Psychic "crackups" and transformations. Psychoses, or authentic spiritual experiences?

Hi there,

For this thread's topic I was going to search the net for strange and unique spiritual experiences and transformations and post some nice, trippy pics to highlight it and make it as entertaining as possible. Then it occurred to me that my own personal experiences in this area, and I'm sure that of my fellow ATSer, ought to be sufficient in and of itself to enthrall and entertain, and provoke.

I had my first major spiritual experience in late 1996 after reading a book called "The Road Less Travelled, A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth" by M. Scott Peck, MD. As great as it all was, in hindsight, it ended up leading to an eventual self-admitted hospitalization.

What goes up, must come down. Been there done that got the t-shirt.

In the process of "grokking" this book, towards the end, in particular the last chapter on grace, I broke down and cried my eyes out in my little condo in downtown Toronto. We all have things to cry over when we get real, or when the winds blow and the rains beat on our house or we experience a "dark night of the soul" or go straight through the tears into a blissful awareness of the presence of grace.

Anyway, so I had this "epiphany", and then over the Christmas holidays, I was slotted to go skiing with some friends of mine, and so began some sort of epic odyssey with myself as a newly created and utterly forgiven sacred creature at the very heart of things, around which fate and circumstance appeared to be conspiring to..I don't know, accomplish something extraordinary? be a light to the world? A hero?

I was so lit up at the time that my friend Dan looked in my eyes and said "I want some of what you're on!". I could seemingly predict and "control" or flow with the weather.

I bestowed grace upon others everywhere I went with the twinkle of an eye, was able to bring happiness to a fighting, squabbling family with a smile and strangers were approaching me and wanting to introduce me to their friends as we skied down Blue Mountain.

Part of the problem was, not just that I didn't know what to do with my newfound self-actualized self, but that in the process of exploring it I made a number of false assumptions based on the old egoic structure of my mind and in pursuit of grandeur and the thought of directing the course of grace - I popped. I was like a spiritual nuclear detonation in the middle of a lonely and lost world. There was nothing else to do?!

Once so much as touched by grace, there's no where for the self to go, and since you can't grasp hold of it, the moment you do, or think you do, down you go, and oh what a fall it is!

When I got to my parents home from skiing, I remember falling at the feet of my mother weeping tears of joy, and fear, and saying "I have seen the grace of God!".

It was trippy, but in my ego-self, all kinds of strange things began to occur of an almost demonic nature (which I can relay), and that was bad.

So we decided that it would be best if I go see the family doctor, who years later when I asked him what happened back there, he told me straight faced and honestly that in his view, because I'm a double minister's son having the church on both sides of me that I came under attack by dark spiritual forces. That was the doctor's opinion in evaluating me. With my mother at my side, he asked me things like "What does it mean the saying 'a rolling stone gather's no moss'?" I handled the metaphorical questions ingeniously, but could not count back from 100 for the life of me.

Strange times those were.

Around Christmas time, the same sort of thing has happened to me probably five more times since 1997.

Indeed it's not easy being a sensitive and complex human being.

If not for a good mind, wonderful parents and the grace of God, I would now be insane. But instead I treasure every moment of it and can remember it all perfectly well looking back and to be honest, I wouldn't trade any of it in for the life of me.

My mother said that, as a mental health professional (which she was), that she did not believe that I was merely suffering from psychosis or bipolar disorder, but he in her view what she called "an authentic spiritual experience", and before she died of cancer she said to me that it had strengthened her faith and that she was very proud of me and knew something of what Mary must have felt like, which only played into my Christ complex back then, I'm sure - don't take myself too seriously any more though.

The strange part about it, is that at some level, although it may have branched off into the land of psychosis at times, metaphorically and allegorically, it's all true, and I really am a sacred being, as are you.

And maybe for a time I really did bestow grace upon the people of Blue Mountain while skiing and "saw the grace of God".

I could share so much more, but I'm also curious about other people's stories and if and how they've overcome.

But a word to the wise who wish to embark upon the spiritual path. Measure the cost of discipleship, while recognizing full well that there's no way to avoid having your spiritual "house" tested at some point by strong winds and rains so to speak.

It comes upon us all I believe, whether as a mid-life crisis or by some other means, whether by circumstance or self-generated.

Carl Jung said that

"Today humanity, as never before, is split into two apparently irreconcilable halves.

The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate.

That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposite halves."

