MY VISIONS
The following is a series of visions I had years ago. I did not go into a trance or was not hypnotized or anything, I was, initially, at church and ‘in the spirit’ when these images transported me mentally and emotionally to a different place.
As all visions are, these are open to interpretation. At the time I thought I understood them as they applied to my own life and the struggles through which I was going. Several years later it became evident that they had much more to do with my growth into honesty about my sexual orientation. And now I am finding that their true meaning is a snapshot of my spiritual life. I’m pretty sure that down the road they will mean something else.
I had never had a vision before these nor have I had any since. I really don’t expect to. Then again, I never expected these either so who knows?
So here are the visions and the interpretations of each as they have evolved:
Vision 1
(June 19, 1992)
I was in a cave and my eyes had to take a moment to adjust to the lack of light. It was cold and damp and consisted of little more than a hole in the earth. There was no apparent opening to the cave although there was enough light to see after my eyes grew accustomed to the cave.
Against the back wall of the cave sat a small child. He was perhaps six or seven years old, dirty and dressed in rags. Although there was no sound, I could tell the child was crying and felt he had been doing a lot of that. I could also feel his loneliness and his resignation.
After a few moments a man walked out of a dark corner of the cave. He was bearded and wore a robe. The child was very afraid of this man. The man sat down a few feet to the child’s left but did not say anything. He simply gazed at the child who edged a little right to put more distance between the child and the man. I knew the child was very afraid.
When they had sat there for some time, the man gently reached out to the child. He never touched him but I suddenly felt such absolute fear… such dread. And this time it was not only the child who was in terror. I, myself, as I was standing in worship in my church, was in terror.
The vision ended.
The Interpretations
(at the time)
At first I kind of understood that the child was me. But I had never been trapped in any cave so I wasn’t sure what was going on or why I was so dirty and ragged. I also knew that I was crying from an emotional level rather than because of the physical circumstance I was in. But I wasn’t sure exactly why.
When the man came into the picture I immediately recognized him as Jesus. It made sense at the time considering where I was (in church) and had seen all the pictures of him. But I didn’t understand why I was afraid of Jesus. And when he reached for me, the terror I felt confused me even more. But suddenly I knew this child wasn’t me as a child… rather it was me in the present.
That fact unnerved me a little and made me want more of the vision. But I don’t think I could have withstood the fear at the time.
(January 1996)
A lot of things had changed for me by this time. I was in the process of coming out of the closet and being honest about my sexual orientation. I still retained plenty of my ‘Baptist guilt’ and so often felt dirty and ragged and fearful. And then here comes Jesus.
But Jesus had changed too. Of course, by 1996, I had the benefit of having had all the visions and so could put them into a little broader context. The ’96 Jesus was there to lift me up rather than to heal me. And I understood the fear by then too. It was based not on the fear of hell but on the fear of change.
The terror I originally felt was pretty much gone by ’96, but I did know that, since I was gay, Jesus was reaching for me to finally dispatch me to the fiery place I knew I deserved.
(June 2007)
There isn’t a lot of difference between how I see the first vision now and how I saw it in 1996. The big difference is that I have gotten through that coming-out process and as well as all the consequences of that decision.
The fear within this vision was at first the fear of hell and rejection by god. By ’96 it was the fear of change. I am past both of those fears now even though I am still at the beginning of spiritual change in my life. I have found that change, although not always comfortable, can be exciting and is usually a wonderful thing.
Vision 2
(July 3, 1992)
We’re back in the cave with the boy and man sitting a few feet apart against the back wall. I still feel the child’s fear. For a time they simply sit there in silence and are not even looking at each other. The terror is gone because the man is no longer reaching for the child.
Suddenly the robed man leans over toward the boy, forcefully picks him up and holds him tightly and tenderly in his arms. The terror floods back over me, but this time it is not terror of the man, but the terror of what I know is about to come… even though that is undefined.
And the terror is softened a bit by the tenderness the child feels in the man’s arms. He feels relief and does not struggle to free himself, but he is still crying.
The vision ends.
The Interpretations
(at the time)
The principle players are, of course, the same; myself (as a child) and Jesus. When the child was picked up it showed me that Jesus did not have any evil intent toward me and was not going to cast me into hell despite the fact that I deserved nothing better. However, I knew that nothing about the child had changed in the slightest other than being in Jesus’ arms. I also recognized the fear I felt as being the fear of change I knew was coming . . . even though I had no idea what that change was going to be.
