Welcome back, dark passengers. As promised, we have a guest blogger for Day Whatever-It-Is of our series on the relationship between religion and the paranormal. To be fair to this topic, Your Dark Passenger has put an open call for opinions in multiple places, as well as soliciting submissions from specific individuals with differing paranormal and religious beliefs.
You might have already noticed that this topic can draw some passionate responses from some. Or you haven’t noticed…which probably means you’ve never discussed the paranormal or religion with anyone but your cat. Or you are a cat. In that case, Meow!
For those of you not fluent in feline, that was a HIGHLY sophisticated greeting…
Anyway, today’s guest post comes to us from a former Christian and current paranormal enthusiast. Michelle Miller is a freelance writer living in Central Virginia. Since she’s published her first novel, I’ll go out on a limb and say she’s probably not a cat. Visit Michelle Miller’s website to learn more about her – and confirm for yourself that she’s not one of our feline readers. Continue reading “A Renounced Christian’s Paranormal Views” »
Tags: angels, Christianity, Christians, demons, Ghost, God, Paranormal, paranormal investigations, personal experience, relationship between paranormal and religion, religious beliefs
Image of Eva Carriere with light manifestation between her hands via Wikipedia
Happy Wednesday, dark passengers. Tonight, I’m taking our discussion on the relationship between religion and the paranormal in a slightly different direction. As you may remember, this was the point where I was going to discuss the spiritual gift of performing miracles and how it relates to paranormal phenomena and psychic gifts.
I’m not doing that.
Why? I love how y’all always ask when you already know I’m about to tell you…
I believe the paranormal doesn’t undermine religion, people do. I’m not about to become one of those people by trampling all over the concept of miracles.
Here’s the thing: I had some fairly strong connections and relationships between psychic gifts and the other spiritual gifts we discussed. I don’t have that with miracles.
Okay, I actually do have that with miracles, but I’m going to keep my mouth shut…for once.
What Are Miracles? Continue reading “Are Miracles Paranormal Phenomena?” »
Are Miracles Paranormal Phenomena?Tags: Empath, Empathic Abilities, God, miracles, paranormal phenomena, premonitions, psychic abilities, psychic gifts, relationship between paranormal and religion, spiritual gifts
Hello again, dark passengers. As we continue in our series on the relationship between religion and the paranormal, we have another spiritual gift to explore: healing. If you’re getting a little sick of camping out in Spiritual Gift Land, don’t worry, we’ll wrap this part of it up tomorrow with miracles and widen our scope again.
In the meantime, let’s jump in, shall we?
In the introductory post on this sub-topic, I said that the spiritual gift of healing can be compared to the work done by Lightworkers and Theta practitioners. That’s not to say there aren’t other types of energy healing, such Galactic healing, but focusing on these two should be sufficient to make the connection. We can come back later if you have a favorite healing method I skipped.
Lightworking and Theta
If you’re not familiar with these two concepts, some of this will most likely sound like gibberish. Sorry. Neither of these are exactly beginner’s level concepts. Since I’m working to stay on the surface of each as I’ve done in the other posts of this series, I’ll try to make things as clear as I can. Continue reading “Spiritual Healer or Lightworker?” »
Tags: Bible, Christianity, energy healing, God, lightworking, Paranormal, relationship between paranormal and religion, religious beliefs, spiritual gifts, spiritual healing, Theta healing
Happy Monday, dark passengers. Tonight, our series on the relationship between the paranormal and religion continues with the spiritual gift of prophecy. We’ve drawn some strong parallels between the gifts of showing mercy and discernment to Empaths over the last few days.
I think you’ll find we do the same tonight.
As you may remember, I use psychic as an umbrella term to encompass all the psychic gifts and abilities out there. The psychic abilities we’re discussing tonight are clairsentience, clairaudience, clairvoyance, psychometry and premonitions – thought some would argue premonitions are one-off occurrences that don’t necessarily relate to an underlying gift.
