Haunted Cosmos - New Age Beliefs, Astral Projection, and Sleep Paralysis

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

Jessica has experienced sleep paralysis ever since she was a child. These experiences were also mixed in with recurring night terrors causing her distress throughout her childhood. Later in life she would "dabble" with new age beliefs and practices which lead to even more distress in her life. She would go on to have even more wild experiences until she learned to call on Jesus' name during these attacks.New Haunted Cosmos shirt available for a limited time! - Get it here!Love Haunted Cosmos? Get access to our exclusive show, The Dusty Tome, early ad-free access to main episodes and monthly Livestreams, by becoming a patron of the show: https://www.patreon.com/c/HauntedCosmosThis episode is sponsored by: Indigo Sundries Soap Company - Go to http://indigosundriessoap.com and use code HAUNTEDCOSMOS for 10% off your whole order!Chronicles of the Elohim is a line of premium action figures Visit https://kaleolegends.toys and pre-order your figures todayStonecrop Wealth Advisors! Go to this link to check out their special offers to Haunted Cosmos listeners today. https://stonecropadvisors.com/hauntedcosmosTalk to Josh at Volenté Creative to get help you with your branding and marketing: https://volentecreative.com/ncpBuy the Haunted Cosmos book: https://www.newchristendompress.com/cosmos PS: It's also available as an audiobook!If you're a Christian business owner who wants to reach thousands of like-minded people and grow your company, we'd love to partner with you. Email us at [e-mail] you're a Christian business owner who wants to reach thousands of like-minded people and grow your company, we'd love to partner with you. Email us at [e-mail] Support the show

This episode is brought to you by Indigo Sundry Soap Company. Clean soap, cleaner body. I watch this like globe come into the room and around the wall and go towards my sister. And I started to panic because I knew that it was going to hurt her. I wake up and I see blood across the walls. I walk out into the hallway. My family's killed. Oh my goodness.

And there is now a man standing over me with a knife. Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of The Graveyard Shift. My name is Ben Garrett. I am joined as always. by my incredibly handsome, talented, skilled friend, Evan Brandt. Dang!

No, my co-host, Brian Sovette. Dude, I needed that. My co-host. And then when you rightfully said that it was Evan, because all those things applied to him, there was a moment where I was disappointed, but then I was like, no, no, he deserves it. I want you to know, I really meant you.

Thank you. Not Evan. Thank you. It is so good to be here. Yes, we're excited. We're going to have a great time today. We're also joined by a special guest, listener of the show, Cosmonaut, Jessica Storr. Jessica, say hello to the people.

Hello. Hi, everyone. Thank you for having me. You are welcome. No, we're grateful to you. Jessica, if you don't mind saying, you also don't have to say, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't ask about this. Where are you from? From Pennsylvania.

I'm in the suburbs of Philly, so. Okay. Awesome. Wow. Is that like a good, is that a pretty part of the? country would you say or not? I don't know where I am it's very very pretty. I'm closer to Redding actually so it's just really mountainous and pretty and yeah I love it here. I know like in my head I think of Pennsylvania and I think Pittsburgh and to me Pittsburgh is like a hellscape

but I know that parts of Pennsylvania because people have told me are like insanely gorgeous. It's beautiful. Pennsylvania is beautiful. Really glad that you're here Jessica. I do have, everyone knows, everyone knows the rules by now. I do have an icebreaker question that we like to ask the guest so that we can all become better friends. We can all get to know each other a little bit. So your question, Jessica, is what is the best Christmas gift you ever received as a child? As a child. Yeah, like ages five to 16. Wow, you're getting specific now. Okay. So this thing I was so ecstatic about, but it was the dumbest gift ever. And it was those mooned. bounce shoes. Do you remember them? Heck yes. Absolutely. It was such a dumb gift, but it was

so much fun. I don't know. I was like really excited thinking I was walking on the moon. Oh yeah. It's like. If you believe in that kind of thing. Wow. Yeah. You remember those soaps? At the time. The grinding shoes. You know, they were called soaps. Oh, heck. Yeah. And you like grind. Dude,

I had those. I had heelies and I would beg my mom to go to Sam's Club and Oh, yeah. So like a hilly around. The floor is so smooth. Or anytime you're on tile. Now, I can relate to that, the moon shoes. Because one time I was like 10 years old, do you remember the commercials for powerizer stilts? Oh, yeah. Do you remember those, Jessica?