(January 1996)
By 1996 I knew what that change was. I was in the process of coming out of the closet and had already found that change not to be nearly as scary as I anticipated. There were painful moments in the process, but not what I had envisioned. I found that what I had thought was Jesus accepting me despite the fact of being dirty and sinful, was actually Jesus accepting me for who I was and for he had created me to be.
(June 2007)
Now I recognize Jesus as the manifestation of the creator who, naturally, does accept us for who we are. The creator (our source of all things) could do nothing less because we were all made – in ‘his’ image – we were all created from the very essence of the source. For the creator to reject us would be for the creator to reject himself. Of course that notion is absurd. The closer we become manifestations of our source (like Jesus did) the more incredible our lives can become.
Conversely, when we feel separated from that which gave us life, we become fearful. As Dr. Wayne Dyer puts it: ‘Fear is nothing more than False Evidence Appearing Real’. The reality is that we are not – cannot – be separated from our creator. Jesus knew this. That truth is what he was trying to show me in that cave.
Vision 3
(July 10, 1992)
Jesus, with the child in his arms stands up and walks a few feet forward. He has to bend down just a little to keep from hitting his head on the cave ceiling. He reaches up to something I hadn’t seen before: a wooden cover over an opening in the cave ceiling. He pushes it forcefully and it flies off revealing a blue, sunny sky with only the fluffiest of clouds overhead.
Again absolute terror welled up within me as I watched the child bury his face into the man’s shoulder. Jesus grabbed the beams surrounding the opening and swung us both up and out of the cave.
The vision ends.
The Interpretations
(at the time)
All I knew at the time was that we were moving on. That fact shook me to my core. The cave was comfortable – at least in its familiarity – it was predictable, it was sheltered.
(January 1996)
By 1996 I realized that, in this vision, we were moving forward. There was still some lingering nervousness, but no terror. I was moving into honesty. I had not known honesty for an awfully long time and so it was indeed unfamiliar, uncomfortable at times and quite unpredictable. I no longer had the shelter of my closet.
(June 2007)
I now know that it was much more than honesty into which I was moving. It was responsibility.
I had been leading a ‘responsible’ life for many years. I (along with my wife) fed, housed, clothed, entertained and loved our family financially, emotionally and spiritually. We made sure the bills were paid and that the kids had everything they needed and some of what they wanted. I was familiar with responsibility.
But I had given up being responsible for my own life . . . my own happiness . . . my own direction. Even now I am only at the beginning stages of learning about reclaiming my right to make decisions (and taking responsibility for those decisions.) I can no longer say, “They made me mad” or “This forced me to do ‘such and such’” or “I have to have (fill in the blank) to be happy” or fulfilled or productive or creative.
This vision, the shortest one of the bunch, is one of the most meaningful to me simply because I will always be moving on, moving forward, moving into something more. That will forevermore take me into unknown territories.
Vision 4
(August 17,1992)
I have aged a little in this vision. I am perhaps 13 or 14. I’m no longer dirty or ragged and I am walking along, hand in hand, with Jesus. We are walking away from the cave and toward a small rise a hundred yards or so in front of us. The day is warm and sunny with the same fluffy clouds I saw in the last vision.
We don’t seem to be talking at all. I feel quite comfortable and safe and excited by the new things I’m seeing or at least things I haven’t seen in a very long time.
As we go over the rise and down the other side there is a huge meadow; green, flowered and waving in the slight breeze. In the center of the meadow is a large bare spot. It seems somewhat familiar but I cannot identify it. At a leisurely pace we cross over to the bare spot and I find it is not bare at all, but strewn with rock and brick and wood. We continue to wander aimlessly through the rubble and I wonder why they would walk there instead of the gentle meadow.
In the distance, across the expanse of the meadow, is a grove of large trees. The boy wanted to go find the shade of the trees, but Jesus held his hand firmly and continued to direct him through the rocks and bricks.
The vision ends.
The Interpretations
(at the time)
In August of ’92 I really didn’t have a lot of explanations for this vision. I kind of interpreted it as Jesus moving me toward freedom and that he was making everything new (very traditionally biblical ideas.) Those ideas, as time went on, proved to be true but in radically unexpected ways. Visions have a tendency of doing that – just research the many, many interpretations of the Bible’s Revelation.
(January 1996 & June 2007)
Since this vision and the next need each other to be understood, and since in ’96 and ’07 I had the advantage of looking at them both together, I will defer the ’96 and present interpretations to those explanations of the fifth vision.
