There's a difference between sleep paralysis and "paralyzed in bed with stuff grabbing me". One is a mental condition. The other is an external attack. That said, he should see a traditionalist priest, yes.
Basically what the other two guys said. Heavily involved in /fringe/. I think there might be an ED page for him, I don't care enough to look myself but I'd be surprised if they didn't.
This stuff definitely happens. Dreams and shadow people all of 5 years ago when i reverted.
You see it alot with reverts and converts. Every couple of months, youll even see people on /r/christianity mention weird experiences converting.
The phenomena is a type of the sign thats contradicted: as a person approaches holiness, the devil does what he can to attack the person. Follows from the prophecy at the beginning of luke where jesus is prophesied over as an infant in jerusalem.
May never know. ED has been killed by cloudflare.
Disregard that. It's at .rs now.
I've never experienced anything like this. I converted to Orthodoxy last year. Is it a sign of poor faith? Like the demons don't see the point in targeting me? Or is it something like supposes, where the Heavenly Hosts themselves are taking extra measures to protect me? I know God has intervened to save my life more than a few times (bad drunken car crash, heroin overdoses, miraculous stop before sliding off a mountain), but I don't want to delude myself with 'spiritual' pride that I'm more special than anyone else and thus warrant more protection than others. I certainly deal with my metaphorical demons every day (i.e. addictions, which I am steadily overcoming) but never any real demonic manifestations like those described here.
Most people don't experience such things. I wouldn't worry about it.
Thanks for the prompt reply my brother. May God bless you and Christ remain between us!
They don't seem to be targeting me, and I got into some crazy stuff. I think it depends on a variety of factors, some of which are obvious (opening yourself up via Ouija, drugs) and others that are the occult of the occult, so to speak. I'd say, thank the Lord you've been protected so far!
That said, we have like a half dozen to a dozen threads on this type of stuff up right now. Some people are not in the same boat you are it seems.
Good luck with that too, user. I'm pretty straight but I've seen a lot of people get messed up care of their addictive personalities. Keep healthy and orderly, you can do it!
Seems to be rather common here. I wonder if it's as rare as you say it is, or if people don't speak out about it because they don't want to be seen as believing in the supernatural (since that OBVIOUSLY doesn't exist, right, everyone at the watercooler?)…or if are embarrassed/afraid they'll be ostracized because they'll think other people will condemn them as unholy.
Thank you, brother. I started a general thread for sobriety in the same fashion as the nofap thread after making this post and thinking about it some more… hopefully it takes off (or maybe hopefully it doesn't because nobody here needs help with that sort of thing but I doubt that).
As for the demonic torment, you are right - I AM glad and give praise to God that He has delivered me from evil, or at least direct temporal manifestations of it. Pray for me, a sinner as I pray for those in this thread afflicted by such things.
I've been falsely accused of being this Smiley character when I once talked about the Book of Ezekiel.
In short, if you talk anything about the supernatural and miracles of God, you'll be accused of being "Smiley." I guess most people here are deists or psuedo-Christians who apparently have never read the Bible.