I had those too. No. You had powerizers? Well, like whatever the equivalent, maybe the generic. Like the kid ones? Yeah, like I had the, the 2B power. You strap them on and they're like bouncy stilts. Yeah, okay.

Heck yeah. So I was 10 years old. I saw a powerizer video somewhere. And I was like, I have to dedicate my life to be a professional. Powerizer. And I like did a bunch of chores that summer and worked for neighbors and stuff. And I saved up all this money. And it was like $300. Oh yeah. And it, you know, that's a fortune to a 10 year old. And so, uh, I had, I had the money and I was going to press order. And then, and then my, my dad was like, dude, Nintendo just came out with this new game boy. And I immediately changed course right there all in the course of like two minutes. That's all it took. The whole summer. I had, built up to this moment and I immediately did you made their decision I I don't know dude because I may not have been I was a really fat kid after that and I'm worried it's because of it was because of the game boy yeah the the thing is like all of us grew up X I'm watching X games no 100% so anything

that was like this is extreme yeah you strap some bouncy stilts to my feet and I'm going to be doing backflips before long Jessica did you watch the X games were you like metal militia Brian Deegan, Travis Pastrana fan, Sean White. I watched it when I was like high school years. Yeah. But I wasn't really that into it. I was a poser, skater girl. Oh, heck yeah.

Did you ever say, see you later girl? She said see you later girl. Sorry. Were you an Avriline fan? I was. Okay. So much ice. No, that's a good ice break.

The ice is pulverized. The ice is, it's not ice anymore. It's water. I have a message for ice everywhere. Hide. Okay. Okay. So again, everyone knows the rules. Ideally, Brian has never heard the story before, and he hasn't. I haven't. Now, also ideally, I have forgotten the story, which is true. In this case, I have forgotten the story. I remember it being really good, and that's all I remember. So we're going to get out of your way, Jessica. We're going to let you do what you came here for. Tell us your story, and we will try to avoid interrupting you. And just take it away. Have fun. Why is it that most soaps and cleaning products ironically don't contain clean ingredients?

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kids' love, and collectors display. Visit Callio Legends. Dot Toys and pre-order the Chronicles of Elohim figures today. So my story is a little complicated because it's not just the sleep paralysis. It's also the dreams that I have. So I have prophetic dreams. But I didn't fully understand what I was being trained in as a young child. So I first experienced sleep paralysis when I was three years old.

My parents had just moved into a house. It was like 1900s home. So it was older. And I was sharing the middle room with my sister. And in this middle room, I had like a full-sized bed and she had a crib. And I had watched, I thought I was awake. I watched this like globe come into the room and around the wall and go towards my sister. And I started to panic because I knew that it was going to hurt her.

So I wake up screaming. Nobody came to check on me. So I didn't know what to make of it. So, so then the next sleep paralysis episode I had, I was probably a little bit older. I was probably closer to four at this point. And this one was, I thought I was awake again. And I was laying in bed and I saw all these spiders crawling across the ceiling. And then they started dropping down and landing on me.

And as I tried to get them off of me and like, I was like freaking out. I realized I couldn't move. So I was just like screaming. And that time my mom came running into my room. room. She turned the light on and there was nothing anywhere in my room. So after that, I experienced night terrors. I suffered a lot of this on my own without telling my parents. So the night terror that continually plagued me for years was Freddie Krueger, you know, nightmare on Ellen Street. I never even saw the movie. I might have seen a commercial of like, how do you remember? I was probably

like kindergarten at the time because I had just brought him a pumpkin from school and put it on top of the TV. And I remember seeing like this commercial I'm like slashing through the screen. And after that, every single night, I had dreams. Every single night I was in my dreams. I wake up and I see blood across the walls. I walk out into the hallway. My family's killed. Like everybody's dead. It was so terrifying. And so this happened for years. So finally, I guess at this point, I was like seven years old. My mom started having my brothers. So she had my two brothers around then, and we were moved out of the middle room to the back room.

