By Marcia Montenegro, revised July 2011
Spirit guides, meditation, astrology, the "higher Self," raising the kundalini, developing psychic abilities, praying to gurus, astral travel, numerology, Tarot cards, contacting the dead, hanging out with witches, Sufis, followers of Muktananda, Rajneesh, Sai Baba, Maharaji, -- all these and more were part of my journey. How did I get on this path?
I grew up with an agnostic father and a nominally Christian mother. My sister and I had to attend church because my mother thought that children should go to church, although she did not always go. Due to my father's job in the Foreign Service, we moved around a lot, so we ended up in different churches located overseas and in the Washington, DC, area. Eventually, I became serious about religion. In junior high and early high school, I had the idea that being good would please God and get me into heaven. But reading about other religions and meeting those who believed differently made me wonder. I wanted something deeper, more experiential. I was also rejecting the idea of hell, that the Bible was God's word, and was disillusioned with Christians. Christianity seemed defined by sermons, going to Sunday School, and doing good works. How boring! I started a serious spiritual search and journey at the end of high school.
That journey continued through college where I had
paranormal experiences, made friends with someone who said she saw
auras, and attended spiritualist meetings where the ministers claimed to
receive messages from the dead. One bright sunny Florida afternoon, as I
rested on my bed fully awake with eyes partly closed, I felt myself
floating. I opened my eyes and was stunned to see my body on the bed
below me as I hovered near the ceiling. I thought I had died. The shock
slammed me back into my body in an almost painful way. This was my first
out-of-body experience and I had no idea what it was or that it even had
a name. I told no one about it. I had other paranormal experiences as
well.
The journey stretched on after college when I visited psychics and an
astrologer, and did a lot of reading on the paranormal, past lives,
contact with the dead, and on Hindu and Buddhist beliefs. I remember
reading a book on Vedanta (sect of Hinduism) each morning in the
cafeteria of the building where I worked. I started to see connections
in my life with the colors of the chakras, the seven psychic centers of
energy in the body according to Hindu beliefs. This and other
experiences pushed me into an active plunge into the alluring worlds of
the paranormal and Eastern beliefs.
In an Inner Light Consciousness class, I was introduced to my "spiritual
master" during a guided visualization. This guide, a spirit being,
looked kind and wise. I felt his presence with me and sometimes saw him
in dreams and meditations. I also had unpleasant, scary and weird
experiences and visitations, once seeing a tall hooded figure in dark
robes looking at my body in the bed as I hovered out-of-body nearby.
Although extremely frightened by this apparition, I rationalized it by
telling myself that I was being tested.
I also learned to meditate, do psychic healing, analyze dreams, and
chant. When I first started to do Eastern meditation, I felt an
incredible peace. I felt that I was fading away and merging with
something greater. It seemed I was literally one with the universe, and
the teaching that we are all connected to one force seemed true. After
all, I believed that truth was in experience, and here my experience was
confirming that belief. At last, I thought, I was connecting to that
spiritual realm.
Later, my studies took me on many paths -- Tibetan, Hindu and Zen
meditation and philosophy, spirit contact, a bit of palm reading,
numerology, psychic development, and past life regression. Reincarnation
seemed to answer questions and I experienced what I thought were
memories of past lives.
Finally, it seemed I was on the edge of a hidden wisdom, a truth higher
than the everyday superficial thinking around me. I devoured books by
Edgar Cayce, Ruth Montgomery, Chogyam Trungpa (Tibetan Buddhism), Annie
Besant (Theosophy), Hanz Holzer (ghosts), and Ram Dass (Hinduism/New
Age). Titles like Seth Speaks, The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra,
The
Metaphysical Bible Dictionary (published by the Unity Church and used
widely by psychics and New Agers), and Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda began to fill my shelves, along with books on astrology, tarot
cards, numerology, and other occult teachings. My spiritual progress
seemed assured, especially since I was having so many paranormal
experiences. I felt I was an insider in the spiritual realm.
I even set up a photo of Yogananda on the bedroom fireplace mantel and
prayed to him. I set up photos of gurus on the mantel of my son's
bedroom.
Over the years, my psychic experiences escalated. I studied astrology
and took a 7-hour exam on astrology in Atlanta, Georgia, administered by
the City but formulated and graded by an astrology board, in order to
qualify for the business license. Passing the test, I started practicing
astrology, and eventually I taught astrology, gave public talks, wrote
for astrological and New Age journals, and sat for four years on the
board of astrology examiners that gave and graded the exams, becoming
chairman of that board for the last three years. I became president of
the Metropolitan Atlanta Astrological Society in June, 1989. My
Halloween birthday and astrological skills made me popular with witches
and others.
