Yes I thought he was real. And I thought that he had me in his power..... because I always felt so dark and lonely on the inside, no matter how hard I worked or studied..
Not really. I'd hear about him all the time, how he was tempting me, how crafty he was, how he would tell me things. All I thought was, "I don't hear voices in my head. If I think about doing something bad, those are my own thoughts." To me, Satan was a symbol of a person's own selfish desires.
I grew up believing that every time I felt bad, it was Satan having influence over me. My parents have long shown that they fear the devil much more than they trust God.
My dad even told us when we were preparing to go to the temple as a family that my wife and I should write down our plans rather than speak them out loud because Satan could hear us and ruin things for us.
It seems that most Mormons that I know are more worried about letting the Adversary influence them than they are about the promise that he has no power over the righteous.
So I wonder now, for just a minute, if people fear the Devil so much more than they trust God, and if their fear of God is because he'll turn them over to the devil for punishment, wouldn't it make more sense to worship the devil?
Thus, isn't it Satans plan to force people to be good, and wouldn't the unrational fear of a punishing god be a part of that plan?
And did Jesus not teach a gospel of hope rather than of fear?
Sorry I digressed from the main point- yes I grew up believing Satan was real and that he was hiding around every corner. Today, I worry more about what kinds of evil men do to one another.
Yup. I had a night terror/sleep paralysis in the MTC and believed for years that it was a satanic attack. I heard voices (my companion talking in his sleep, I think) and felt pressure on my chest and everything, a lot like JS's story of being attacked by the devil. And I couldn't open my mouth.
About fifteen years ago I was checking into “lucid dreaming” and it has the effects you describe “felt pressure on my chest and everything, a lot like JS's story of being attacked by the devil. And I couldn't open my mouth.”, also the inability to “run” or get away from something. These are the symptoms of what happens as the brain winds up in this semi-conscious state and doesn’t know what to do so it conjures up fears just like the unknown does in real life.
If a person is paying attention you will find that the terror’s you dream about while lucid dreaming are actually “thought “ about a microsecond before it starts happening in your dream. In other words you “Thought it” then it happened in your dream. Once a person realizes that they are in this state of dreaming they can control the content of the dream. No more nightmares.
So you go to bed, tell yourself that if you wind up in that state that there will be no more bullshit happening and instead you’re going to fly over and visit the Eiffel Tower instead or any of a hundred thousand other things that destroy the fear in your dreams. In other words have fun with it instead of being afraid.
Incidentally, after I educated myself on how lucid dreaming works I have not had a nightmare since that day fifteen years ago. Just like waking up to the reality of the falseness of the LDS church due to education, the nightmares also stopped due to education. Who’d a thunk it?
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/14/2011 08:00PM by AmIDarkNow?.
same thing happened to me as a missionary ... but I raised my arm to the square and the devil got off my chest ... or so I thought at the time.
Since then, I only dream of flying a purple dragon over a swedish nude beach. No casting out needed.
On a related note, recently I was reflecting on ghosts just before going to bed (don't remember why. A movie or a book had me thinking about the supernatural)
As I laid there, a light flashed across the foot of my bed. My heart jumped!
Of course, a minute later the light returned ... as a car drove down my street, splashing light into my room through the window. The mind will play tricks on you.
Woke up thinking that Satan was running down the halls of the MTC toward my door in the deep dark. It was a dream but felt real at the time. Interesting supposing that he is real (which I don't) that he'd spend so much time at the MTC. Just sayin.
Church leaders would invoke Satan way too often. He seemed more to me like a bogeyman to get you to do what they wanted. That got to be very tiresome, particularly in the mission field. I don't know if I ever did believe in Satan as a being.
Oh, I believed in Satan 100%. I'm bipolar, so when I started manifesting symptoms as a teenager, I was positive that the obsessive thoughts were Satan trying to attack me. What 14-year-old child do you know that spends All. Night. Long. on her knees, begging God for protection from the adversary?
I honestly think freedom from Mormonism was what allowed me to look at experiences like this and realize that it was *not* normal behavior, and I needed some professional help.
Satan was as real to me... But oddly I thought about him as more of an historical figure. I didn't really see him as tempting or that every bad thing in the world could be attributed to him. Yes he was real, but he was not out there causing mischief... Weird.
Yes, I believed in Satan too and his hosts of demons and that he could take advantage of weak minds and sometimes even control/possess them. You see it in movies and I heard a couple through the grape vine real life exorcism stories.
I didn't think he was responsible for all evil as we humans could screw up things perfectly well on our own without his assistance. (This was part of my thinking that was on my road to apostacy as I believed we had responsibility for our own actions and we couldn't blame all the bad things in our life on some bogey man).
While were talking about MTC ghost stories in my room one of the elders related how his older brother had had the night terror and seen Satan at his bed before leaving on a mission.
Then later before we left as a district we were moved into an empty dormitory as we had to leave later and there were new missionaries coming in to take our place. It was a plush pad, must have been reserved for sisters because everything was new and they even had individual showers with curtains.
Anyways, one of the elders told a story about elders who were playing with a ouiji board in the MTC and the mission president had a dream of the ghosts of the army of Helaman fighting off a hoard of devils trying to break into the MTC. He got up and knew straight away where to find the delinquent elders and destroyed the board. After that I had one of my scariest nights of sleep.
I never worried very much about Satan when I was a kid, but I had grown up hearing hair-raising tales about the end times and how Christians would be persecuted. I also started reading about the Holocaust in elementary school (yes, I was an odd child), and some time later, I heard a sermon in a weird little church we were going to about Corrie ten Boom, and how the coming persecution would be like the Holocaust. So I had nightmares for years about Nazis coming to get me/us, even after I was an adult and had long since stopped believing in things like that. I'm not one of the extremists who think all religious education is a form of child abuse, but I do think that teaching children about a coming doomsday IS abuse. If a child is so frightened on a visceral level that they continue having nightmares about it as an adult who doesn't even believe anymore, yeah, that is absolutely abuse.
I did. I had a few creepy things happen to me in my life which made me certain that he was real. I can't explain those things now. The brain is an interesting organ. But I no longer believe he's real.