Before we define the aforementioned psychic abilities, let’s turn our attention to the spiritual gift of prophecy and what the Bible has to say about it. Continue reading “Prophet or Psychic?” »
Tags: Bible, Christianity, clairaudience, clairsentience, clairvoyance, God, Paranormal, premonitions, prophecy, prophesy, psychic abilities, psychic gifts, psychometry, relationship between paranormal and religion, religious beliefs, spiritual gifts
Image by schmish via Flickr
Happy Saturday, dark passengers. Tonight we continue looking at how Christian spiritual gifts relate to specific psychic abilities as part of our month-long series on the relationship between religion and the paranormal. Last night, we looked at the spiritual gift of mercy as compared to empathic abilities. Tonight, we take a closer look at the gift of discernment and how it applies to Empaths.
And Intuitives and Telepaths, to be exact.
As always, before we can talk about how all these radically different things are related, we must have a basic, common understanding of the terms. So let’s waste no time in laying the foundation so we can get on with the good stuff.
Spiritual Gift of Discernment
According to 1 Corinthans 12:10, the spiritual gift of discernment is:
“to clearly distinguish truth from error by judging whether the behavior or teaching is from God, Satan, human error or human power.”
To put it plainly, is you possess the spiritual gift of discernment, you should be paying careful attention to when your “spidey sense” goes on full alert because it’ll clue you in bad stuff around. For the non-Spiderman fans, this could also be a heightened sense of foreboding or the little hairs at the back of your neck standing to attention.
But let’s really unpack this scripture to break it down to its most basic, universally understood levels. What this line tells us is there are four possibilities for any behavior or teaching. These are: Continue reading “Spiritual Gift of Discernment and Empaths” »
Spiritual Gift of Discernment and EmpathsTags: Bible, Christianity, discernment, Empath, Empathic Abilities, intuitives, paranormal phenomena, psychic abilities, psychic gifts, relationship between paranormal and religion, spiritual gifts
Happy Friday, dark passengers. Tonight, we’re closing out the week with a two-part analysis of the spiritual gifts that pertain to Empaths: mercy and discernment. We’ll start with how empathic abilities are related to the spiritual gift of mercy and move onto discernment for part two on Saturday. While some could argue that mercy and discernment are the same gift, I’ve found them referenced separately on a few sites, so I’m sticking with it…although I tend to agree with combining them.
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m an Empath – on this site, at least. In work settings, I try to be normal and blend into the group. What I haven’t mentioned until now is my personal mix of spiritual gifts.
Yep, the “crazy psychic lady” actually has spiritual gifts and knows what they are. Surprise! 
Personal Spiritual Gifts Inventory
When I took my first spiritual gifts inventory a few years back, my strengths were discernment, administration and one other I can’t recall right now. Just for grins, I thought I’d take a new inventory to see where I stand today. Actually, I took three in preparation to write this because I wanted to ensure I was accurate. (I’ve given links to the spiritual gifts inventories I used in the Resource section at the end of this post if you’d like to take one for yourself.)
The spiritual gift of administration rounds out my top three, but the other two are new…in a way. Continue reading “Spiritual Gift of Mercy and Empaths” »
Spiritual Gift of Mercy and EmpathsTags: Christianity, Empath, Empathic Abilities, mercy, Paranormal, Psychic Shielding Techniques, relationship between paranormal and religion, spiritual gifts
Image via Wikipedia
Happy Thursday, dark passengers. I trust all the US readers are calmly at home instead of frantically rushing to mail off their taxes. Tonight, we continue our discussion of the relationship between the paranormal and religion with an overview of spiritual gifts as set forth in the Bible and corresponding paranormal phenomena.
Yes, by corresponding I mean a direct connection or similarity between the two. Things won’t always match up point for point, and not all the spiritual gifts will have something paranormal to compliment it, but we will find more common ground than I imagine either extreme expects.
