Although I was baptized Catholic, I had no education in the faith. The only time I went to Church was when my friend’s parents took me along. And that wasn’t often. However, I was introduced to a biblical God and that concept of God nourished an innocent childish faith.
On September 11th of 2001, I received a phone call from my fiancée telling me to turn on the news. I sat there stunned like the rest of the country. I was numb. I had worked in the World Trade Center and I still knew people who worked there. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing over and over again.
Suddenly I fell to my knees and Jesus appeared to me and said “John, it’s time to pick up your cross.” That’s all He said to me, but with those few words I understood immediately what I had to do. I immediately contacted the local Catholic Church here in town, and met with a wonderful priest. The very first thing I said to him was “Look, I’ve been a psychic for many years, and a priest in an occult faith. If you’re going to reject me, do it now so I don’t have to invest my time here only to be hurt later.” Trust me when I say that no human being could have ever caused this conversion.
The priest was wonderful with me. He wasn’t judgmental in anyway, and never once put a condition on my faith journey. I had some very difficult decisions to make. My situation was not unlike a protestant minister who was giving up a livelihood and more to join the Church. In truth, much of what I had to give up was ego. Although I knew there would be no question as soon as I made the appointment with my priest, it took me a couple of weeks to make the decision to stop doing psychic readings completely. During that period of time I was testing the priest to see if he was going to demand that I stop. The demand never came; he only mentioned that I would at some point need to make a choice.
Then started my RCIA classes, which, I must add, was the worst experience I could ever imagine. The RCIA team was a husband and wife who were salaried. Apparently they didn’t like my priest, and began a vicious campaign to have him removed. It had become very ugly and they brought this into the RCIA classes. Another couple that took part in teaching the RCIA classes told my fiancée and me that we didn’t even need a priest!
I bring this up because I want to express to you that my conversion was not easy. As you might guess from what I wrote above, I don’t enjoy feeling vulnerable, and vulnerable is exactly how I felt when preparing to become Catholic. The RCIA directors told us in our first class that we might decide this isn’t for us, or “they” might decide it isn’t for us. The combination of their character assassination of our beloved priest and the overall behavior of these people caused me to feel utterly at their mercy.
Now, I must admit that because of my past, I was concerned about having a vision of Jesus. After all, if someone else had told me that he had experienced such a conversion, I would doubt him. But there is no doubt about the love and faith Christ has planted in my heart, where there once was only anger. My vision has brought me to His Church and has given me the strength to become Catholic, despite the fact that my RCIA experience was my worst nightmare about Christians come true.
I’ve recently started writing about evangelizing people involved in the New Age and occult. I believe that my long, dark journey has uniquely prepared me to help others with experiences like myself discover or return to His church. Thank you for reading my story, and please pray for those who are right now where I was, because our God is still in the miracle business.
© Copyright 2003 Catholic Exchange
John Ryan currently owns and operates an online video production and hosting company, StreamingSun.Com.
I recall an evangelistic minister preaching on a street corner, giving me a miniature book of the New Testament when I was seven or eight years old. I held this book in high reverence, sleeping with it under my pillow. I trusted completely that the words in that book would protect me against demons and ghosts and the Boogie Man. But my trust in the Bible as my shield against evil faltered when I realized that the greatest threat to me was not from the Boogie Man but from my own mother.
I never knew my biological father, and my stepfather had left us without a word when I was about eight years old. At that time my mother was in the hospital for an attempted suicide. She suffered from mental illness as well as severe physical illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
My mother was a very loving and kind person when she was well, but her illness sent her into bouts of rage, hallucinations and schizophrenia. Many times she would come into my bedroom, and stand over me and tell me that when I fell asleep she was going to kill me. Sometimes she said this with a knife in her hand. I realized that the book in which I had placed so much faith was not going to be able to protect me from my mother. I replaced that book with weapons under my pillow. My childish fear of the Boogie Man was replaced with fear that my own mother was going to cause me harm and my trust in the power of the Bible was gone. I felt a strong need for some power of my own that could protect me from the chaos and craziness of my mother.
What fell into my young hands and impressionable mind was a book on the subject of E.S.P. Here was an alternative path that promised to give me a sense of control in my life. I was also inspired by one of my favorite comic books, called Doctor Strange, a Marvel Comics super hero who used psychic powers.
Things might have been so different if I could have found relief at school from the fear and chaos of my home life. But I had been diagnosed with Dyslexia at a time when our education system placed learning-disabled children in classrooms with severally handicapped children. We suffered considerable abuse from both teachers and the mainstream students.
Living at home with a mother who was continually trying to commit suicide and threatening my life filled me with rage. Leaving there every morning only to go to a place that also put in me in fear and shamed me every single day was a torture that made me want nothing but escape at any cost. By the time I was 11 years old I was already a full blown alcoholic and drug addict, stealing money to drink and buy drugs. Only on the street did I feel in control. I knew I was on my own.
I began drinking in bars at the age of 14, when I was left under the supervision of older teenagers. I thought they were treating me like a man; I felt grown up. It was an escape from the chaos in my life. I accepted alcohol and drugs as my savior. The streets were my church, and the drug dealers and bartenders were my priests.
I had also discovered girls, but I was without any understanding whatsoever about what a relationship with another human being should be like. The only examples I had were from the older gang I hung out with: street justice, physical abuse.
At 17 years old, I alternated between living in the streets and attempts to live at home with my mother, regardless of the chaos. Although my drinking and drug use were an obstacle to any kind of studying, I continued to pursue my psychic studies, but any illusion of control was now gone. I concluded that my life was a complete disaster. The pain of addiction was so great that I attempted suicide. By the time I was 21 I had been in dozens of detox and rehab centers with only a very limited amount of successful sobriety.
