Just thought I would share this.

I am starting to run into many skeptics in my offline life. My roommmates family is very anal retentive, to put it mildly, and they wanted me to start going to NA meetings again. I went to one last night.

You will never meet a more religiously biased group. You say you have another religion besides belief in one true God and they say you will come around. Why is it that their god is the only one who can help people recover????

They also believe that if you are seeing and talking to ghosts you are either mental or still using....

I definitely am not going back. No way.

People need to accept me for who I am. On March 16th I will have 9 years clean and I've done it mostly by trusting in my own deities and staying away from the illegal substances. I also remember vividly almost dying when I went through my withdrawls when I stopped using.

I am Wiccan Witch. I am a Sensitive. I am a Psychic. I have many other abilities that I am just beginning to understand.....

Take me as I am or I don't need you in my life.

End of story.

GOOD FOR YOU!!!

You should have told those biased people to take a hike. I am catholic and I still go to church but I used to get scared of the fact that I can see things and forsee somethings that happen. I used to think I was cursed. I just go to church to feel good about myself. I have accepted what I have but I still feel the need I don't know a lot but would like to learn more and use it more. 20 years have gone by and I feel like I'm still in the dark.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion of what they feel or believe in - be it a deity or something else.

Belief in the paranormal, living with it or experiencing it for the first time ... the confounds and structures of a particular religious belief and what building you go to (or don't) to practice that belief is really not that different other than the literal topic.

The problem that seems to be in the way many times is the inability for folks to agree to disagree on a subject. If someone does not believe just as you do, does that make them less of a person or wrong in what they're saying? No, it is just a different belief.

As in life you will find the same in with the other side - differences in experiences, beliefs on how to handle a situation, etc.

If you know someone doesn't believe in something or doesn't want to broach a particular subject, you must decide - take it for what its worth and move on and accept and respect their beliefs and wishes or try to shove it down their throats and insist to them that this is the only way. In all honesty, it would be a travesty to do the latter. Rather than start a fight or develop "bad blood", the wiser choice would be to do the noble thing and accept that they are not open to paranormal discussion and move on.

JMHO....

All you can do is be open to possiblities....

I was raised Roman Catholic, but I knew it wasn't for me, especially when I ran into age discrimination in the church. One of my tow biggest turn offs. I also can't stand prejudicism.

I just started reading; whatever i could find on the paranormal, supernatural and metaphysical. I started studying other religious beliefs. I found Wicca, but I now also am studying Taoism and Shamanism....

Just be open. What you need to know will come to you when you are ready to receive it. Only the cosmic karma can decide when that time is....

I say just about everywhere I am, especially on the web:

If there is one thing that deity, no matter which one you believe, gave us, it is free will. The ability to make your own choices. I can only control the choices that I make....

I do not mock you for the beliefs you have or the choices you make in your life. All I ask is that you treat me with the same dignity....

I look at it like this. ( and... when it comes to "religion" I am a real oddball.. I suppose you could say I am a polytheist as I take quite a bit from a number of religions)

Ultimately, when you look at religion it is all an expression of a culture in a form of folk tales and types of Aesop's fables to guide the people of said culture in the proper way of living..being kind, being productive members of a social group, etc etc. I don't think that in the end it matters which of these you choose to follow as long as you take the right aspects to incorporate into your life.

That said, those who use fear of one "god" or another in any form I feel are getting it completely wrong. I see life as the ultimate learning experience and feel that if there is an "ultimate god" overseeing everything that it would be counter productive for this entity to function in some big brother fashion with the threat of eternal suffering being ever present forcing us to not make mistakes out of fear of "damnation"

Hopefully this has made sense... I'm 2 coffees short of being awake lol

I forget what he called it, but Stephen Hawkings coined a term for what a lot are calling their deity that consider themselves more spriritual than religious....

He called it the "cosmic consciousness" or something like that....

oh Stephen Hawking's ideas in this arena fascinate me! ...such an interesting theory