A friend of mine has been acting very strangely, any ideas?

A bit of background here, I have a very close friend who is/was an artist of great talent, one of the best I know. He is very into rap music and has spent the last two years building an amazing port folio of his work. So anyway I get a call recently and he says that he has had a life changing epiphany and that everything has changed for him in a matter of days. He claims he had a realization that everything he was doing in his life was in support of 'the devil'. He claims that the entire music industry is 'controlled by the Illuminati' and that it is the evil work of the devil, and so is all art apparently.

He has never been a religious person and before anyone asks he doesn't really take drugs, which was my first thought. He is actually convinced that in order to make it into 'heaven' he has got to live by the laws of Islam, in a kind of purist way. What I find really strange about it is that he connects it all to 2012, he thinks that he has got until then to 'make it into heaven'. So now he has changed his name, wants to move to Iran to study Islam, has given up his passion of the last 20 years, his career and claims that he can't make any new friends who are not Muslim, he has also smashed every CD he owns and destroyed anything that he has that is connected to artistic expression. This is very bizarre to me.

I can understand if people become interested in religion suddenly, sure. But this just seems extreme, and to think that it all has to do with 2012, getting into heaven and the Illuminati control of the music industry.....man????

Does anyone know someone who something similar has happened to? I just can't get my head around his thought process. What do you guys think about it? I've been stumped.

reply to post by sir_slide
Mid-life crisis would be my best best. Does he have any physical ailments (might have missed that in the op)?

reply to post by Balkan


nah not at all, and he's actually relatively young (28)

Boy is he in for a huge surprise come January 2013.

second.

reply to post by sir_slide


I guess the art burning is wahhabism as for his behaviour in general with conversion and the 2012 stuff, I’d say he's been spending too much time on conspiracy web sites or he's made friends with a Muslim nut-job.

reply to post by Balkan


You are right 30 is the new midlife crisis age.

I really don't understand this "art" thing and either way rap isn't really art. Don't get me wrong I like rap, but it's no Mozart.

I did notice islam has this impact on people. The new friends thing is sort of normal, in any religion the people born that way are normal, the ones that converted are usually extremists.

My advice: Either do all you can to get him in the normal range or forget about him ...

I've actually lost a couple of good friends to religion. This was at different periods in my life, and neither knew each other, but at one point they were 'saved', and suddenly the free-thinker was Satan and they spent a lot of time trying to convert me and telling me I was evil. Not surprisingly, both of them were indoctrinated as children, grew up in it, went thru a wild point, and then returned when they started to mature. Sadly, neither of them could just accept me as not being Christian, so I never heard from neither again after they gave up trying to convert.

reply to post by windowlicker80


You see that's what I find really weird, he's not really into conspiracies, whenever I would bring up anything remotely conspiracy related he would kinda cringe, how could he make such a leap? and I don't see how it ties into religion....

I'm a homeschooled teen and I'm having a midlife crisis, I don't know what I'm going to do with my life. The ideas were Embalming/writing or serial murderer. I have options, but I have no idea what I'm going to do with myself.

Originally posted by RanDeLv2
reply to post by Balkan

 

You are right 30 is the new midlife crisis age.

Actually I never wrote that, but oddly, I was considering throwing it out there as a rebuttal and then I saw your post.

reply to post by sir_slide


...he's an adult and whatever path he goes down is his choice... when its someone you care about, its hard not to worry about mental illness if their changes are abrupt and unexpected - but - sometimes we just have to wish them well and go on with our own lives...

reply to post by Balkan


Yeah thats really sad, all religion does is divide people. I'm totally down with some of the work that is done in the name of religion, good charities, feeding the homeless etc etc but the kind of mentality that those friends of yours had is just sad, I hope I can get through to my friend in time. I have no issues with islam, but he seems to be taking it all VERY seriously, I mean he wants to move to Iran and study the Koran.....

reply to post by Wyn Hawks


Yeah totally, I am completely supportive either way and have told him this, I just feel that it's all very irrational and maybe shouldnt be rushed into you know, I'd also like to understand it a bit better....

hey sir_slide,

did your friend convert lately to Islam? or is he a muslim from birth?

in both cases i woudn't worry much about your friend, Islam is a very retarded religion (i respect good muslims and they are the majority but not Islam) he will soon realize that Islam isn't the true religion he thinks, Islam is the religion that makes you feel guilty every second of your life if you are a believer, your friend is a good person, he wants to be a better person, tell him that many muslim scholars don't view music as related to the devil or should be forbidden (Haram), advise him to spend some time researching islamic text before making his mind, if he did then i guarantee you he will leave Islam and never look back.

