Quote: (05-11-2018 04:02 AM)sterling_archer Wrote:
But why would God care about Wicca or meaningless flings with women? What makes you think that you heard God's voice and not for example of your higher self? God is Supreme Reality, origin of existence and hardware on which existence runs (software) and not some being that concerns himself/herself (no gender here really) with the matters of mortals.
These two guys were sharing personal experiences, and you are issuing global statements that are designed to invalidate those experiences.
I could turn your question around and ask, why is it so important to you to tell them that God didn't speak to them because if there is a God, he has better things to do?
I have found that when the conversation turns to magick or the esoteric, despite the avowal of objectivity among the practitioners, there is a clear tendency to degrade, diminish, and explain away any traditional experiences of a traditional god.
Now why do you think
that is?
To take your question at face value though, there is a spiritual gift/charism/quality that is very well known to Christians no matter the denomination called discernment.
Some have the gift of discernment and some don't, and some, through hard work and patience over the years learn to cultivate it. Some people just get flashes of it when they need it.
Discernment is a kind of spiritual knowing that allows people to be able to identify whether or not they are hearing their own voice, or the voice of God, or the voice of some other spiritual entity.
An earthly equivalent might be good threat detection and situational awareness. As in, two guys might be walking along and come across some strangers in the street. They deal with them and move on, and afterward, one of the two is relieved, because he had to engage in some quick verbal judo to keep the strangers from attacking them. The other, is completely oblivious to threat, and felt nothing during the entire tense moment.
If you have explored one of the more traditional religions, you know that when you pray, it is very hard to discern whether or not God has answered, or whether you are just following your own inclinations and calling it God, or whether you are in the presence of some other less than positive spiritual entity.
It takes a kind of internal puzzling which may even take hours or days to figure this all out.
(Luke 2:19: But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart. )
Long story short: You can feel the difference.
Usually, but not always, when it is God, it goes against your preferences and inclinations, and when it is something spiritually negative, you get a kind of a warning chill that you can either listen to or hamster away. If you have taken the time to know yourself, you can usually tell when it is your own voice telling yourself what you want to hear.
It goes without say that this sort of spiritual learning is a world away from the occult which focuses on the will and the world.
As to your question about why would God care. Why would a parent care about their children? Why not just let them do their own thing no matter how dire the consequences?
If you can even ask that question, you are pretty far away from the spiritual reality that is God. You are in a world focused in an entirely different way.
It has been my experience, despite so much propaganda to the contrary, that it is in fact the followers of magick and the esoteric who seem to have a vested interest in running down the traditional conception of a deity.
Why would that be the case if magick is just objective self help?