Lee Harbaugh

Introduction

This post is part of my series, Who Is God?, an exploration of my personal journey with the mystical and spiritual realities.

In my last post in this series, I talked through my faith journey from birth through about age 12. I described how I came to faith intellectually and emotionally through middle childhood. As I hinted in that post, here I will discuss my earliest truly mystical experiences, which took place during adolescence. This was the age I first experienced deeply detailed dreams in which I felt I was being taken elsewhere. This was also the age I began to experience the Divine—God—in a much deeper, personal, and surprising way.

The Dichotomy of Church Teachings

One of the hallmarks of evangelical Christianity is the idea that one should regularly tell other people about Christ in an attempt to get others to "accept Jesus as their savior"—to evangelize. As I referenced in my post about the beginning of my faith, I had begun memorizing Bible verses and teaching succinct lessons about "salvation" not long after my baptism in the 3rd or 4th grade. As I reached middle school, the voices at church encouraging us to share our faith became much louder and more rhythmic. It was something we were constantly being told we should do.

For me, sharing my faith seemed like a great thing. After all, I truly wanted my friends to have the same kind of experience with God that I had. By this point, I hadn't yet had what I would call deep personal experiences with God, but I did have a respect and admiration for who I perceived God to be, and it only made sense to me that my friends could benefit from this as well. As such, it was not unusual for me to talk about God with my friends at school or with teammates on my soccer team. As a result, this was the first time in my life I had the opportunity to pray with some of my friends to "receive Christ"—i.e. to accept Jesus as their savior so they would go to heaven when they died.

This was a very positive experience for me because I felt like I was genuinely helping people. And even though today I believe the salvation narrative is a bit of a misguided attempt to help people connect to God, I do still think it helps some people. The facts surrounding the narrative might not be completely accurate, but I recognize that some people are so broken and hurt that a "salvation experience" is exactly what they need, even if the truth behind it is somewhat obscure and misplaced.

Without going too far down a rabbit trail, it is for this reason that I have never (even when I was agnostic) and still don't try to convince anyone that their beliefs are wrong and that they need to change. I try to support people where they are because I realize they can only open up to the amount of truth their nervous system can handle at any given moment. If I had been suddenly given all the knowledge I have today when I was in middle school or high school, it might have destroyed me.

So, on the one hand, I was being taught tools at church that were very life-giving and beneficial, even if not completely factually accurate. On the other hand, this was also the age at which my church leaders began to use fear as a tool to try to keep us aligned with church doctrine.

In my neighborhood as a young lad, most of the other kids were 3-5 years older than me. As a result, when I was in elementary school, many of them were already listening to the rock and roll of the 1970s and early 1980s. From a very early age, I gained a love for the music of Foreigner, Styx, Kool and the Gang, the Bee Gees, etc. Then one week, my church hosted a special series over a period of 2 or 3 evenings in which a man came and talked to us about the evil of rock and roll and popular music. According to him, when I listened to my favorite music, I was being indoctrinated by the devil! From backmasking to hidden messages in album covers to secret deals with the devil, pop and rock music were portrayed as simply evil. I cannot express how deeply this made me afraid. I was scared silly that I had been inadvertently giving myself over to Satan. I went home and literally broke several records I had at the time.

One ramification of this experience is that it led me to view the world outside of the church as something to be very wary of. It was the first time in my life I felt there was a clear division of "Us" and "Them"—the church and the world. As a result, I became fearful in many ways. I was fearful that I would somehow run afoul of God's laws and principles, and this might result in me going to hell some day. I was fearful that I might accidentally lead others astray because of the music I listened to and enjoyed. I was fearful that I might disappoint my church leaders.

And so, as I entered middle school in 1982, there was a dichotomy of teaching coming at me from my church leaders. I was being taught about the benefits of helping others to find God, but I was also being taught that it was easy to fall into the trap of "sin" and wind up on the wrong side of eternity. Fear, it turns out, is a huge tool in the evangelical Christianity toolkit.

