Speaking in tongues

Originally posted by KellyJay
One of the big things about speaking in tongues is that it can
be faked.

I'll relate one account that occurred with me.

I ended up in a Bible study with several people I did not know
one night. I knew only one other person in the group of about
12, all of different ages.

At the end of the Bible study we formed a circle to pray.

As I was unde ...[text shortened]... , no one
should get caught up in the gifts, only the giver of them is really
important.
Kelly

I basically dislike sharing things that you simply just have to take my word on for events like this I believed that to have been a real manifestation of God working through people.

I agree. It’s even difficult in PMs, even in letters. A lot better communication can take place face to face, with give-and-take, question-and-answer. It’s difficult to communicate personal things in an impersonal way. That’s why so many of my posts are overlong: I keep thinking: “Well, somebody’s going to ask this, so I’d better get that out of the way. (And maybe I’d better get it out of the way from this angle too&hellip😉”

So, along those lines, you know me well enough to know that I’m not coming at this from a Biblical angle. But I can’t come at it from a dismissive angle either.

I noted in my first post, it’s a lot like tai chi to me, or other forms of “meditation,” for lack of a better word (and I’m also including any form of contemplative prayer under that term). I can do it or not—that is, I can sort of “jump start” it the way I begin tai chi form. Then the flow may become spontaneous if I relax into it. I can “watch” it, but if I think about it or try to direct it or get distracted, it stops. That seems to me to be the same with any meditation or contemplative prayer. Yes, it’s enjoyable. Alan Watts once described meditation as simply “grooving with reality” (as opposed to thinking about it—Wulebgr’s fly-fishing comes to mind too); I suppose you might call it “grooving with the Spirit.”

I cannot describe the feeling, but it was like out of my belly flowed something quite wonderful…

Now this interests me greatly. In the West, there is a tendency to ignore the physical, so that the “spiritual” (using the term broadly here) becomes sort of “airy-fairy.” This is not the case for Buddhists, Taoists, Sufis or, say, Native Americans (and maybe Eastern Orthodox Christians; there was a book I read some time ago, called Lost Christianity that touched on this a bit).

In Chinese and Japanese culture, at least, the belly area (Ch: tantien; Jp: hara) is the center, sort of the “seat of the soul” (as long as we don’t impose a western concept of soul there). There is a line from the Tao Te Ching that goes something like: “The sage empties people’s heads, and fills their bellies.” In tai chi, this is taken to mean letting your discursive mind go calm and quiet, breathing deeply into the belly, letting your center of gravity sink into the belly, moving from that center and being from that center.

I can’t ask you to try to describe the feeling more fully—because I couldn’t. But—again from a wholly different perspective—I get it.

Originally posted by KellyJay
One of the big things about speaking in tongues is that it can
be faked.

I'll relate one account that occurred with me.

I ended up in a Bible study with several people I did not know
one night. I knew only one other person in the group of about
12, all of different ages.

At the end of the Bible study we formed a circle to pray.

As I was unde ...[text shortened]... , no one
should get caught up in the gifts, only the giver of them is really
important.
Kelly

Great post Kelly...I like what you said because that is how best to describe SIT..."out of the belly" is how it flows.

John 7:38
38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.
(KJV)

🙂

Originally posted by checkbaiter
Great post Kelly...I like what you said because that is how best to describe SIT..."out of the belly" is how it flows.

John 7:38
38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.
(KJV)

🙂

that makes a lot of sense , lol

beer does the same for me.

Originally posted by frogstomp
that makes a lot of sense , lol

beer does the same for me.

Yes, but you won't stop buying that cheap stuff!😛