have you ever had a religous/spiritual experience?

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I have had moments in my life where i have felt connected to the universe in a way that makes me feel there is a spiritual aspect to our existence. I have looked into various religions and spiritual doctrines but never felt that any resonated with me.Has anyone had an experience or revelation about the nature of spirituality? I would genuinely love to hear from any and all.

The closest thing I have had was a bad trip on LSD.
I had been drinking 24/7 for a month back in april of 2007, then one day my friend had some acid, So, I took it. My mistake was, I neglected to continue drinking. When one is on a long drinking binge, a sudden stop will result in unpleasant alcohol detox.
The acid & the alcohol detox kicked in about the same time.....
OOOOOOOOMFG!! !! that was NOT fun, not one bit!
I saw into the gates of hell itself. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the most horrifying, evil, demonic, alien faces.
It was a very long night for me, I was also getting "the shakes" from the alcohol detox" I was literally vibrating.
At one point I was in the corner, hugging a teddy bear, crying for my mommy.

Eventually it was over, and I swear I will never touch LSD again!

What was the "spiritual experience" in that?
I had learned that there ARE dark things in this universe, VERY dark things. There are other layers of reality, and spiritual growth is important, neglect that side of personal development, and you run the risk of falling into some quite unpleasant places.

i have had bad trips as well and know how terrifying it can be. when i was very young about 4 maybe i lived on the Chatham islands and there were these old tree carvings that we some times went to see as a family.When i first saw them it was like a strange jolt went through me and felt like i was looking at something VERY important i can still see them clearly when i close my eyes now. i feel the same way when i see cave paintings this strange feeling like there is more to life than the ephemeral washes over me unbidden..
Thanks for sharing that

i will attempt to offer a few descriptions of specific experiences, not related to drug use.

i lie on the floor of my room, attention is drawn towards my pulse, first in the neck, then in the heart. soon i feel the pulse in every corner of my body. then there is only this pulsing and nothing else. the pulse becomes a smooth energy field. i am aware that i no longer feel my heart beating. a faint whisper of a thought 'death'? i accept, i give up. any sense of physicality drops away. aspects of experience predominate and fall away in layers. a state stabilizes. a borderless, centerless, pure clear light. everything is just this light. i am not 'somewhere' in relation to the experience. there are no thoughts, and no tactile phenomena. at some point i open my eyes and notice something remarkable. i'm in my bedroom. i mean the bedroom is there, but i'm not there. i'm not anywhere. everything is vivid and immediate, perfect. time stands still. my visual field has no location. my mind is silent. i have no experience of a body, except for the feeling of my skin gracing the air. a hand makes an appearance in the visual field to reach out and touch something, but it's not 'my hand' it's just colors and shapes and shades. there is no sense of an observer, no subject-object split. i know by their absence what phenomena comprise the feeling of being a located in experience.

-i'm standing in line at a verizon kiosk. the world is continuously dissolving, flickering out of existence. like a film reel with the timing slightly off so that the frames seem to disappear into the shutter. this leads into terror, as i realize that i am going to die. i don't think i'm dying as it's happening, it's just far more immediately apparent than usual that everything passes away. i look to the exit of the building. i take a couple of steps in that direction but realize i cannot walk away from this. so instead, i turn inward and look straight towards it. as i look into i realize that i'm ok with feeling this way, and since it can't bother me anymore, it goes away. as i look at the people around me i realize that sooner or later, they too must face this.

-the world appears transparent, like a hologram. it is not transparent in the sense there is something behind it, yet still i see through it. my eyes and thoughts do not land on people or objects as i walk about, because i no longer experience discrete objects. i have no difficulty making provisional distinctions.

-it feels like a bowling ball is materializing in my abdomen. the density of the feeling is slightly unnerving. the bowling ball drains into the base of the spine, then bone crushing vibratory sensations roll in waves up my spine streaming out the top of my head. this experience is my world as it happens. the distinction between internal/external and categories of sense phenomena breaks down. there is a loud auditory component to the vibration, it is exceedingly tactile, and i can see the feeling.

-attending to a particular feeling of gravity in my head i sink fully alert into a formless nothingness.

wow, you have an incredible descriptive talent it fascinates me to think that consciousness could remain in absence of the physical body. . what did you make of these experiences?

The biggest such experience in my life was when Jesus saved me from suicide, and its been almost 12 years since then. The woman I loved had abandoned me, and I'd poured everything I had into our relationship. When it fell apart, I gave up, and was about to cut my arm with a knife when God Himself stepped in.

I know it sounds crazy to a lot of people, and there's times where I even battle against the reality of it. I heard what could only be the voice of God, asking me to put the knife down. I refused twice, raving about how I didn't want to live anymore. When He asked me to drop it for the third time, I asked why, and was shown what I can only describe as a vision. It was like a movie playing in my head and heart, but I was also in it, from a third-person perspective. I saw my own funeral, and the woman I loved was crying in front of my gravestone. All she kept saying was "Why did you do it? Was it because of me?"...and I realized God was showing me the future that would exist, if I took my own life that day.

I still struggle so much with my faith every day, but that one event changed me very deeply. When I'm tempted to reject Jesus for good, I go back to when He saved me.

I am happy you found peace and your spiritual identity. thank you for sharing your experience

Nope. I did lucidly dream of a ghost once and have rare bouts of sleep paralysis, though.

I frequently have experiences where I am profoundly moved by natural beauty, and feel simultaneously connected to the universe and so small as to be invisible. I don't usually think of these as 'spiritual' or 'religious' experiences, though.

"I" have had spiritual experiences while in deep meditation when the noise of the mind is quiet and perception is deeper and clearer. It is virtually impossible to convey though in words. I had composed a long post but decided to edit it back to just this.

I have had what I would consider "an awakening". It was an amazing time in my life. I found beauty in everything. I was happy just for the sake of happiness. But for some reason, it began to go very wrong after awhile. I still struggle with it from time to time. I started to write about the whole thing, but I began to feel very emotional and a bit physically ill.

I did learn a very valuable lesson though. Opening doors in your mind can be a great experience, and the light from those doors can be very beautiful and beneficial. But light does cast shadows, and shadows are sometimes best left in the dark.

May you all find peace and happiness on your journey through life (or lifetimes).

I've had experiences that were very real and can not be explained away rationally. They are very personal, though.

i have never had a moment where i connected to what you allude to.
i am not like you.

I've had a couple of religious hallucinations. I hallucinated angels singing when I was a small child and once woke up and heard a voice saying 'THIS IS THE VOICE OF GOD' a couple of years ago. I am adamant they were just hallucinations.

I don't think I've ever got far enough in meditation to say I've had any special insight. I improved my concentration and changed my perspective on the world, but I'm not sure that qualifies.

I like to visualise stuff when I eat fly agaric, like the minds of different animals and I'm usually not thinking rationally at that point, so I try to 'learn' lessons from them, or whatever. I don't believe in spirit guides but my brain sometimes acts like it does. Or sometimes, I'll ask myself, 'what am I?' and I'll feel like I know the answer in some part of my psyche but that it can't be put into words. I'll think about other people and who they really are and in that moment I don't have the normal egotistical fear of judgement from other people I normally have, I just have an interest in understanding them.

Then I get the runs because I've eaten a moderately toxic (legal) toadstool, which even the headshop has to say is 'not for human consumption'.

Yes. They have all led me away from organized religion and religious dogma.