I noticed while doing chart readings for clients, that I would "tune in"
to the chart in a mystical way, during which I felt an energy connecting
my mind to the chart, and felt guided through the chart. It often seemed
that I was being fed information or led to specific things to say about
the client. After so many years of Eastern meditation techniques, I was
slipping without effort into an altered state of consciousness while
doing astrology.
Yet, with all the knowledge and experience I had acquired, what were the
answers? Though I believed I would be coming back after my death, where
would I go in between and for how long? Some taught that we would go
somewhere that was like a school, then choose our next life. Others
taught that we go somewhere to be spiritually purified - how, it was not
explained - then our next life would be chosen for us. By whom? That was
not explained. We were supposed to just trust the process.
I sought peace in Zen Buddhism and participated in meditation with other
students of Zen at some area zendos, as well as meditating at home.
Trying to detach myself from all desire involved a meditation that
allows thoughts, fears, or desires to come up and then not to respond to
them. This was to be applied to life outside meditation as well. But
though detachment sounded good in all the books, there was a price to
pay. The detachment seemed contrived and unnatural. Is it human to be
non-feeling, to accept every thought, action, and emotion without
judgment?
The idea was to transcend the rational mind which was a barrier between
me and enlightenment. Although I failed in achieving detachment, I clung
to the paradoxical teachings of Zen, reading books with Zen tales, and
continuing the meditation. I noticed that the peace I had felt with my
initial meditations had decreased, causing me to meditate more in an
attempt to recapture that elusive peace.
We are just drops in the ocean, I learned from Hindu sources (I blended
Hindu and Buddhist teachings, as many do), and the goal is to
eventually, after many lifetimes, rejoin the cosmic oneness that some
call God. This God-force was what we came from and was our final
destiny. So that meant my identity, memories, talents, and personality
would be swallowed whole into the cosmic One. Where would I be? The
disturbing answer was that I would no longer be. Death became an
absorbing but uneasy topic for me.
The best way to help others and stay true to your path, I heard and read
over and over, was to work on yourself and love yourself. Although talk
of love was common and was taught to be the basis for everything, this
love was not defined. It was just sort of out there - a love force that
pervaded the universe. There was no personal being to love me; there was
this energy coming from the cosmic One and that was it. Could a force
care? Or love?
Despite the meditations, trying to live in the now, and the talk of
love, I continued to have frightening experiences. One of the worst was
waking up to see an older woman staring at me from the bottom of the
bed. I knew she was not flesh and blood, but a spirit. She did not
speak, but I heard her in my mind say to me, 'I am here to take over
your body.' Too scared to speak, I said in my mind, 'No! No!' This
seemed to go on for a long time, although I have no idea how long it
really was. Finally, she simply faded away. I was left trembling,
perspiring, and my heart racing. By the way, I was not doing drugs.
An unexplained compulsion to go to a church gripped me one spring. Since I hated Christianity, churches and Christians by
now, this made me angry. I first ignored this compulsion, then resisted
it, and then, after struggling against it for awhile, I decided to give
in, hoping that it would go away. It was probably from one of my former
lives as a Christian priest or monk, I reasoned.
In the opening minutes of a service in a large church in downtown
Atlanta, I felt a love I had never known wash down over and through me,
so powerfully that I started quietly crying. I knew this love was from
God, not from the music, the people, or the place. I returned the
following Sunday, not to have another experience, but so that I could be
where that love had happened to me.
After several weeks, I began to feel unclean about astrology although no
one in this open-minded church said anything about it. In fact, a few
asked for my business card. All I knew was that astrology was somehow
separating me from this God of love. I then got the impression that God
did not like astrology and wanted me to give it up. This gnawed at me.
Give up my life's work? But I felt I had no choice; it was so clear to
me that God did not like astrology. Not even believing what I was doing,
I decided to give up astrology in late November of 1990. At the time, I
was chairperson of the curriculum committee, a member of other
committees at the astrological society, and scheduled to teach an
upcoming class. I had to find another teacher. I had to tell clients who
called I was no longer an astrologer.
Now what? Thinking I should read the Bible, I started reading in
Matthew, the first book of the New Testament. Reading the Bible put me
in touch with something pure, but I didn't know what it was. Although I
had read the Bible before while growing up and had quoted from it for
astrological articles, this time it was different. I felt as though I
was encountering something clean, much cleaner than I was, as I read it.
This person Jesus fascinated me. It was as though I was learning about
Him for the first time. One winter evening on Dec. 21st, while reading
part of the 8th chapter of Matthew, the real Jesus was revealed to me. I
was reading the account of Jesus on the boat with His disciples when a
terrible storm arose. The disciples were afraid they would drown, and so
they woke Jesus up, telling Him that they were going to perish. Jesus
stopped the storm in its tracks! How? He did not visualize calm waters,
He did not perform a ritual. He rebuked the winds and the sea, and they
obeyed him. He was displaying his authority over nature.
