Sweeping Zen Closes

Dear Sweeping Zen Readers,

Today’s post has been a long time in the making. Many of you are aware that I have become a Christian convert, a process which began in April of 2017. Knowing what to do with my website and the documentary Zen in America has been a cause for concern for me. The easiest solution regarding the website is to simply close it down, as I do not feel God would want me promoting any religion or system of practices that do not lead others to Him. Despite offers to purchase the site or to manage its care, I cannot in good conscience make either of those two choices. I feel that much of what happened to me in 2017 was directly related to my being a so-called evangelist for Buddhism, in addition to many doors I’d opened to the demonic over the years (lust, drugs, Tarot readings, my fortune having being told, having a woman called in to my life by a clairvoyant, and much more).

Regarding Zen in America I am still pondering what to do with the footage. I will likely end up releasing the interviews for free on YouTube with links directing folks to my testimony and some words about what I believe today about the tradition.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the demonic was allowed to come at me with such a ferocity that April while I just so happened to have such a voice in a religion that leads people away from the Way, the Truth and the Life, through whom which no man or woman has access to the Father. I know that most will not hear my words of caution and that I was always viewed with suspicion anyway, an outsider.

My testimony is one of spirits operating through others in my life who were familiar with me and natural laws being violated. I would walk in to a room of strangers and someone would come sit next to me and remind me of some sin I once committed. People who could not have inhabited particular spaces in time would sometimes be standing right before me, halfway across the world. I saw a man’s eyes turn to slits and when I told him what I saw he toyed with me, saying human beings are like pets to them. This was a social worker in a psychiatric hospital, who a few minutes later told me I was lucky I wasn’t sent to Guantanamo. I smelled like a corpse for several days. I remember praying and a woman getting in my face to say, “Our prayers are stronger than yours.” I called her bluff and continued praying, and she uncomfortably turned and walked away.

There is far more to my story of coming to Christ but that’s an appropriate synopsis for the purposes of today’s explanation. Seeing is believing. Once I realized there is a very real and malevolent enemy working against mankind and once Jesus Christ demonstrated his power and authority over these forces in my life there was no turning back. Despite the mass exodus of friends that occurred as I gave my life to Christ and an understandable inability to understand it from those who I knew in Buddhism I am happier and more alive than I ever was sitting on cushions burning incense, trying to find that buddha within. If you’ve been involved in Buddhism for years and are still stuck battling the same patterns you sit to overcome, if you’re still as depressed as ever, you might want to consider whether what you’re doing to address it is helping or hurting the cause.

I needed supernatural intervention for some of the things that ailed me, not more superhuman effort.

Isaiah 55:1-2: “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.”