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(Permit me a short interlude so that I can provide a moment of background. My name is Neil Roger . . . Until I was 20 I went by the name ‘Neil’. When I went away to college I changed my name – or at least what I insisted people call me – to ‘Roger’. The only ones I permitted to call me Neil without correction was my parents . . . and I even corrected them at times.)
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Vision 5
(November 17,1992)
Jesus and I continued to make our way through the rubble. Again I had aged some to about 15 or 16. I was exploring, turning over rocks and lumber to see what might be underneath. Jesus, too, occasionally turned a brick or stone over with his sandaled foot.
I was content, but curious as to what all this had to do with me.
Jesus stops and bends down on one knee and motions for me to come to him. I did. He reaches down for a large brick half buried in the dirt and works it free. He turns it over. Embossed on the face of the brick was one word:
NEIL
The boy seemed confused and both he and Jesus stood motionless . . . as if in tableau. But I, as the observer, understood and began to cry as I had never cried before.
The vision ends.
The Interpretations
(at the time)
I understood quite well that this rubble was either what had been or what should have been my life. I didn’t know what had destroyed it. At the time, of course, due to my religious beliefs, I knew it had something to do with homosexuality.
And I also understood why I had started going by my middle name – I felt as if there was nothing left of Neil. When I changed it I didn’t understand that of course, but it was obvious after the last two visions. In the fourth vision Jesus had brought me back to my life and in the fifth he not only identified who I was, but, implicit in the visions themselves, there was a promise of rebuilding.
I sensed that because the one large brick with my name wasn’t broken or damaged in any way. I changed my name back to Neil that very day.
(January 1996)
In the months after the fourth and fifth vision I had begun to put more meaning into them than was intended. It began a time of renewed religious fervor and of heightened expectations of what Jesus was going to do in my life. In looking back, what I put into the vision after-the-fact only held me back from the real affect it was supposed to have.
By January of ’96 I knew that it wasn’t Jesus that was going to rebuild my life. It was me. And that all the materials I needed where strewn across this field of rubble. I also understood that it had been destroyed very early on in my life. I didn’t know why or by whom it was destroyed and I wasn’t sure I was up to the task of rebuilding much more than a small shelter out of what was left.
And I had been right in my first interpretation back in ’92 that this destruction was connected to being gay. However, at that time I believed it was something to do with the sin of homosexuality that had destroyed me. In ’96 I knew it was the religious beliefs I had been taught that, since I was gay, being gay was the totality of my life and that, since being gay was a terrible sin, my life had to be dismantled. I had to destroy the homosexuality which had taken over.
By ’96 I realized that being gay was no sin nor was it ever supposed to be the totality of my life. I knew then that my life had been destroyed by the church because it made me become dishonest about whom I was. And it focused so much on homosexuality that the other parts of my life went unrecognized.
So I began again to lay the foundation of honesty in my life.
(June 2007)
As I moved through honesty into responsibility, I had to admit that it was not the church that had laid waste to my life. I did that all by myself. That is not to say they had no input into that destruction, but rather that it was the decisions I made regarding those foolish teachings that actually caused the destruction.
When I made many of those decisions I was 11 or 12 years old. With a child’s mind and with the false information I was being given, perhaps those decisions made sense at the time. But I had made those childhood decisions the guiding principles of my life. Over time they did dismantle who I was intended to become. I say ‘dismantled’ rather than destroyed because everything needed to rebuild is at my disposal – either in that field of rubble or ready to be delivered by the creator at exactly the right time.
I have cleared away the foundation of honesty and am in the process of figuring out the shape my life should have. Dishonesty is indeed one of the chief results of being in the closet. And one thing more: Jesus is right there with me.
Now before anyone gets confused, I am no longer talking about the literal Jesus (especially as interpreted by christianity). Instead I am finding Jesus to be someone who so mirrored his creator that doing the things his creator did came naturally to him. I am in the process of learning to mirror our creator too. I’m not very good at it yet . . . but my life is just beginning to take shape; not by will or determination, but by the spirit of creativity into which we are all born and from which we can never be separated.
Vision 6
(April 17,1993)
Jesus, still kneeling, gives me the brick with my name on it and then looks over to the grove some little distance away. He stiffens, stands up, puts his arm around my shoulder and draws me close to himself. I look for a time into the shadows of the grove but don’t see anything.
Then something moves in the grove and I see what I assumed to be a man standing there watching us. The figure is too far away to recognize or even to identify the gender with any certainty. He simply watches us as we, in turn, watch him.
I was a little unnerved by the presence of this person, but I had no tangible reason to feel that way.
The vision ends.
