Experiencing the Divine

seizures, divine, god, christianity, religious, experience,
Note: this could well be a very poorly written and disjointed post. I am trying to capture the experience of the Simple Partial Seizures I have been having all morning in order to make a point. If this makes no sense at all, well, I've got a good excuse. (No worries, SPS's are annoying, but harmless, in my case anyway. I've just never tried to write a blog post in the middle of them.)

A great many believers, and this isn't just limited to Christians, offer up their experience of the divine as proof of the divine. "How do explain how I felt at that moment?" they ask, truly bewildered at the thought that you might want more proof than a feeling.

It misses the point, I think, to dismiss these arguments with a demand for proof. Feelings are powerful, feelings define us as humans, and truly, the only reality we have is the one we personally experience. Your reality is not my reality. In general, our realities are much the same, but in some instances, we may as well be in different dimensions.

I think of this today, because apparently my seizure meds have decided to stop working, or I forgot to take them, and the (doctor recommended) additional (or possibly first) dose I just took hasn't taken effect yet, and I've been seizing on and off all morning.

I don't flop around on the floor or blank out, though, for I have Simple Partial Seizures, in the temporal lobe. I remain conscious, capable of holding a (somewhat peculiar) conversation, or typing, and generally acting about 10 degrees off of normal. I experience deja vu so strong I feel prophetic, or jamais vu that leaves me lost in my own home. I see and hear things that aren't there, or I feel as if every normal thing I see is secretly bizarre, as if the walls are insidiously straight and their lies hold the secrets of the universe.

Why yes, that does sound like a religious experience, doesn't it? My seizures are the reason I do not believe in experiences of the divine, in prophecy, and the like. My response to the claim of any divine experience is simple: I feel like that, too, on occasion. It's a brain disorder, and it's treatable. You can feel just like me, in fact, if you could get someone to jab an electrical wire into the exact right spot in your brain.

Personal experiences are proof of nothing, other than the fact that you experienced something. My advice to anyone faced with this sort of "proof" is empathy. (I know, totally evil, right?) Explain that you understand that they did indeed feel the way they felt, and that it obviously affected them, and that's fine, but then offer up the example of seizures and fever hallucinations. Ask them if they accept without question the uncorroborated testimony of every person who has ever claimed to see an alien. Question whether they would be comfortable with psychic testimony being offered in a court of law- during a death penalty case.

tired. bye.