Finally, by the time I was 24, I had managed to obtain two years of sobriety by moving out of New York City and going through a half-way house in upstate New York. I was still a very angry person, but I was looking for spirituality. The 12-step program I was in strongly suggested a spiritual life and turned many back to the faith of their childhood. Although I attended recovery meetings and hung tight to sober friends, I was unwilling to revisit the faith that had left me defenseless as a child.
During those two years of sobriety I met a young woman, fell in love and got married. Unfortunately, my drinking and drug abuse re-started a few months before our wedding and I was right back to being my old self. I shudder now to think of the terrible abuse I put her through until she took our one-year-old son and left me.
My life was one of utter debauchery. I was back on the streets and my violence had become worse then ever. I hated the world and managed to hurt myself every chance I got. My life had become so sick and full of self-inflicted pain that I destroyed everything that was good in my life. I was completely out of control.
In the midst of this insanity I began another extremely abusive relationship. When it came to a head, I stabbed this woman’s ex-husband in a fit of rage. I was very fortunate that he wasn’t badly hurt; I did a little jail time and probation.
Even when I was released from jail and under the threat of a very long prison term if I violated my probation, I still couldn’t get sober. I recall being mandated into a rehab by probation, and after only a week I walked out and went on a three-day drinking and drug binge.
I was homeless once again and I had hit rock bottom. I ended up in an in-patient alcoholic homeless shelter, and for the first time I truly wanted to get sober. After several months of treatment and a few good breaks, I found an apartment and began my recovery process. The burning question for me had become how to work the spiritual side of the program this time. It was clear that if I didn’t find a spiritual way of living my life, I would end up drunk and I was willing to do anything to avoid that. I simply didn’t know where to turn. I certainly heard people talking about Jesus in the 12-step rooms, but I wasn’t about to trust in Him again. Still I knew I needed God to stay sober, so I decided to go knocking on the three church doors within a two-block radius of where I lived. Two of these churches were Catholic and the third was Lutheran. I said to myself that the first church that opens the door to me is the church I’m going to join.
The Franciscan Church was the one that first opened its door to me, and I begin meeting with a kind old priest about once a week. Ultimately I couldn’t bring myself to let go of my control, so I stopped the meetings. I simply couldn’t take the risk of ever feeling vulnerable in that way again.
By that time, I was suffering from great depression for the things that I had done in my life and the loss of my family. I had started outpatient treatment and began functioning better. However, it seemed my anger was growing stronger and stronger. I wanted to find a spiritual path without all that “Jesus stuff.”
Almost immediately after my private meetings with the Franciscan priest ended, I stumbled upon a little store just a few buildings from my apartment. The windows were covered with foil strips blocking the view from the outside and I’ll never forget my first impression when I entered the store. I looked around and saw pentacles and pentagrams on the walls and all sorts of things I had no idea about. At first I felt like running out of the store in fear, but in a few days my curiosity drew me back. I knew nothing about paganism or many of the other subjects they advertised, but I was seeking some form of spirituality and I had crossed Christianity off the list of possibilities. I thought to myself, “What the heck. I’ll take some Tarot classes and see what this place is all about.” After all, the Tarot wasn’t anything new to me; I’d been playing with them for years anyway.
As I started taking classes, I was amazed. Here was a spiritual system that made me feel powerful instead of vulnerable. I studied and found that I was very talented; within six months I was asked to do some readings out of the store. I was very grateful for the opportunity because I truly wanted to help others. I began to feel good about myself, and as time went on I learned numerology, palmistry, auras, psychometry, clairvoyance and mediumship in addition to Tarot.
I delved even deeper into ritual and ceremonial magic, Kabbala, paganism and other occult studies. These seemed to be the ideal spiritual systems for me, because everything was about me. With the exception of paganism's many gods and goddesses, which never really was my thing, almost all of these teachings claim belief in “God” or the One Supreme Being. As time went on I became a priest in a faith called the Sangreal Sodality. I began doing professional psychic readings and rituals. I had found my spiritual path. I was in control. I loved helping people in need, and for the first time in my life I felt that I had found my calling.
After several years of working out of storefronts for new age/occult stores I decided to work online. The lure of the Internet intrigued me and gave me the chance to run my own business instead of working out of other people’s stores. This began approximately 10 years of online work. I found no limit to people seeking psychic readings and classes in psychic development. I built up a very good following and made some wonderful friends.
I was beginning to count my sobriety in years, but I was still haunted by an anger I couldn’t seem to overcome. I had done everything suggested by my 12-step program: I made a fearless and searching moral inventory, I made amends wherever possible, etc. But I still felt haunted. I would go weeks with very little sleep, I would find myself disassociating to a point that I could see myself walking down the street in the third person. This frightened me enough to seek help. I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. My anger, my sleeplessness and my depression all stemmed from this, the effect of repeated, severe trauma in my childhood and the years spent as a drunk and drug addict.
Seven out of the 10 years of working online had passed when I met a wonderful woman who lived out West. I was living on the east coast, and after visiting with her for a few weeks we decided that our feelings for each other were indeed real, and the possibility for a healthy relationship was within reach. I relocated out West and shortly thereafter we became engaged.
There was finally real love in my life, so why this nagging feeling that something was wrong? Here I was, Psychic John Ryan. Other people were depending on me, trusting me to reveal things to them, but something was wrong with me and I couldn’t even get a handle on it.
I was sure of only one thing: Christianity was not what I needed. My impression of a Christian was a person who condemned others. I had come to believe that Christianity itself was evil and that all Christians were being fooled by the devil. Christians were liars and hypocrites who used the Bible to justify their own condemnation and hatred of anyone who had a mind of their own — like me.