Keep in mind that we’re only working with a higher level overview tonight, as we’ll discuss certain spiritual gifts and paranormal phenomena side-by-side in the coming days. If you’re reading this after the end of the series, you can click on the links in the final section to take you to whichever article interests you the most or visit the full table of contents page for this series.
But if you’re reading me in real time, sorry, you have to wait until the end for those things to be live on the site…
Before we jump in, I’d also like to point out that I’m speaking specifically about the spiritual gifts in the Christian bible because those are the religious beliefs I know the most about. Once again, I thought it would be refreshing if I didn’t go off half-cocked to discuss things I know zero about. If you’re part of a different religion that has spiritual gifts – or your equivalent – please let me know so I can research them for later discussion and paranormal comparison. Continue reading “Spiritual Gifts and Paranormal Phenomena” »
Spiritual Gifts and Paranormal PhenomenaTags: Bible, Christianity, God, paranormal phenomena, psychic abilities, psychic gifts, relationship between paranormal and religion, religious beliefs, spiritual gifts
Image by freestone via Flickr
Welcome back, dark passengers. As you may have noticed, it’s not Tuesday. Unfortunately, the presence in my house didn’t learn how to do my taxes in time for the deadline. Maybe next year.
Today, we hear from guest blogger What a Girl Doesn’t Know about how she views the paranormal, psychics, ghosts and religion. She’s a wife, mother of two, preschool administrator…and she might even have a real name. Visit her site, What a Girl Doesn’t Know, to read more about her non-paranormal thoughts.
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I was only vaguely certain of what I wanted to write about when Jen asked for guest bloggers for the month. However, as I have thought on it for the last couple of days, my memories of childhood have become clearer. My family was not what you would call religious. They did not attend church, talk about church, or show any inclination toward wanting to either. The only time we talked about God was at Easter and when I really screwed up. Jesus was Continue reading “Are Psychics and Ghosts Hinky?” »
Tags: Bible, Jesus, Paranormal, personal experience, Psychic, psychic abilities, relationship between paranormal and religion
Image via Wikipedia
Happy Monday, dark passengers. Tonight we continue our discussion on the relationship between the paranormal and religion with a question I’ve heard more times than I can count. In fact, I’d say the chief argument I hear as to why paranormal phenomena can’t exist – besides that it’s all stupid – is that it’s a direct contradiction to one religions belief or the other.
Is that really the case? Is believing in the existence of the paranormal a solid slap in the face to your favorite religion?
As with so many things, it’s a matter perspective.
I wish that wasn’t the case, but it is. I’ve talked to Buddhists who believe departed human spirits can be left to wander the Earth in death. I’ve talked to Christians of varying denominations who believe in both psychics and ghosts. Conversely, I’ve met people of all religious faiths – and a few atheists – who believe anything paranormal is a figment of the mind; simply your imagination running amock.
I’ve gotta say, when my imagination runs wild, it usually comes up with more interesting and outlandish things than ghosts and mind-reading, but I’m a mental ninja…
I won’t lie. I can see how some believe the paranormal undermines religion. In truth, there are a number of metaphysical practitioners who actively try to subvert religions, especially Christianity. Continue reading “Does the Paranormal Undermine Religion?” »
Does the Paranormal Undermine Religion?Tags: Empath, metaphysical, paranormal phenomena, Psychic, relationship between paranormal and religion, Religion and Spirituality, religious beliefs
Image by ashley rose, via Flickr
Hey dark passengers. It’s star7 and I’m here to share with you how my Catholic upbringing has influenced the way I feel about my gifts. I am a clairsentient and also a sensitive.
Unfortunately I can’t remember the priest’s exact words when he spoke to us that day. I do, however, remember being in my fifth grade religion class. The gist of the lesson was only God can make things happen or know what will happen.
I was lost and confused. How could it be wrong that I knew things and could sense things when God made me this way? From that day forward,I grew up being very fearful of my gifts because of my religion. Continue reading “Being Catholic and Psychic” »
Tags: Catholicism, personal experience, psychic abilities, psychic gifts, Religion and Spirituality
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