The Interpretations
(at the time)
While there was something sinister in this dark figure in the grove, I had no idea at the time what it meant. As I thought about it I had the idea that perhaps this was the devil come to see the end of his destruction in my life.
(at the time – with a little help from the church)
According to the teachings of the church I was attending at the time (Vineyard) nearly all homosexuality was rooted in childhood molestation. It was obvious (to them) that god was showing me the one who molested me. I was told that if I prayed about it and concentrated on the vision perhaps god would reveal who it was (so I could forgive them, of course) or that perhaps I would be able to recognize the figure in the grove.
I concentrated and prayed and, sure enough, someone came to mind . . . and then someone else . . . or maybe it was another person. Soon I had a whole list. It was clear that I had been horribly and repeatedly molested sexually at an early age by multiple individuals. I forgave each one in turn. Nothing changed.
(January 1996)
By now I had rejected the molestation theory altogether for a variety of reasons. One reason is that I had figured out the truth concerning sexual orientation and how being molested cannot turn anyone gay. But, more importantly, a few gay people I had met through one of the church’s ministries had been molested as young boys. That didn’t make them gay. Rather it convinced them they must be gay since they had been raped. Children most often blame themselves for such attacks – at least in part.
Since they were to blame they made the decision to identify as gay. They were all in process of living life unhappily ever after. That is always the result of living against nature. When they were able to identify the men who molested them and when they were able to forgive those men, they were able to begin allowing their true heterosexual nature through. That which was false started to fall away. They began finding the female gender to be actually attractive. Some married and are happily in that state to this day. These men stopped living the lie they had believed (that their molestation was their own fault) and so were able to recoup their true natures.
Others in that same ministry were able to change their behavior, but were unable to change the gender which attracted them. They began living the lie. The few that remain faithful to that lie have relegated themselves to live unhappily ever after; at least until they see the truth about their created natures.
Since I rejected the lies about being gay, I also rejected the idea that I was molested.
The problem with that was then (in ’96) there was no interpretation for this vision. For a time I thought maybe the figure in the grove was the man of my dreams who was still waiting in the wings. But that didn’t make sense when I thought of Jesus’ reaction to his presence. I gave up trying to figure it out.
(June 2007)
To this day I do not know the identity of this figure in the woods or his purpose or intentions. I still have no solid interpretation. Perhaps it is the one who molested me.
Yes, I do now believe I was molested. Not sexually. Spiritually. For years I was taught that I was evil, sinful, hell bound, perverted, sick, worthless and more simply because I was gay. Oh, the teaching was always coupled with the idea that if I’d change my mind and become straight everything could be forgiven. Such foolishness. Those false teachings by this false religion concerning the false god they worship is most certainly spiritual molestation.
But, again, the molestation is not what caused the problems. The decisions I made concerning those lies – deciding to take them into my heart and soul – is where the problems began. Keeping those childhood decisions at the core of my life is what multiplied the problems and the unhappiness that I have both endured and caused to others.
I now know that I have the right and responsibility to change those decisions. I am in that process. Maybe I’ll be in that process for the rest of my life. That’s OK. Sometimes I struggle with exactly what decision to make instead. That’s OK. Once in a while I find that I actually made the right decision even if it was for the wrong reason. And that’s OK too.
Anyway, if that figure in the grove was indeed the one who repeatedly molested me or not, I have used that figure as a focal point to forgive the entity which foisted that evil upon me . . . the christian church. It is truly an evil thing . . . but no longer a scary thing . . . no longer a powerful thing in my life. It is pointless, indeed, counter-productive, to harbor anger or hatred toward the church. It has simply become another chapter in my life.
In Conclusion
The sad part is that the church is not made up of evil people. It is made up of people who genuinely believe the lies into which they have been raised, or lured or blackmailed. That is the nature of all religion in my opinion. These people, filled with love in their hearts, blinded to facts, ignorant of truth, relieved of consequences flail wildly at the straw men their faith creates. No, not their faith – the false beliefs they have been given. The damage they do opens wounds both within themselves and within those they touch. Their own wounds seem to be healed as they see the wounds they create in others healed by the lies they espouse. When in reality, both their own wounds and the wounds of their converts are not healed. They only fester under the surface. And when that puss erupts we see the inquisition, the witch hunts, the holy wars and all types of manifested evil.
The part of forgiveness that I have had difficulty with is to forgive myself for participating in opening those wounds in my former wife and, especially, in my children. I do see those wounds slowly healing. I pray that healing continues in their lives. I pray that someday they will be able to forgive me for the damage I have done.
