It has been three years since the supernatural events of My Story and I have spent on average a couple hours a day listening to paranormal stories - Christian and non-Christian in nature - and researching every avenue that I could find about the topic of spiritual experiences and the phenomena. It has not been an easy road, by any means, and at times it has left me rather emotionally drained.
Shortly after the events of three years ago, I felt like I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand I was overwhelmed with wonder at what had happened, incredibly grateful for the deliverance that was granted me. On the other, I soon discovered that even those within the church found my story a bit too much to bear and in some ways it has left me feeling homeless spiritually and among friends.
In researching a lot of these stories, this is a common response. The pain and grief of both having experienced something that was terrifying and wonderful and the aftermath of the often cold and dismissing responses of people whose dogma holds them in its grip. Firmly holding to "Doctrine" (which simply means teaching) is often seen as a sign of the faithful, and a person's ability to hold to a particular set of beliefs regardless of any experiences or evidence given to them, is seen as a virtue. And to question any of the doctrines is seen as a betrayal and so a person will often be "put out" of the community as a result.
Many factions and denominations within Christianity hold to their worldview with an iron fist. And it is often impossible to get people to realize that perhaps their views need rethinking.
One does not need to abandon their prior beliefs entirely in order to rethink them.
Shortly after my experiences I had a series of overwhelming questions, and I would like to address three of them in this post:
At the time of my experiences I did not know that this was such a pertinent question among many experiencers of UAP. Apparently there are experiences that people have had that involve both what appear to be orbs of light without physical structure and nuts-and-bolts craft. In some cases, the same object has morphed between the two.
In the story of Dr. Gary Steerman, who eventually became a rather dedicated protestant Christian, he saw a UFO craft-like object that was a classical physical saucer which then, when it rapidly accelerated away from his private plane, was seen in the distance as a bright star.
This has lead me to believe that it is quite possible that the object that I saw in the sky was indeed a machine. It could very well be a distant classical saucer-shaped UFO just at quite a distance. Yet I have no proof of this, just conjecture.
This is extremely discomforting, I confess, because the object did lead me to a protestant church where a classical message of deliverance from demonic beings was being taught.
Despite my confusion on this topic, I cannot help but wonder why in the world it was so clearly hinted to me the connection between flying saucers and angelic beings. As one can expect, this is highly frowned upon by most people in the church.
It is clear to me that heaven wanted me to make a connection between Christianity and classical UFOs
If heaven did not want me to make this connection, then there were a myriad of other experiences that I could have had.
After studying the phenomena throughout the years a lot, I discovered that there is solid evidence that when creatures of the phenomena show up, they seem to have abilities to almost create holographic projections into the minds of humans.
This could mean that when people see angels, fairies, demons, etc. that these are not real beings in all cases, but simply what it is wanted for us to see. Everyone from antiquity until now could simply be experiencing holographic style images projected onto their consciousness designed specifically to invoke fear or feelings of love and warmth.
This is a serious problem to solve for all religions, because it implies two truths:
In other words, can I trust that I actually experienced a demonic entity in my apartment and two angels that came to rescue me from it? Did Padre Pio really experience demonic beings attacking him? Are all the experiences I had real, or were they just designed to push me in a direction of thought, perhaps in what I am thinking right now?
In many near-death experiences (I have listened and read hundreds of them), people report that their spirit guides / angels do not care what they are called and instead feel compelled to simply do their job and help / guide the human. In some cases they respond to the experiencer that they are "called by many names". In other words, they often wish to remain anonymous and seem to care very little on what identity they are given. There are exceptions, of course, as when people sometimes meet Jesus, but even then it appears that Jesus himself often does not reveal who he is directly (think of the disciples on the road to Emmaus). Anonymity seems to be more important than the details that humans often seek.
It appears that often heaven / spirits guide humans anonymously and prefer to leave a strong level of mystery around our purpose and direction on earth.
Yet with most stories there is one compelling truth: people are to report what they experienced, even if it leads to derision or persecution.
For some reason, the telling of the stories seems to be a powerful element in the entire phenomena.
So who were the angels? I have no idea, but it appears that the intention was for me to understand that they were ready for that moment, had most likely planned it for some time, and left from my perception shortly thereafter.
If there is one thing we learn from reading ancient texts on spiritual experiences, from the Bible, to ancient lore of Native Americans, to the apocrypha of Judaism and Christianity, it seems that there are no limits to the strangeness and riddles found within them.
Consider the story of Jacob wrestling with an "angel of God". In the story, the angel is clearly described as a physical being wrestling with Jacob, who for some reason must leave at the crack of dawn. If a person came to their church today and described a paranormal encounter like this, the laity would assume it was demonic. Yet there it is, the ancient Hebrews ascribed to it an origin from God and as a good thing.
In my case, I experienced all of the following, which seemed to be intentionally connected:
I have had numerous people, Christians, suggest to me that I should just accept it happened and then - as a result - embrace a particular set of doctrines as a result. Yet I find this unsatisfying and quite the opposite of what I think I was shown.
If anything, what I was shown is that heaven works through all of the above to influence human direction. That yes there are dark and evil paths that one can take with beings if one chooses, and that if one chooses a good path one will be helped in that direction. And heaven will use a variety of paranormal things to lead/push a person in the direction they are supposed to go if they choose to embrace it. And, in some cases, they may just have no choice in the matter. Some of our lives may well just be written in the stars.
Yet I confess I am not fully at peace about the entire thing. It feels that an invisible hand is pressing me, and my life, in a direction I do not fully comprehend. Like I am compelled to continue this pursuit of knowledge and to solve the above mystery.
I feel that my life is being driven in a direction I do not understand, and that for some reason heaven wants me to connect all these dots together, or to at least try. It may not make sense now, but perhaps it will in the future, for some reason I do not understand.
Internally, I regularly feel tempted to just hang it all up and go back to a "normal" life, but I feel I cannot to some extent. Once the veil has been lifted, a person cannot just waltz back into a normal life.
Regarding Christianity, I still do believe that Jesus was sent, and his death and resurrection was a bigger plan that was meant to rescue us humans in some way. Yet I do not fully get why. All classical Christian doctrines to me seem a bit bland and rigid. The idea that all human faults - like recurring bouts of anger - are entirely due to a "sin nature" just does not make sense now in the light of what we have discovered throughout the entire animal kingdom about how brains and hormones work. And I cannot help but feel that the New Testament authors were perhaps doing their best to understand how the pieces fit together, but their conclusions were not the final or best answer on any topic related to spirituality.
I hesitate to embrace any conclusions because for most of them I just feel we do not have enough evidence. I cannot bring myself to embrace any particular set of doctrines, as I feel most people do this more out of a need for community than they do because the teachings make any sense.
So as of this time, I continue to ask for guidance and hope that some direction will be granted me. But I choose to continue to study and explore and in the process I have two primary goals:
And I do hope that everyone has a pursuit of the same goals!
From Stockholm,
Josh