And so actually, when I was in this back room, nothing happened. And it's actually funny because later on, I asked God, I was like, where were you when I was having all these night terrors and things happening to me? And he showed me how he had that door blocked, that he was with me in that space. So it was actually really cool. So during that time when I was in that front room, I didn't have night terrors. I didn't have anything happen, but I would hear things in the hallway walking, like coming down the hallway.

I would see shadows, but nothing ever came into my room. I truly believed he was with me. And I had visions at that time of Jesus sitting, like at the end of my bed, keeping me comfort or giving me comfort. And I also saw like angels in the clouds. I was little. So some of it I just chalked up to me in my imagination. But I don't really believe that anymore.

So fast forward, me and my sister constantly fight. So I was separated from her. And I was moved back into the creepy middle bedroom. And during this time, the night terror started again. And it was, this time it was like a pack of wolves constantly chasing me. And this is when I learned how to lucid dream. I don't even know how I learned how to do it. I just knew I had enough and I heard tell it to stop.

And so I turned around in my dream and I told it to stop. And they turned into like puppies and it was fine. So fast forward, we move out of that house, we move a few times. Nothing really happens. When I was 12, I gave my life to Jesus. I always believed in God. I, like, I always believed in Jesus.

I would, like, read my Bible when I was little and make up songs to Jesus. Like, I always believed in Jesus, but I didn't give my life to him until I was 12. So when I was 12, I had my first prophetic dream. And it was about myself. And it was me being a single mom holding a little girl with blonde hair, her hand. And so I wasn't a little girl. single mom, but I had our daughter before we were married. So it felt like I was a single mom, and sure enough, she had the little blonde hair. So that was my first prophetic dream.

You're 12. So when I was 12, I had that dream. I had my daughter when I was 18. So after I had her, when she was about a year old, I started babysitting for my aunt Susan and her kids. and her youngest is two months older than my daughter. And so one day I was at her house. I was babysitting. The kids were just playing on the floor, playing Legos. I was laying on the couch watching them. I did not realize I fell asleep.

I was woken up to hearing the back door in their kitchen slam. So it was like the kitchen dining room, living room. So it was, I heard something coming through. And I look up and there is. now a man standing over me with a knife. And I start freaking out because I'm just like, this person's going to kill me. I have kids.

I don't know how. Freak out. I realize I cannot move. I'm completely frozen. And then I snap out of it. And the kids were still sitting exactly where they were. When I was having this sleep paralysis, everything looked exactly the same.

It was a bright, sunny fall day. Like, nothing was different. So, like, completely freaked out. And then it started happening more frequently. Sometimes it was just feeling like a pressure on my back. Sometimes it was hearing a growl in my ear. Sometimes it was just the feeling of being stuck and not being able to move. So we were, me and my husband bought our house and we were about to, we were expecting our third child.

And so we had like this Cape Cod and we were upstairs. and the kids were downstairs. And I went down for a nap because I was exhausted. And so I was sleeping and I had sleep breast again. And I saw this globe, again, the globe, come up the stairs, come around. And I knew I was scared of it because of what it did to my sister at that time. And it landed on my hand and it started electrocuting me. And so I woke up from that.

Of course, it never feels like I can fully wake up from it and panicked over that. And I was like, why is this happening again? So it's actually really funny. We just moved into this house about four years ago. And I had an email notification about my old house and like its value. And it showed the old pictures of that house. And in the attic in that picture, there is like a glue in the picture. I was like, this is really weird.

So my sister actually, she lived with us for a short time and she was up in the attic. And she had seen like a girl hanging over her. her like just a creepy girl. And so it was weird. But I will say during those years, I was definitely dabbling in like new agey stuff. I was one of those deceived Christians that thought that, you know, I could manifest what I want and, you know, just totally deceived because I was out of church for so long and, you know, there was a lot of shame with having a child out of wedlock. So I definitely kept out of the church and got easily let off track and suede. So I was definitely dabbling in like new age stuff and opening doors.

