From New Age to Christianity: One Seeker's Journey

I walked through every spiritual door I could find: Eastern meditation, channeling, psychedelics, Hindu devotion, and Buddhist practice. Each path delivered something real. The question was never whether the experiences were genuine. The question was: where were they leading?

I write as a witness, not a prosecutor. I walked many paths and would never want someone to judge me at any point in the process I was being led through. This is simply testimony of where those paths led me, and what finally brought rest.

The Paths I Walked

I do not say this as someone who dabbled. From early childhood I sensed something most people seemed to ignore. I practiced all three Buddhist vehicles: Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana. I spent years trying to leave my body, collecting rare first editions on out-of-body experiences, adjusting my diet for spiritual sensitivity.

Then I went deeper. I married at an ancient Hindu temple. Brass idols sat in my home shrine. I completed thousands of mantra repetitions in single sessions. I stood in the inner sanctum of one of the world's most visited temples and felt the presence that devotees worship day and night. Something was there. Something responded.

I explored psychedelics: LSD, psilocybin, ayahuasca. They promised expanded consciousness. They shook me like a snow globe and rearranged my inner furniture. Some people land well on the other end. For me, they opened questions that only Scripture eventually answered.

What Responded

These paths shared a common thread: genuine spiritual encounter. Meditation produced altered states. Devotion produced palpable presence. Psychedelics shattered ordinary perception. Something responded. Powers I could not name made themselves known. Phenomena I could not explain away occurred.

My mother sensed what I could not. The house felt oppressive to her when she visited. One day, her Bible fell open to Deuteronomy 7:26, the passage warning about bringing cursed things into your house. The verse was marked in red. She never marks her Bible in red.

During her visits, when I was unaware, she began opening the cabinet holding the idols to pray against them. Years later, she told me what she experienced: the faces seemed to shift, the eyes seemed to blink. Whether this was spiritual reality or a mother's heightened perception in fervent prayer, I cannot say. What I know is that her intercession mattered.

The Breaking Point

The more I practiced, the worse my life became. I added more mantra repetitions, more hours of puja, and more devotion. Life did not get better. It got worse. The pattern was clear: intense experiences occurred, but returns diminished on every other measure. Effort increased while life quality declined.

We could not keep serving entities that demanded endless devotion while giving us oppression in return. Something had to give.

My wife and I drove to a hiking path around several lakes. We found a bridge over a canal. I threw those heavy brass idols into the water, one by one. The relief was immediate and physical for both of us, as if something had released its grip. We finally understood who we had entered into relationship with.

I had called this warning primitive. Scripture had been right all along.

What Scripture Offered

When I finally opened Scripture and read it myself (instead of reading about it), I found what none of my seeking had revealed: a thread of truth running from Eden to eternity, preserved through persecution, and accessible to anyone willing to look.

I expected a tribal deity, a god of one culture claiming universal authority. I found the opposite. The God of the Bible was larger than anything I had encountered. The spiritual phenomena I had experienced fit inside His framework. Scripture names the powers, explains their origin, and warns where they lead.

What drew me was not a list of contradictions in other paths but an offer:

• One sacrifice, sufficient for all sin (Hebrews 10:12), not endless karma to exhaust
• One return, where evil is destroyed forever, not merely paused until the next cycle
• One body, not a prison to escape but a temple to be resurrected, transformed, and glorified (1 Corinthians 15:44)
• Linear time with an actual beginning and an actual end, not another turn of the wheel

The Sabbath anchors this framework. It memorializes a specific creation by a distinct Creator, a finished work requiring no karma to exhaust, and a linear time with a destination. The seventh day points backward to Eden and forward to eternity. Every other path I walked was circular. This one had a direction: toward rest.

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