When I was living with the missionaries in Northern Ireland, we would have prayer meetings during which most of the thirty or so people on site would speak in tongues. If you've never been to a church that does this, speaking in tongues sounds like people saying gibberish. The idea, though, is that it is a sort of spiritual language granted by God. Of course there are those who object to this idea and say it's something else, but that's not as important to me as the fact that the experience exists, and I would like to experience it but I haven't. I was one of the only people who didn't speak in tongues at these meetings. At the time, and despite what my friends told me, I assumed I wasn't holy enough, but there are plenty of spiritual leaders (I mean the good kind) who don't speak in tongues, so maybe that's not it.
Now that I go to a secular school *play dramatic music here* I have friends with a wider range of beliefs. some of my friends say they can see your aura, which I guess is kind of like a halo around people that can be different colors. As you can probably guess, I can't experience this either. Whenever I find myself in a conversation about this it reminds me of not being able to speak in tongues at the prayer meeting. I feel like there's no spiritual side to me, like I'm a robot or evil or something. People don't tell me this. I just think it.
I've become more skeptical than I care to be. Skepticism is like the doppelganger of curiosity. They both involve asking questions, but a skeptical question seeks to prove wrong, while curiosity seeks out new knowledge. Curiosity doesn't mean believing everything you're told, but understanding and taking joy from the idea that you don't know everything yet. Why don't I experience spiritual things? Is it too much skepticism? I don't know.
Ever since I read the novel "Snow Crash" I can never think of speaking in tongues the same way again - let's just say, that book makes me *afraid* of ever gaining that gift. (In the story, it was tied into the story of Babel and the idea of a base human language/programming that existed in a time before humans had free will, and a computer/brain virus). It is a really cool science ficiton book (Heck, one of things I most liked about it is the fact that the one of the most intelligent characters in it believes in a God in her own quasi-Catholic/computer hacker way and is darn proud of it - quite refreshing to see an *inversion* of the old "belief makes you stupid" trope that's so popular in secular sci-fi), but it' not one I'd recommend to a certain subset of very religious people...
ReplyDeleteMy conclusion as to why *I* don't have any mystic experiences is twofold: I have enough imagination not to need such things, and I'd probably be scared out of my pants if I had anything weird happen to me. It all works out.