I hundreds of believe I was. So during this time, I had the most frequent attacks. This is when I had lots of lots of things like grabbing at me or laying on me or growling. I also had this one time. It was really bizarre. I was laying down. I was about to fall asleep. So my sleep paralysis sometimes happens as I'm waking up.

Other times it's happening as I fall asleep. So I'll start feeling like my body like vibrate and I'll be fighting it. So this time I was fighting it, fell asleep. And then I had lifted out into space, which was really bizarre. So I'm in space looking at the earth. and all this knowledge is coming to me. I'm seeing like numbers and equations and I just know stuff. I'm like,

this is amazing. As soon as I thought, I need to tell my family about this, I slammed into my body. That was not a normal sleep paralysis. I have no clue what that was. I tend to think, because like I said,

I was dabbling with New Age and a lot of things that I've heard from people was if you can get past the fear of sleep paralysis, you'll ask or reject. So I don't know if something happened there, it really scared me. Then I had another situation where this one was not sleep for else's. This scared the crap out of me. After this experience, I'm like, it's time to me.

My son would sleep up in our room and he had longer hair at the time because he didn't like sleeping downstairs. It made him nervous. And so I thought it was my son coming to wake me up. So I look at the end of my bed, I just see a figure with long hair. And then I look closer and it's literally a woman in a white gown hunched over with black hair. And I was like, oh, no, I lost it. I, my husband was just like laughing. I was like, Jess, it's nothing. You're fine. It's, it terrified me. And I could not sleep. So then I dealt with a lot of insomnia after that because I just, I could not relax enough to sleep. So like I said, we finally made.

moved. And I was like, all right, it's a new house. The previous owners were Christians. Like, this place is anointed. That's what I told myself. I was so convinced we'd be fine here. Within the first week, our bedroom has an open bathroom, which I absolutely hate, because, you know, I get to hear my husband pee on the one night. There's no door.

Strange design decision. Horrible. Horrible design. It's just right there. You know what you go great in this master bedroom? a toilet right next to the bed that I can see from anywhere. In 2023, Indigo Sundries became one of our sponsors. At the time, their business was little more than a side hobby,

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Thankfully, I couldn't see the toilet, but it's like, it's just an open wall into, yeah, it's not a doorway. I don't know. So, I mean, it's a doorway, but it's not a door. There's no door. It should have had a door. Obviously, I'm very upset about that. So within like the first weeks, I hear feet sticking to the floor walking into my room. And there's this big black, tall creature just standing there.

And I was so discouraged. I was just like, I can't believe this has followed me to this house. I thought it was the house. I thought things were just attached to the other places. Now, mind you, I am a Christian, and I never once thought this was a spiritual thing. I just thought this is just something. Like, I've been to neurologists or like, this is just something that happens. You know, you get stuck in the state.

So this thing haunted me then for the next few weeks. And it got worse as I was leading up to my baptism. So me and my son had agreed to get baptized together. And I rededicated my life. And it actually got worse before that. So a lot more sleep paralysis episodes. After my baptism, it was actually pretty cool. This was like the most disjoining, bizarre sleep paralysis episode I ever had.

But it, and it went on for a long time. So I didn't know where it was. I didn't know where my mind was. So I feel like there was a spiritual battle that took place. So I had this dream where it's so hard to start. So I was sleeping in bed. And I was hearing noises as I was asleep. And I was hearing like a tinkling sound.

And I didn't know what it was. And I was like kind of fighting the sleep paralysis feel of like, that vibration feel in between all this. Then I thought the dog jumped in my bed and I felt something. And then I kind of went back to sleep. And then I was hearing like a static TV sound. And then that went away. And then I was hearing water drip.

So then finally I wake up and I check the clock and it's 3.43. I look over and I notice my phone is broken. Like the screen's cracked. I'm like, oh, that's the tinkling sound I heard. The screen completely broke and shattered. That's what I was hearing while I was sleeping. I put my feet on the ground and I feel glass cut into my foot. And I was just like, what the heck?

And I see my door and the door to my bedroom is like off its hinges. And I was like, what is going on? So I get up. I walk to the door and I look in the hallway and like the closets are open. Things are thrown out of the closets. I yell for my daughter. I was like, Daniel, I need to borrow your phone. I need to call dad right now.

