Have you ever had spiritual experiences that seem unusual or to odd to share with people you know?

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Have you ever had spiritual experiences that seem unusual or to odd to share with people you know?

People I know write down spiritual experience in a journal.
Because it is safer!
 
Yes! I very recently had one during my Cursillo weekend — I told my husband everything (because it partially had to do with him) but all I can tell others is that I had one during Adoration time that weekend.

I love the idea of writing it down in a journal though! I’ve been meaning to start a prayer journal, and those sorts of experiences would be a great addition!
 
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Yes. I have. I don’t know how uncatholic it is but if I have disturbing dream about someone or a situation I follow it. Some folks think it is irrational. I think I have hunches.
 
Whether they’re unusual or not, I tend to keep all spiritual experiences to myself. My encounters with Our Lord just feel too personal to share with others.
 
Private revelations, etc, are always difficult to share, because others will be skeptical and reasonably so. We can’t expect others to be as excited as ourselves about them, although sometimes they’re intended to be shared I believe, at the right time and place. Anyway, God has His purposes with these things, and sometimes it’s only for our own sake.
 
I agreed with @gertabelle. I tend not to share prayer experiences with anyone but my spiritual director. I want to share them with someone who will treat them with the greatest gentleness and care.
 
Usually, you keep them close to you, because they’re yours. You turn them over in your heart, and you try to figure out what you’re supposed to learn from them.

Eventually, you might share them because it will be helpful to someone else. But when you do share them, it’s never, “Aren’t I awesome! This happened to me!” but rather, “God was awesome-- this was my experience.” And then the other person has the opportunity to benefit from our experience, and if they do, that’s awesome; and if they don’t, that’s their business-- we did our part.

Nothing we can do can ever merit those little experiences that we get. So usually, it’s from the “If this can happen to a dork like me—!” kind of perspective. But it’s easier to share them on the Internet-- because no one knows who we are. 🙂 It’s faaaaar more difficult to share them in person, and even then, it’s not really a subject you bring up unless you already know the other person has had experiences of their own.
 
I don’t bring them up very often, because they make people feel strange.
 
yeah, and it generally makes people think I’m crazy so I’ve stopped telling people
 
I have always shared them (not that there are tons of them mind you) but I have shared them in the context of teaching the faith, because real life experiences seem to resonate with people.
Particularly seekers.
 
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Jesus said not to throw your pearls before swine. I think this means not to throw
something you had from God before people who will mock it.
I have had some experiences, a few of which I have shared with my wife because I trust her. But I have not told them to other people.
Saint Teresa of Avila had some very bad experiences with this. She wrote her autobiography under obedience to a superior, and seeking to be honest under obedience, she told of her spiritual experiences, some of them great gifts and revelations from God. She gave her autobiography to a priest who said he would keep it in confidence and it ended circulating around people who greatly ridiculed what she said. Now her autobiography is considered one of the great Catholic classics of all times. She faced great suffering when her experiences became known among other people, among laypeople and even priests who lived at the time she wrote it.
 
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Yes. Sometimes I talk vaguely about an experience, but no details.
 
I was slain in the spirit once and had some prophecy over me, but folks are quick to “explain away” these experiences, then get mad when I point out the holes in their explantations.
 
SacredHeartBassist said:
yeah, and it generally makes people think I’m crazy so I’ve stopped telling people
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That’s sad for this world. It should be the complete opposite. People who don’t have spiritual experiences should be seen as crazy 😉 God talks to us all day long, but humans have made it all about us and now it’s craziness, coincidences, anecdotals, etc. Makes life boring actually to think spiritual experiences can’t happen. But then, humans are boring.
 
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