hard time.

[Duncan]

5 minutes ago, Metis_LDS said:

I understand what you are saying but why discount it if the vision is not harmful. A sincere question not trying to give you a hard time.

it's not the vision itself but the intent of sharing it

[mfbukowski]

10 hours ago, Metis_LDS said:

Would you agree that seeing things are just one symptom of these disorders and not always present. If so how did we get from that to anyone seeing things being unwell?

Clark Goble , who hangs out here as well, was kind enough to ask me to post on Times and Seasons this little article that seems relevant.

What is the difference between a vision and a hallucination and seeing anything "real"?

There is a neuroscientist mentioned in the article who says we "hallucinate reality" !

We do not see what is "real" if what is "real" is what physicists say reality is- quarks and subatomic particles, but what we actually see are light waves bouncing off of---- what?  Compounds and elements?  What IS reality and why do we see what we see as "real"?

https://www.timesandseasons.org/harchive/2017/08/guest-post-justifying-visions/index.html

 

Edited May 26, 2019 by mfbukowski

[carbon dioxide]

8 hours ago, Tacenda said:

First off, I wonder all the time why members of the church, like my husband for instance, don't believe in Mediums (my niece is one) but then they somehow believe in the veil being very thin? Strange that it's so hard for members to not be skeptical, I know there are fakes, but I believe there are real ones, because they've been able to connect far better.

I think the problem is that heavenly visitations almost  universally occur out of the blue with no expectation that it will occur.  For example when Joseph went for an answer in the First Vision, he was just seeking an answer to a prayer.  He was not expecting an actual visitation.  Visitations from God or any other righteous being cant be conjured up by someone.  They come by their own will or to accomplish a certain task and they are very rare events.   Probably the closest thing to a Medium in the Church is a stake patriarch who gives a blessing but that probably is not a good example of it.

My sister was telling me a story of her talking to a temple sealer.  She asked him basically what was the most interesting thing he has experienced.  He simply answered to the effect "Sometimes they let me see them."  Anyone who goes into the temple expecting to see something like this are probably those who will be the last to have an experience such as this.

 

Edited May 26, 2019 by carbon dioxide

[Maidservant]

I can't say that I have had an individual I knew was dead engage with me so that I could see and hear with my earthly ears and eyes in broad daylight, so to speak.

On the other hand, as this thread has caused me to recall, I have had innumerable experiences that I would say are not easily explainable to others in the paradigms we have in our society today.  Some of those experiences are dreams, hallucinations (yes!), 'feelings' of an 'extra' sort whether a communication or simply a transcendence, miracles saving lives (before, during, after), words said in blessings, things happening at the same time in distance, etc etc etc etc.  I would dare say I have had hundreds of these kinds of experiences. 

The value they all have is likely for my self.  For example, the hallucination was unutterably frightening at the moment it happened; but now I think it's hilarious to remember (it's a great story); and my explanation to the best of my own info for myself is that I had some chemical/mineral deficiency I was dealing with so I did some detoxing and the hallucinations went away (there were two before I decided I had to detox NOW lol).  Some of the transcendent feelings I frame as a spontaneous deeper connection with the joy and truth of the universe and of the specific happenstances they were in the middle of (two were related to prophets, Ezra Taft Benson and to Joseph and Hyrum; and one was in connection with a Native American PowWow and the drums and dancing).

In fact, as my husband is passed to the other side, every day is an exercise in communicating through the veil and strengthening that ability.

I am the kind of person that would probably tell any and all of these experiences to anyone who would listen.  If I thought I wouldn't get laughed at.

One of my favorites was when I was about 18 years old and I had moved out from home.  Everything was fresh--good and hard as it only can be at that age.  I was standing on the campus of MCC (Mesa Community College) waiting for a friend.  There were nice large green lawns.

Way across the lawn, not close at all, I saw a white dove in a branch of a tree.  I was caught to see it because one, I am a 'Look there's a tree!' type of person.  All flora and fauna fascinate me.  And, two, I thought it was really cool that it was all white.  As I let myself observe it at length, it left the tree and flew straight toward me.  Now, again, it was far away.  There was no reason for it to fly to me; there was no reason for it fly that low; there was no other obstacle that it couldn't have freely flown anywhere else; I was not close enough at all to have disturbed it.  It flew straight to me and flew past my shoulder.  It was going too fast, but if I had known, it was close enough to touch--wingtip at my cheek almost.  I can't say that there was any spiritual feeling; there wasn't.  But I was flabbergasted as I watched it happen and then it flew away.  "Huh, wow." kinda thing.

That's my share ha ha.

I wouldn't mind telling my hallucinations too, but they might scare some.

Edited May 26, 2019 by Maidservant

[MorningStar]

Are our visions meant for just us or for other people to hear? I have a couple I have shared with close friends when I felt like they needed to hear it, but I wouldn't share them just to try to prove to others that there is a God or that the church is true because those who don't want to hear won't hear and would most likely call it a hallucination. Those experiences were meant to help me during my worst trials. 

[Tacenda]

2 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Clark Goble , who hangs out here as well, was kind enough to ask me to post on Times and Seasons this little article that seems relevant.

What is the difference between a vision and a hallucination and seeing anything "real"?

There is a neuroscientist mentioned in the article who says we "hallucinate reality" !

We do not see what is "real" if what is "real" is what physicists say reality is- quarks and subatomic particles, but what we actually see are light waves bouncing off of---- what?  Compounds and elements?  What IS reality and why do we see what we see as "real"?

https://www.timesandseasons.org/harchive/2017/08/guest-post-justifying-visions/index.html

 

Haven't watched this, if it's saying what I think it is, then what about JS's vision, does he still get a pass?

Edited May 26, 2019 by Tacenda