And so I get the phone. I start to call my husband and then I was like I don't know what's going on with me I don't know if I'm having seizures I don't know what's going on and so I walk into the bathroom and I sit down on the tub

and I look in the tub and the water's dripping so that was a dripping sound and there was like vomit in the tub and so I'm sitting there and I'm like trying to pull this like shred of glass out of my foot I'm asking my husband to come home

something's wrong and then I feel like I'm going to pass out then I wake up so I It was so wild. So this to me was like, this was like a confirmation that God was battling for me in the spiritual realm and purging stuff. Like that's really how I took it.

So here's the weird part too. The next day, we have to go to a funeral. Rob's aunt had passed away. We go to the funeral and somebody's phone goes off. It's that same tinkling sound. I was like, that's weird. After that, we head home and I sit on the couch and I look at, the screensaver's on and the time says 343. I hear water dripping and I look behind me and the

sink is dripping. I was like what the heck? I was like to me it was proof how the spiritual realm and like our realm is very intertwined and it felt like confirmations. You know this is really bizarre. So anyway, after that I had I had very very angry sleep paralysis only of the only like one other time I did and then the sleep paralysis stopped. So I had this like angry thing come at me. It was like a dark shadow. And I was like in Jesus' name. And it disappeared.

And then all of a sudden it came back and it like flew at me but like bounced off this protective barrier around me. So since then I have not had any more sleep paralysis. However, now I, it's in my dreams again. So my dreams are now I'm seeing demonic cruises. creatures in my dreams. I'm doing deliverance of my dreams. The one I had that was really bizarre was it started as a weird dream. And then it was like, I was like at Pearl Harbor. I don't know why. And I have my soldier husband walking with me. And he goes to kiss me and then his

face changes. And now he has like really like piercing eyes and birdlike features and long teeth. And I was like, in Jesus name, get out of my dream. I was lucid dreaming at that point. And it, he literally left the body and the body fell on me in my dream. So like, I really do believe that we can battle spiritual stuff in our dreams. Um, I don't know why I experienced all this. Um, it doesn't end. Like last night I had a dream of delivering my husband and he woke up and he told me, well, it's kind of weird.

I was being told to divorce you all night in my dream. And I was like, so crazy. Yeah. So I have a. a lot of interesting sleep pearls issues and experiences. And it wasn't really until more recently where I've actually started calling the name of Jesus. And I mean, only the last few years that I learned to call the name of Jesus.

And they instantly disappear every time I would call the name of Jesus. But yeah, that like battle was kind of like the end of it. It's like it purged it out. Now, before we started, I told you I've been like spiritually attacked leading up to this. And after. I got the confirmation email about like our time and I like accepted okay and added it to my calendar. That night I had dreams that were mimicking sleep paralysis. So in my dreams I saw like spider creatures come around the wall.

I saw the dog creature on the floor. I saw the tall, the tall dark man walking around. And it was just like you. I don't even know how to take it because it was just like it was just like throwing in my face all my past experiences to try to scare me. from saying something. And so if anything comes from this, I just want people to know, one, you're not alone.

You're not crazy. God does protect you. By saying his name, he does protect you. And, um, I mean, we've had even people in, I talked to a guy in our church who had, right after the sleep paralysis episode we did,

came out, you know, years ago at this point, which is kind of weird to say. Yeah. And, uh, he described some similar experiences to what you just described.

and it is just wild how many people since we came out with that episode we have heard from that I've said I've had this experience, yep, and people that I wouldn't have expected, people that are like not, they don't ever talk about the supernatural or they don't ever talk about, you know, anything like that.

They go, yeah, there was a period of my life where this happened and that happened. It was before I was a Christian. It stopped when I converted. Stories like, that. And one of the takeaways that I've wrestled with back and forth is my mind goes to this place. I'm always, what is it? Is it physical? Is it spiritual? Is it both? Because we're body, we're soul. Like, is it all what actually is going on? And one of the conclusions that I've come to is it's almost

irrelevant to an extent for us to know exactly where the one starts and where the other begins. because what we do with it is actually most important. Call on the name of the Lord, pray, ask for God to deliver you from this, this trial, to protect you spiritually, bodily. Like all of this, the what to do is actually the most important. Like you said at the end, it's calling the name of the Lord.

