Baby’s First Exorcism

*imagine a little less floating, and a little more crying in the fetal position*

I started writing a blog called “One Year After My Kundalini Awakening”, but as the paragraphs started rolling in I realized that what happened in 2021 wasn’t my first Kundalini Awakening. It was my second. My first Kundalini Awakening happened completely accidentally when I was at a sleep away church camp. It was one of the most beautiful moments that I have ever experienced in my life. Lets take a walk down memory lane to see how we end up at “Baby's First Exorcism”

Church Camp

The lore, the sexual tension, the weird “rock on for Jesus” youth pastor with slicked up hair with the signature highlighted tips of the early 2000’s with crispy white Air Jordans because “God wants us to treat our body as a temple”. Middle schoolers jacked up on the sugar and caffiene of the weekly free cappuccino that was handed out willy nilly in the mega church basement.

However, on this occasion all us middle and high schooler were sleeping in the basement. For God. Sleeping in the basement for God. We were apart of a “missions trip” for our hometown. My decrepit, beautiful broken hometown in the Midwest recruited other churches from out of state to help paint fences in the glorious birthplace of Richard Pryor: Peoria, Illinois.

I was sixteen at the time. Deep in love with my anarchist, schizophrenic boyfriend who currently was hopping trains to go to a political actions with “Earth First”. He would call me on a flip phone, and say that the line was tapped. It probably was, knowing what I now know about the government and any activism.

I had recently lost my virginity, and I was deeply in love with this poetic and dangerous nineteen year old. So many emotions, so little outlets with deeply religious parents where denial was a way of practicality, and you didn’t ask questions you didn’t want to hear the answers to.

Servitude & Slumber

*I had no fewer than 3 Jesus’ in my house growing up*

We lived a minimal life for a week. About 100 of us kids in the church basement. We slept in sleeping bags on the floor in the basement, with girls in one space and boys in another. I’m sure we slept well with all of the hours of manual labor we would do subsiting off of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Go- Gurt.

One of our tasks was to walk around the surrounding neighborhoods in groups of two to hand out flyers to our church events, We stumbled upon a porch with a toddler running around, and a gun sitting on the ledge of the porch. Don’t worry, Jesus protects you.

I can only assume I was sleep deprived and malnourished, we lived like social monks. Every evening we would have a service in the evening. Sometimes they would play these awful games where you would eat butter, to “community build”. Maybe to make up for a caloric deficit. It feels like a fever dream scene in a Harmony Korine movie.

This night didn’t seem like any different than any other. We did our Hillsong praise and worship, listened to the sermon, and then broke into small groups of 5-6 people talking about different prompts they had given us.

Paralyzed With Laughter

One question had lit me on fire, and it is still a question that inspires me to live the life I do. It was “How can we take church out of church”. I lit up. I began to radiate and felt this electric energy as I explained to the group that “we belong under the trees praying to g-d, we should sing our praises to the stars, with a bonfire keeping us warm. We should dance as our worship with the fresh air as our nourishment”. My excitement radiated. I asked the group if they also felt the electricity. They did. I exclaimed “This is g-d! We are feeling g-d!”

Someone then handed me a book. I flipped through the pages and started reading. It was about a group of missionaries who were stuck one ground laughing. Paralyzed with laughter, unable to move as they were overtaken by the Holy Spirit.

There is a commotion a few groups away. There is a piercing laughter, and I see the “teachers pet” of youth group laying on the ground, with a face red like a cheery, unable to move, paralyzed with laughter.

The pastors all gather round and look like confused. I shout “I know what happening! It’s in this book I just read!” I start to read the passage I had just been reading like a crazed maniac over the body of the paralyzed laughing boy.

My body was electric, and in hindsight I realize that this was Kundalini Awakening. A divine power had overtaken me, given me divine knowledge and power, and radiated throughout my body and spread throughout the group of un expecting teenagers.

The pastors looked at my bewildered. They cleared everyone from the room, and they called my dad to tell him that his daughter was possessed by a demon.

Luckily, my father is a spirit filled man. He stood up for me. When I talked to him on the phone he said “It’s okay Anna. Don’t be upset. How can you judge someone who has never felt g-d before?”

Nursery Exorcism

The next morning, while everyone went to their service project, the pastor asked me to stay behind. Then they asked me to go to the nursery in the basement. When I arrived, there was about 7-8 adult men standing with their arms crossed. They asked me to take a seat in a small nursery chair as they circled around me.

“Anna, what you felt last night was not of g-d.”

“What, what the other guy felt was from g-d!”

“Yes, he reads his Bible and is a disciple of Christ”

“You felt it! How could you not! The entire room felt it! It was g-d!”

They asked me to quiet down, and explained that if it wasn’t from g-d I must have gotten my powers from a demon. They then took turns praying the demon out of me. Casting out the demon from my body. Lifting their voiced to cast out the demon as I howled lit the fetal position on the floor weeping violent tears and shaking in fear and sadness.

This was the most heartbroken I had ever felt up until that point. Why were they treating me like this? How come they didn’t know that g-d could speak through me?

Dream Walking

I put that experience in my back pocket for years. What was the point of bringing it up? I wasn’t confident enough in myself, my spirituality, or my psychic abilities to recite this as an origin story. After this happened, I felt fear and apprehension. Sure, I had the support of my dad, but people I was to “respect” just did something so cruel and poisonous to a young girl developing her spirituality.

It took me years to realize that women weren’t meant to thrive in the church. That they were always to be the support of the man. That was probably the real reason I received the exorcism.

I was reading The Artist Way in 2021. If you haven’t read it, it is one of the most powerful books I have ever read in my life. If you follow the 12 week program it will absolutely change your life. One of the prompts struck the chord of this exorcism experience. I wrote about it in my journal, and it brought up a lot.

That night, I dreamt I was back in the church basement. There was a banquet in the other room, and I was standing in the lobby in front of the nursery. I didn’t want to go in the other room, because my ex- sister- in- law was there, and I didn’t want to run into her.

Later that day, I talked to my friend who was living in Spain and we talked pretty infrequently. We were childhood friends so we were familiar with the church and the youth group. She began to tell me about a dream she had the night before where she was in the church basement at a banquet. I felt my stomach drop. We had the same dream. She described the banquet the same way I saw it in my dream. She said she went into the stairwell in the back of the church, because the devil was trying to get her to leave.

That was the first time (that I know of) that I have dream walked. I know that big energetic experiences can leave footprints that can be revisited or present themselves different throughout your life.

I consider this my spiritual origin story. The moment where I realized I was incredibly powerful and struck fear into people. Looking at it through the eye of an adult. I am proud that I allowed myself to have that experience and continue to defend my position of love through all of the hate.