Ah by the way tell him that once he becomes a muslim he must never abandon islam, he will be considered an apostate and muslims according to Islam have the right to kill him... nice religion isn't it?

I will only debate them if they try to convert me. Otherwise, as said.. just let them do their thing. As I like to say.. you wanna be Batman, be Batman. Whatever works for you.

Originally posted by RanDeLv2
reply to post by Balkan

 

You are right 30 is the new midlife crisis age.

I really don't understand this "art" thing and either way rap isn't really art. Don't get me wrong I like rap, but it's no Mozart.

I did notice islam has this impact on people. The new friends thing is sort of normal, in any religion the people born that way are normal, the ones that converted are usually extremists.

My advice: Either do all you can to get him in the normal range or forget about him ...

He's actually an artist as in a painter, i mentioned the rap thing because I thought maybe he'd just over done it with the rap and flipped out.

Cheers for the advice man

reply to post by sir_slide


My opinion....his life, his decisions, his mistakes to own up to if he makes them. Unless all this negatively impacts you, why not encourage him to discover himself. I consider myself an artist, and around 26-27 I basically dropped the pencil and pad and changed course in life. Big mistake I made, maybe, maybe not. Still have a lot of years and experiences to say whether or not its a failure or success. Cheers!

It sounds like someone with control issues.
When your life feels really out of control, it is easy to turn to a control system to find some security, and there is no better control system than really strict religious practice.

"I can't control the world, but I can control myself"

Powerlessness breeds it. That's why it's becoming more and more rampant.

reply to post by sir_slide


sir_slide i can relate to your story from what happened with my brother years ago. he too is a very talented musician type. but his downhill slide was easily traceable to his marriage going to pieces and it took a toll on him. he was pretty much a broken spirit in need of a band-aid when he somehow became affiliated with a certain religious group.

accordingly his beliefs and behaviors changed sharply. he choose to go through life for many years with blinders on. as in many religious groups, they like to completely immerse their new brethren in their world as totally as possible, making certain very little free time is spent on other pursuits.

over the years my brother associated deeply with this religion three times, each time for several years. the last time served as his wake-up call. he married a woman of that faith, whose father was a long-time respected elder in their local Kingdom Hall. one day she 'found' my brothers notebooks, journals which he has kept for years that he uses to self-analyze his behavior patterns. yes, i know, writing things down on paper is viewed as foolish. still, this was his private journals, tucked away, for his eyes only.

his wife took it upon herself to take my brothers personal writings to the elders of their Kingdom Hall. they made copies of every page, and each of the leaders of that 'church' read my brothers private writings at length. then they dressed him down and took away the privileges he had earned in their place of worship.

this was a great wake-up call for my brother. he was crushed and deeply hurt by what these people did. he soon wound up divorced and he disassociated himself from the Kingdom Hall, that religion and the people associated with it. he could have easily won a lawsuit against them for their actions but he isn't that type of person. in the end, it was for the best. he saw these people for who and what they really are. these days he is happy by himself, single, and back with his music.

reply to post by sir_slide


The fact that changing in thinking will more more happen as time goes by. You may believe me or not but I can tell you we live in an era of great changes in a way the world will become cleaned of all the evil we currently have here. Some says it is related to ascension, others says it is our consciousness of our lost memories which will come back, who got the truth? Only god knows, but the only true fact which you can verify by yourself is the life is speeding more and more. As time goes by this year in 2011 did you notice how many events have happened worldwide in such a short amount of time?

Also, I have to say that many people have the perception about it all as being something negative, a problem, destruction, etc. Fear is not the way you should perceive it instead see this as an evolution of the mind. Again as I said as time will go by we will see more and more radical changes here on earth and fo the very best in my honest opinion.


Thruthseek3r