While reading this account over and over, I realized that I was
separated from God by everything I had done in my past -- I had lived my
whole life based on my will, a will that had rejected and dismissed God
and His word. I realized that the only way to be forgiven of being
against God, the only way to be reconciled with this true God, was
through Jesus, who suffered and died for me out of a great unconditional
love. I realized that Jesus really is the Savior. I realized that he had
died because everyone had gone their own way and gone against God, like
myself, but would be forgiven when trusting in Jesus.
In those several minutes sitting on my bed with the Bible, I knew
that the truth and the answer to all my questions were one and the same:
Jesus Christ. What a simple but amazing truth! And so I gave myself to
Christ and knew I belonged to Him from that moment on. At that moment, I
realized I was a new person inside. This was the Holy Spirit indwelling
and regenerating me, although I did not understand this at the time.
This is what is meant by "born again." It is an act of God upon faith in
Christ.
Several months later, I found out that a young Christian man at the
part-time job where I worked (as a secret astrologer giving astrological
advice to the boss about employees) had been praying for me with a
fellowship group at his church during 1990.
Jesus was different from the masters I had studied. He was more real than the spirit guides, the Ascended Masters, the mythical figures of Eastern religions, the Higher Self -- all those airy, elusive things that gave no evidence of their existence -- because Jesus came to earth in flesh, and He hungered, thirsted, felt pain and sorrow. He did not give a message that denied the dirt and dust of life, but He sat with the outcasts, the prostitutes, and the hated tax collectors, yet remained sinless. He was as real as it gets.
Though fully man, Jesus was fully God incarnate, equal to God in nature but setting aside that glory (not deity) to be among suffering men and women. Jesus Christ willingly laid down His life and died an agonizing death to pay for our sins. He bodily rose on the third day, conquering death, so that we can have eternal life with God. No sorcerer, no spiritual master, no Buddha, no shaman, no witch, no psychic has conquered death, but all still lie cold in their graves. But Jesus has power over death and is living today. "I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades" (Revelation 1:17b-18).
Spiritually, I had been in a grave with the buddhas and the gurus and
the seekers of wisdom who had rejected the truth of Christ. The
complicated and intricate studies that had enthralled me, the endless
layers of truths and realities I had pursued, the constant effort to
evolve, the paranormal experiences, the need to believe in one's own
goodness at all costs, were all a maze and a trap.
The truth was simple enough for a child because the truth is a Person.
Jesus did not teach the way or say He had a way. He said that He is the
way.
Many people want to know if I had to wage spiritual warfare
after trusting Christ. Well, a few months later, as I was about to go
forward in a church to publicly proclaim faith in Christ, I got
incredibly ill (I still went forward but it was difficult). When I went
home, I got sicker. I felt an angry presence in the room and I knew it
was my spirit guide. I realized he was, in reality, a demon. I told him
I belonged to Christ and there was nothing he could do about it, that
even if I died, it was too late. "You lose," I said. I was addressing
Satan, although I was really talking to my spirit guide. I do not
believe in doing this now, nor advise it; I do not address demons nor
Satan. They have already been spoken to and defeated by Christ. I prefer
to speak to the ruler of the universe, Jesus Christ. My focus is on the
One who is worthy of attention: Jesus Christ, who has power over all
rulers and principalities, in both the physical and spiritual realms
(Matthew 28:18; Ephesians 1:19-22).
What is the biggest difference between my former life and my life in
Christ? That I am happier, that life is easier? The difference is that I
am spiritually satisfied. There is more to learn and much room to grow,
but the learning and growth spring from Christ as the foundation, not
from a search outside Him. The search has ended; the thirst has been
quenched; the hunger within has been filled.
"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me," - John 14:6.
"But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life." - John 4:14
"I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst." - John 6:35
"And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, 'All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.'" - Matthew 28:18
(You will find
Marcia's story with more detail in Chapter 10 of The Unexpected
Journey (Zondervan) by Thom S. Rainer.
This book contains the firsthand accounts of 12 people who came to faith
in Christ from other spiritual beliefs and told their stories to Dr.
Rainer. Marcia's testimony has been published in many other
publications, including the end of the chapter on Astrology in
The Kingdom of the Occult, by Walter Martin, Jill Martin Rische, and Kurt
Van Gorden. These books are sold on Amazon and also on the CBD site at
www.christianbook.com, and
can also be found in or ordered by bookstores).
Note: Up to 50 copies of this document may be made without permission if
no fee other than copying fees are charged. Linking to this article from
another site is also permitted. If one desires to put this article on a
website or to publish it or publish part of it in hard copy, please contact Marcia for permission at
Thank you.