Vivid and Lucid Dreams

When I was in the 7th grade, I had the first of what have turned out to be many lucid and vivid dreams. It would be difficult to overstate the impact this dream has had on my life, and I would unequivocally say it was the first truly mystical experience I ever had. In this dream, a man came to me and invited me to come with him. He took me to someplace that I can only describe as not being here—not being on earth. In the dream, I had the notion that I was in another dimension or another set of dimensions. When we arrived at this other place, the man began to play music for me. Today, I cannot remember the music. But what I do remember is that the music was extraordinary. It was beyond beautiful. It was all-encompassing. It was as if my entire being was somehow participating in the music. The experience was beyond blissful. I cannot even begin to describe the immense feelings of warmth and beauty I encountered on this little journey. If you think about a concert you may have been to at some point in your life where you got deep chills from the music being performed, you'll get a tiny sense of my experience in this dream.

I knew intuitively that the music I was hearing was not able to be reproduced on earth. When I awoke the next morning, I felt overwhelmed by the peace and warmth I had experienced in the night. I told a handful of people about the dream, but I didn't talk much about it for fear of being thought of as a lunatic. At this point in my life, I had never heard of anyone else experiencing anything like this. Yet, this dream has most certainly influenced my life greatly. This dream very succinctly taught me that music is much more than just entertainment. Music is a doorway—a portal.

Introduction to Youth Camps

The summer after my 7th grade year, I experienced my first church youth camp. We spent a week that summer at Mt. Lebanon Baptist Camp in nearby Cedar Hill, Texas. During the evenings, there was always a camp-wide church service that all the campers were required to attend. I'm guessing there were around 300 - 500 young people from many different churches at the camp that week.

During these evening services, the camp preacher(s) would talk extensively about our need for Jesus. At the end of each of these services, there was always an "invitation" time—a time in which emotionally provocative music was being played while the preacher would essentially coax young people to come to the front and give their life to Jesus. These guys were good. They told us that even if we had been saved and been baptized, most of us had fallen into sin and needed to get right with God. Gripping the back of the chair in front of me until my knuckles were white, I would tell myself they weren't talking to me; I didn't need to go down to the front. But finally, on the second or third night of this, I had so much fear built up that I might be "backslidden" and going against God's will that I decided I had to make the walk to the front and "re-dedicate my life to God."

Though I would later come to believe that much of what I was taught as a youngster in church was hooey, I never really felt resentment toward my leaders and teachers. I figured they were just doing the best they could, and most of what they had said was relatively harmless. The fear factor, on the other hand, is something that I do think caused much harm to a lot of young people. I don't know how things are done today in evangelical churches, but this is one area I do see that needs fixing and fast if it's still used the same way (and I suspect it is). Instilling needless deep fear in young developing minds is not healthy in any way whatsoever!

Glorieta, New Mexico

The following summer we went to youth camp in Glorieta, New Mexico. Glorieta is a town with a large Baptist encampment nestled in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico. It is an absolutely beautiful place to visit. The views are truly breathtaking.

While the evening experiences at this camp were similar to the evening experiences of the previous camp, I had a profound personal experience during the days that I had never experienced before in my life. At this camp, each student was instructed to spend about 20-30 minutes each morning alone "with God." They gave us a little book that had some Bible verses and some questions for us to reflect on each day relating to the verses we read. For me, this was the beginning of learning to meditate.

I found a place near my cabin nestled on the side of a mountain that was punctuated by tall pine trees and huge boulders. Each morning I would camp out on one of those boulders for 20 or 30 minutes and have my "quiet time." As I would sit and reflect on the verses I was reading with the wind rustling the tops of the pines and the sun shining overhead, I discovered a deep place inside that was ineffable. For the first time in my life, something stirred within me as I just sat there that I simply couldn't explain or even quite put to words. This was not some fear-driven response to an altar call or an intellectual exercise in trying to "do the right thing." This was a real spiritual experience. I now look back on this and see the beginning of true Profound connection—connection to something much deeper and more grounded than anything else in life. This was a deeply personal experience that ultimately nudged me in a more spiritual direction in my life.

The Next Chapter

I was now entering high school. Although I experienced lots of typical high school emotions and challenges—how to fit in with other kids, how to handle acne, how to handle young male hormones, etc.—my experience alone with God on that mountain gave me a foothold for further spiritual exploration. Ultimately, this exploration would take me to places that, in hindsight, I see as unusual. In my next post, I will talk about the further deepening of these mystical experiences and how I continued to grow spiritually in my later teen years.