You know, he'll protect you. Psalm 91. It's interesting too. Like even the, you know, you brought up the kind of sense of shame that you had for some of those years and how you can look at the difference in 2nd Corinthians 7 yeah 7 where paul is talking about worldly sorrow and godly sorrow and it's interesting he says that the godly sorrow it's a real sorrow but it leads to repentance and then he says without regret so it's like the you know you have this guilt and guilt is good when you've

sin. It's your conscience accusing you. But it's what you do with that that's so important. And it says that when you do the right thing, when you actually lean on the Lord to take it away, he does. And it's like there's no regret. It's interesting to me how we can almost, you know, again, to your point, whether where the physical and the spiritual have a boundary layer doesn't really matter. But how even in our dreams, even in our mind, it can reveal this like these things that are still coming for us, almost these, these motifs of sin that are coming to us. And it's interesting how you connected that to a kind of shame. And then how that's shifted, you know, and how the, it's, now you know it for what it is, right? Like, this is not actually, this is something that I need to ask the Lord to

take from me. This is something. that I need to ask the Lord to protect me from, and he's faithful to do that. Does your outdated website give your visitors sleep paralysis? What? Is that a thing? Are you haunted by that logo your uncle's pet werewolf made? Brian, what are you talking about? If you're ready to level up your brand and website, you need to talk to Josh at Valenti Creative.

What's up, guys? Josh, my guy! What the heck? How did you just appear? Head to Valentecreative.com slash NCP to talk with Josh about your brand and website. Oh, oh, this is an ad that we're doing right now? Wait, wait, how did he teleport into this room? Ben, I wish I could tell you, but this is an ad. You have to go to valentecreative.com slash NCP and reach out today. You must begin a perilous journey to find treasure in the mountains.

Along the way, be weary of demons, vampires and ghosts. They will lead you astray and corrupt the wealth you seek. You'll be assigned a personal guide, stone crop, wealth advisors. They will help you find the treasure and fight against the corruption. Are you acting like you're in a movie trailer again? This is supposed to be a simple ad to tell people to use Stonecrop Wealth Advisors to invest in faith-based portfolios instead of pagan companies. Visit Stonecropadvisors.com slash Hawn and Cosmos to get the demons out of your portfolio today. Investment advisory services offer for Stonecroft Welfare's LLC. One of the questions that I had, this is a really boring question. But what's a prosthetic dream? Is that what you said at the beginning? Prophetic. Oh.

prophetic. Yeah. I know, my dream have limbs that are bionic. I thought at the very beginning you said prosthetic dreams and then you said prophetic dreams. And I was like, what's a prosthetic dream? What is a prosthetic dream?

It is a fake dream where you've had your normal dreams amputated. And then you get a, you get like a custom fit. Well, it did make me think the whole like the glass breaking thing, the dripping thing. And you know, you go out all your, your closets are ransacked and stuff.

and how you had like woken up from a dream to that and then you woke up again. But it was like the most vivid like waking, waking nightmare. And that's actually something that we get into in this upcoming season about like premonitory stuff. Yeah. That, you know, it seems like some people have in their dreams at times where it's like this premonitory thing where they're touching on shapes or sounds or smells or whatever it may be. And then eventually sometime it comes up again in real life. And they're like, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.

And it can be mild or it can be extreme. And it's really fascinating how that happens. And I just don't like I personally, I don't have a really good mechanism to work through that and figure out all the details. And I'm kind of like maybe we're not supposed to. Like maybe we just, maybe we just don't know. And it's just more of a reason to say, okay, Lord, like have mercy on me. deliver me. I mean, in this case, I do feel like, I feel like the spiritual world does know who's gifted

with what spiritually. And I feel like there was something to cause fear at a young age to keep me from wanting to dream and have these prophetic dreams. And I do feel like that's why I've been attacked in this way. Because the dreams that I had have helped people. And I've had things to tell them. and I've had things to give them. It was mostly about giving comfort when I've had certain dreams.

