Discomfort in places of worship

Question for, well i suppose anyone that this may be applicable for - do you find that if you ender a building of active or past worship, ie a bulding that was a chuch bur retired for another purpose, do you find yourself firstl, uncomfortable with it, secondly, can you sence in the case of buildings formerly of worship, that it was such a building?

what imean is, yesterday i went to find the local Salvation Army thrift store in town - they had moved, so i had to find the place again - and once i did, i got this feeling of, geez isnt this a church? i went into the building and that feeling amplified, quite.. unpleasant for me as well. (its very rare i enter any such building). later, after talkin to my landlord (id originally went looking for the place because my landlord had some furniture he wanted to drop off there) and he confirmed it - it had been a catholic church before they built a new one, then let "sally ann" use the building.


Anyone else go thru something similar? me personaly, i tend to attribute this feeling as originating from my kin sides, would others agree?

I don't neccicarilly feel a discomfort, but many places have a rather high amount of energy to them, for various reasons, that I can pick up on in various different ways.
I don't really think it's a kin specific thing, instead I see it as a thing that anyone who senses energy, is sensetive to energy, or has learned to be open to the input of the surroundings in ways that go beyond scent and sight, are able to pick up on.

I get annoyed at the idea of churches. I take pleasure in weaving curses and speaking & thinking blasphemy from within their blessed walls. But no actual discomfort other than "I don't want to be in this place" (which, I believe, is simply because I don't want to be in that place).

No, not remotely.

I find it sickening that certain major religions spend vast millions of pounds on building and upkeep of highly expensive places of "worship" when there are so many poor people in the world starving; but that's a distaste at supposedly compassionate organisations spending their cash on a "look how big my building is" dick-waving-contest rather than actually doing good; it's nothing to do with religion or worship.

When I was 15ish, and going through my "I wonder if God is real and Christianity is the true path" phase (blame the fact that I grew up in small-town Texas), I was told by some bible-thumping classmates to go "ask a priest" if I wanted the answers to life so bad, since my questions were far beyond their own capability.

So one day during lunch I entered the local Catholic church to see if anyone was there. Upon entering, the hairs on my arms and neck literally stood up. I also felt like the air itself were a solid object- something oppressing me into the confines of my body. (On this note, I generally view my own thoughts as pictures, and they exist outside of my body, almost like projections that I can look up at. The sensation made me feel like those thoughts were being shoved back inside of me "where they belong")
Also, and I've been told this was completely psychological, or that there must have been something leeched into the water. My friend Lauren who was with me told me to touch the holy water. It felt a bit "off" on my fingertips, but I couldn't quite place it so I spread some on my arm. It burned, in the same way a weak acid (lemon juice or vinegar) would burn a cut. I saw a red mark forming on my arm where the water was so I wiped it off on my jeans. I left the church, and the redness faded before I got back to school, but that same oppressiveness feeling remained on my arm in that spot for most of the day.

Come to think of it, this is actually what originally led me to think I was otherkin - something in my soul was not welcomed by God, something about me made me inherently what the Church considered its enemy. A "demon".

I was raised in churches, my grandfather is a minister and so is my dad so I literally grew up in the halls on one church or another. While I do share Archers sentiment about missuses of some church funds, I HATE "Mega churches".
I Feel a sence of home and peace in some places. Only some places though. Some churches make me feel uncomfortable and want to leave. Some times its just certain people. But in a worshipful setting with good intent makes me feel at home.
The catholic church I visited once made me feel uncomfortable, I've never been to any other catholic services so I cant say what exactly it was.

In my entire lifetime, I think I can count the amount of times I have been in a church on one hand. Well, by choice anyway. When I was a teenager I moved in with a friend because my parents abandoned me and they were complete bible-humpers (no offense to anyone, these people were a rare breed); they forced me to go to church 3 times a week. I was so numbed because of my situation it could have been a church of god or a Church's fried chicken and I wouldn't have known the differance.

As an adult, I've been to my fair share of weddings and a few abysmal baptismals and each time I can't say I've been put off. The place was filled with cheerful energy due to the event...and perhaps boredom, but actual discomfort? Not really. I feel more uncomfortable in a gas station bathroom.

-Tai

Yeah, I tend to get spinal shivers just thinking about a church. I used to bring books in, and read them when my mother dragged me in there (I often used literature to shield myself) and when she would snap my attention back to it I would feel slightly like I was choking (picture a turtleneck that's too tight).

Also, I always had a gut feeling of "this is WRONG! WRONG WRONG WRONG!!" mentality. Like, the information they were giving on "God" was incorrect. I can't stand lies/misinformation, so when I was 12 I just started bringing bodice rippers the rare times my mother would drag me.

I'd have to agree with Freetha to an extent. I can tell if somewhere used to be a church, a school, or a hospital. The energies in those kinds of places are very distinct and tend to linger.

Also, like Spanky, I've had the whole "holy water burning" thing. I think something was in the water, not necessarily because it's holy. The stuff looked and smelled like old bathwater. I got some in my eyes and started tearing up/crying/rubbing my eyes. I tried not to make a big deal about it, but the stuff burned really bad. Needless to say, the congregation at that place was going "wtf." And this was before my Awakening too.

I've never been a big fan of churches. Mainly, the main room of the place. The large sermon areas have always made me feel small, compressed, restrained, and alone. Like I was the only one there, and everything else was gone, but if I screwed up just a tiny bit something would kick my butt. Not a nice feeling.

It's been like that, even the first time I entered a sermon area, when I was 3 or 4. I started crying because it felt screwed up.

The sermon areas of churches is designed, from an archetypical and archetectural perspective, to create an emotional response. Gothic era churches were dark and cold and designed to insite fear in the congregation. Fear of god, fear that they'll be punished by damnation. Later attempts were to try and make the churches more "friendly". A warm shelter away from the harsh realities and the cold chill of death. And yet, that still has a twang of influence from the old goetic churches, so you get a slight conflict of influences. (Yay for art-history...)
All in all, each individual church, the way it's build, the way it's decorated, the words that fill the halls, are designed to create an emotional response, first and foremost.
The air-flow throuch churches tends to create a stale sort of sensation, in my experience, makes the whole of the building press down on you as a heavy construction.
No one talks in church so you don't feel a "connection" with the other people around you, so that creates a sort of isolation.

Now where I'm going with this is that this can explain and/or enhance anyone's experience with a church, as well as go to show why the energy of the place could be strange, and/or a little wonkey. The construction isn't "flow" friendly, there's thousands of millions of hours of human emotional responces to the place to take into account, and so on, and so forth.