Seeking the occult, finding God.

     In my teens to early 20's I took a deep dive into the occult. I always believed that God existed, but I didn't feel connected to him or even know who he truly was. I was raised in a Christian household but took no interest in the Bible. Despite being forced to attend Church services I paid no attention to the message being preached. I've come to find out that the message being preached, or lack thereof, in most Churches today is boring and ineffectual by design. Or by negligence and ignorance of those conducting said services. 

    My father was a pastor when I was very young, and again after I had essentially moved out on my own. It's curious to me, in hindsight, that I missed out on his teachings, which were very different teachings from the Churches we attended in my formative years. I remember my father dragging us from Church to Church every Sunday trying to find one that he believed taught what the Bible actually said. He never did find one. He settled on taking us to a local Baptist Church where he was hired to teach Greek and Hebrew classes, part time. He already worked 60-70 hours a week at two different jobs to support our family. So, while I technically had access to a great Bible teacher, he was unavailable to teach me at the same that I was unavailable to receive the message. 

    I sought out the supernatural on my own. I had never had an encounter with God; I decided I might as well try an encounter with something else. I read every occult book I could get my hands on; I was too poor to buy them, but my two friends and I would sit on the floor in the bookshops downtown reading on metaphysics, astral projection, channeling, dream interpretation, hauntings, tarot, etc. We were obsessed (particularly me) with movies and stories detailing possessions or haunted places, ghost hunters and demonic activity. My mother had told me stories of one of my childhood homes being inhabited by demonic spirits. When I was a baby she'd walk in to check on me while I was sleeping and see the curtains billowing (windows closed), a depression on the bed as if someone was sitting there next to me, or shadow people. Once she said she found me underneath the bed, with no logical explanation as to how I got there (still in infancy). And once she found me, with some entity patting me on the diaper while I slept. At some point she gave up her cognitive dissonance about what was happening and realized it was demonic. She told me she finally commanded, in the name of Jesus Christ, that they leave me alone. And according to her, it all stopped.

    I've since learned that my mother had very severe childhood trauma, and I feel she was under demonic oppression for her entire life. When my friends and I decided to make a Ouija board to contact the spirits, I often now wonder if this is why they were immediately responsive to us. I think they were already there, and they clearly knew us very well. 

    The entity we contacted knew everything about us; there wasn't a question asked that it failed to provide the correct answer for.  It's led me to think that the demonic realm operates as a hive mind, because while my friends and I grew up in different states, this entity could immediately answer questions about our pasts as if it singlehandedly had been watching each of us since birth. It answered questions about my friend's past regarding things she'd never even divulged to us. And vice versa. I hesitate to state the specific details of these conversations, but I think it's important to note that we were also told accurate predictions about our futures. I was told, for one, that I would have a lot of children. At the time this was a preposterous thought, because I wanted no children and often stated this fact. While I was told a specific number of children, I cannot recall what the number was. For years I remembered it as being five. I was so certain of this that when I became pregnant with my 6th I was absolutely wrecked with anxiety the entire pregnancy thinking that one of my children was going to die, as I was only supposed to have 5. But my children were fine, and my memory was in question. Was it ever 5? Maybe it was 7. Maybe it was 10. Maybe the entity was making a guess and didn't know anything about my future.  

    Obviously, growing up in a Christian, Church going home, I had certain concepts of the supernatural realm in mind prior to these experiences. One being; demons can't read your mind, and they don't know the future. This was the beginning of my truth-seeking journey regarding the Word of God; were the things I'd been taught true? Is that really what the Bible said? For years I was also nagged by the idea that perhaps this entity telling me of "the future" was moreso the entity planting ideas in my mind and my subconscious then acting out the predictions. However, some of the predictions that came to pass were things completely out of my ability to control. Or things that I was only able to make connections to in hindsight. Nonetheless, it was a stern lesson in just how much the power of suggestion can shape our life choices and how important it is "take every thought captive" (2 Corinthians 10:5). 

    I also found it particularly interesting that the entity we spoke with seemed very hesitant to answer certain questions. While the questions it did answer were answered correctly, there was questions it would refuse to answer. There were questions we had to rephrase before it would answer us. Some of the answers it gave required us inserting our own framework. For instance, if it refused to answer I would state something like, "Are you not allowed to answer that question?' Yes. I also told it point blank that I knew he had no power to harm me because of God, because of who my father was. He responded that he knew that, but that I would tell other people about him and he could in turn, harm them. I asked him if that was his goal, to lead others away from God so they would be lost like he was. Yes, he answered. 

    For years, most of my adult life, that statement has kept me from telling anyone about my experiences. I was listening to a podcast recently (Nephilim Death Squad, I do not remember the episode) where the statement was made that supernatural entities lie. It sounds obvious, but it seems to be a common reaction, when having a supernatural experience, that the experience is taken at face value. When you are told x thing, by an interdimensional being, that also just told you a series of verifiably true things (that it could only know via supernatural means), it's a natural reaction to take it at face value. The statement made sense to me. If I tell anyone about my experiences he can hurt those people. And yet, he already could hurt those people. He already could lead astray anyone who was of a mind to be led astray. My takeaway from these occult experiences was that God was real, and it made me seek him ever more diligently. Why couldn't that be someone else's takeaway as well? And by me NOT sharing what I have to share, harm could equally come to others. 

    Do I think I went about finding God in the right way? No, I absolutely do not. In this blog post, I've barely touched on the experiences I had with this entity and with the occult and it's not something I would ever suggest or condone anyone doing. Channeling, Tarot, Ouija, astral travel, etc are all real practices that harness the supernatural in the exact way that God tell us to not attempt. Why would I seek information about my life or the supernatural realm from a lesser god, from a trickster entity, when I can seek information from Jesus Christ himself, the one intermediary between God and man and the ONLY entity that I can trust to tell me the whole truth and not lead me astray? I was seeking other gods before Him back then, because I didn't like the way he spoke to me. I didn't get immediate answers from Him so I sought answers outside of Him, and I only ended up with confusion. 

     Jeremiah 29:13. I also wasn't seeking him with my heart, but only my mind. You can't find God with your intellect. Matthew 18:2-4.