So, well, when God has given me those dreams. And so I do feel like it's an attack to keep me quiet. When you talked about the New Age connection and you had gone for a period of your life kind of down that, that road, why do you think, like, what was it for you that was tempting about it? Because it's exploding. There's so many people are into it.

What's the temptation? Yeah. So what was tempting for me, was trying to understand these dreams that kept coming true, understand why I was dealing with the sleep paralysis. I wanted to have control in my own way. And at that time, I was not turning to God to get rid of those things or to clarify them or explain why I'm dealing with them.

So New Age is enticing in that way because it tries to give you the answers to. Because the church at that time, for me, I grew up in a church that I don't remember them really talking about the Holy Spirit. I don't remember them talking about giftings. I don't remember anybody practicing giftings. It was just very nothing. So I think part of that was like, well, then I must have a special gift. And I don't know what this is.

So I'm going to search it my own way. And the world is so willing to accept you into that and just say, oh, yeah, this is what this means. And this is what you do with it. And here's how you control it. Here's how you manipulate it. Here's how you use it for yourself. Yeah. So I think that's why.

It's one of you, I mean, what you just described is like, one of the big motivations behind this whole project in the first place is to say, the spiritual is when we downplay it in a materialist way. And I actually even, I think there are even within the Christian tradition ways of being fearful of talking about the supernatural because of the influence of materialism more than anything to where we don't want to sound weird or strange or we want the kneel. the grass tisons of the world to respect us and find us respectable. And when you say things like,

no, that's not just people sinning. There are demons involved. There are unclean spirits involved. This is Satan raging. Satan is prowling. He wants to steal souls. He's at work at all this alleged supernatural phenomenon. We out of a craven and sinful desire for respectability, I think, sometimes avoid the topic. So even with, you know, a lot of our lives, are probably just because Ben and I are, we're very much, like from the reformed tradition, which tends towards cessationism and, you know, that kind of side.

And I'm not, we're not going to get into that here. But one of the, the things I would want my own camp to consider is, there are our own motivations. And just to be careful that we're not embracing, essentially a model of the world that's functionally, deist where God set things in motion

supernaturally but then like day to day he's not really supernaturally involved it's all just natural it's all just atoms and even on a properly understood you know some kind of maybe you have an understanding of spiritual gifts where certain gifts were either have ceased or they were they are more rare today than they were in the apostolic age something like that if you go read the reformers the Protestant reformers

and you listen to them talk about something like preaching and prophecy, or you listen to them talk about the leading of the Holy Spirit subjectively and the unction of the Holy Spirit in the believer's life, you will very quickly make a lot of hardcore cessationists even quite uncomfortable. Even with our own theological forefathers, which tells me that we've likely, in the same way I think we've been infected by the sexual revolution with, you know, some kind of embarrassment at the sexual mores and, you know, of the scriptures, I think we can do the same thing with spiritual things where materialism has been ascendant.

And so we've, you know, sort of got to become embarrassed a little bit about saying that, no, the whole, like, you would hear Protestant reformed Christians, um, who were far from Pentecostal saying the Holy Spirit led, me to this, the Holy Spirit spoke through me in this way, in this sermon or in this instance in my life. If I'm remembering right, and I don't have a citation for this, but I believe that Martin Luther said multiple times in sermons and in like commentaries that he wrote that he was very much like, no, the Holy Spirit led me, told me to write these things, to do this, to write the 95th. Like the Holy Spirit was leading me to do that. The Holy Spirit used me for that. And it's really fascinating.

I think that so there's kind of like a hyper-sessationist camp in the modern reformed world that I would certainly disagree with. And I think that you're right. I think a lot of it is like you want to hold on to your pearls of materialism. But I also think that some of it may be a reaction in the other direction to say like, well, now we have this new age spiritualism. Right. We can't sound like them. Yeah, let's get far away from the spiritual. We can't participate in that.

And I think the problem with that is that the thing that the new age spiritualists are right about is that the spiritual world exists. And we interact with it. And we interact with it. And so it's foolish for us to just say, okay, well, you have that. We'll stay over here content with our basically materialism. But it's so that we, I don't want to sound like. you. I don't want to sound ridiculous like you. And the problem is, like, they know that the unseen world is there and that we interact with it and they will give you answers. It's just that they're

the wrong answers. Right. It's not that they're experiencing something that's totally false or anything like that. It's not that they're noticing something that's not actually there. It's that they're coming to the wrong conclusions. And so it's a huge mistake for Christ's church to ignore it and not even seek to better understand and to recapture these kind of these convictions of our of our fathers or spiritual fathers that that had studied the scriptures and had seen the spirit work and genuinely were like, no, I think that just like everything else, I think that the Lord guides us in this and gives us the right answers and tells us what to do. And had seen Satan at work. I mean, Luther was quite famous for being aware of the operation of Satan in the world. it reminds me of when Paul's first getting into spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians in chapter 12 he speaks about it in chapter 12 13 and 14 primarily he begins with this exhortation to the

to the Corinthians make sure that you are not led away by the wrong spirit nobody who is speaking by the spirit will say that Jesus is a cursed and nobody can say that Jesus is Lord but by the spirit and his point is that if people are made to be led by spirit which they are God, namely God, that means that such a thing is possible, that we can be led by spirits, by spirit. And so take care that you're led by the right spirit. And so I agree the exhortation really, you know, across traditions, all, you know, looking at the church Catholic, the universal church of what we can agree on is call upon the name of the Lord, test the spirits, test all things by the scriptures, obey the Lord, and seek to obey him in all of your earthly and spiritual duties

and there's safety there. And be aware that in the midst of that, you're waiting through a constant spiritual battle, not just a physical battle with flesh and blood. Yeah. But with powers and principalities in the heavenly places that hate God, hate you, and want to bring destruction. And it is interesting how I really do think that dreams can be like some way for us to experience that unseen a little bit more closely in our mind. And I think this is one of the things that Carl Young was onto. I think that he was wrong. But, you know, he talked about when you go into the dream, you're entering the collective unconscious. and you're going into your subconscious world,

and it's giving you all these, like, ancient memories, basically from the, and, yeah, like, his conclusions are crazy. But one of the things that's fascinating is that I think that he was noticing the ubiquity of people coming to him and him also seeking out other people and basically being faced with this catalog of dreams that, you know, we're not supposed to really remember dreams. Our minds aren't supposed to work that way. But when you get people that they're like, no, I remember.

so many of these really... This was different. Yeah, this was different. And he was noticing that and saying, well, maybe there is something there. Maybe there is some kind of like... Like Pharaoh, like Nebuchadnezzanical. Yeah, exactly. Like, the dream scape is this, it's a different world in many ways. And to think that it's all just meaningless thoughts that are splattered on a wall, I think that, I think that that's incorrect to say that it always must be that. It's an overly materialist accounting of things. I think it's a gross, oversimplification of dreams and even the depths that the mind might be able to go to, being the tapestry of spirit and body that we are.

That's, I mean, a fascinating account that spans years, decades for you. And we're, yeah, really grateful that you're willing to come on here and share it with us. Jessica, thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you for you. Yeah, we appreciate it. Yeah. All right.

You want to lead us out? Yeah, I'll take us out here. Thanks for listening, guys. We hope that this installment of the Graveyard Shift was helpful to you. Again, we'd remind you the point of this is, yeah, we, it's fun to hear stories that are interesting and people are made to engage with stories because we live in the midst of a story that God is writing in history. So that's fine. We're all about that here at Honod Cosmos, putting sound effects and doing stories.

But really behind all of it, our aim is that you would know the Lord, believe the Lord, be conform to the image of the Lord, more and more by grace and through faith. faith. And so keep your eye on the ball. Like Paul says in Colossians 3, lift your eyes to the things of heaven to where your life is hidden with God and Christ. And then put off the earthly, put off sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness. The point of even this show isn't just entertainment. It's that we would all consider lift our eyes and consider the Lord afresh in our day. And so thanks for listening. Thanks for giving us a couple minutes of your time. today. If you like what we do here, always, there's some links you can support the show and help us continue to make it possible. But yeah, share it with your friends, share it with your dog,

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