- Carl G. Jung, 1959

If my own experiences can somehow serve to stand on the shoals like a beacon glow lighthouse so that others won't have to go through the terrors that I have, and the ups and downs, then that's what I would offer if I could.

Someone has to light the way, that's the way of leadership by my oh my the courage that it takes to try to develop a working theological framework by which to enter the fray with one's entire being, without any fear.

My message is a message of hope, humor, mirth and charm . It's the epitome of sanity and reason.

After all, sometimes you have to go insane to go into sanity, and the resurrection process is never easy.

I therefore pray that God will grant you courage, and that the stone might be rolled away from your own tomb on the other side of the ordeal.

I believe that there is a hand that's capable of wiping away the tears from our eyes and getting us to smile again, maybe even cry again but only tears of absolute joy and utter hilarity.

We are loved and we are protected by God, but it sure is scary to find one's self a "person of interest" when you perceive that "all eyes are on you".

And who said that perfect paranoia isn't also perfect awareness..?

Love you and God bless you and keep you safe on his rock.

Let the piece of suffering given me (we don't get anything we can't handle) help to ease your burden and serve as a "beacon glow" at the edge of the mountaintop experience. Learn from me. It's worth a bowl of tears to recover your smile.

Ankh

Hey there AnkhMorpork:

gotta say that's one of the best threads I've seen on ATS lately, purely from a spiritual, and philosophical perspective.
And further, I think that's one of the best things about the internet, in general, is the sharing of that kind of anecdotal information, that has the capacity to hit a person chord that will reach out and touch a person, and further, connect those of us who have experienced something similar, or even just like that.

It has the power to admittedly turn this away from potential "society defined" insanity, to an epiphany. I was so happy to see your use of that word, here. That's exactly what you had, and described, so well. And further, it's an anecdote, personal experience replete with personal detail and experiential knowledge of what it's like to experience such, and go beyond it from what most doctors would translate as a pychotic break of manic depression, left untreated, to a true epiphany of spiritual knowledge and how to live with that in the real world, which then doesn't seem so real, after all.....but the test is how to survive that cognitive dissonance.....at least, I think.

I could go get links about people experiencing just these type of events, and how they react to them, what percentage is hospitalized, seeks medication, seeks just counseling and knowledge, and what percentage is "successful" under which circumstances....LOL. But I'm not going to belittle your cognitive dissonant epiphany that turned into real truth for just you like that.

For that's how I view what you experienced. Real genuis and awareness is difficult, truly, and often accompanied by madness, because it's that hard to assimilate with our "everyday" experience of life, and what we've been brought up believing of all that......

True awareness of what is possible, and even the not knowing or ever being sure, even knowing all those possible equations and possibilities, and living with that, everyday, is the true challenge, to me, of sanity.....


Those engrossed in their office politics (not that jobs and making money for the things you require and wish for is bad), but it is somewhat limited. To carry on real relationships of unconditional love, acting upon that as it requires and true giving of self with nothing required, but still knowing how to draw a line or boundary to protect oneself and those that depend upon you, without giving everything away, is a true test of life, to me......

Knowing what integrity is, and trying to follow it, even if it sometimes is categorically oppositional to what everyone else is doing or thinking at the time, to you, but still being able to know what it is, no matter what anyone else sees your behavior as, as though only you can understand it, truly, at that moment, is very important, I think.


And so is your thread, and for those whom have experienced what you describe herein, and have still maintained, and found some joy, in continuing to live with what they might not always understand, or even all those around them might understand.
much love and compassion to you.
tetra50

Realizing what uprightness is, and attempting to tail it, regardless of the possibility that it now and again is completely opposition to what other people is doing or thinking at the time, to you, yet at the same time having the capacity to comprehend what it is, regardless of what any other person sees your conduct as, as if no one but you can comprehend it, genuinely, right then and there, is critical, I think.
www.platooh.com...

a reply to: tetra50

Oh what an awesome reply! much mutual appreciation.

The funny part about it is that everyone else is insane and very fearful and I really am one of the most interesting people in the world.

LOL!

I would post one of those youtubes of the most interesting man in the world, but that would be going too far!

It taught me really everything that I know and needed to know.

Here's the secret.. we are untouchable, and we have the power.

If powers and principalities take a run at you, know that they are already bound and double-bound and then laugh with me in the truth that sets us free for the sake of freedom and love.

Most people at this threshold point, might allow their humor to collapse at the feet of unjustice and suffering, or allow their mind to cave in at a world gone crazy whose societal matrix isn't the least bit congruent with the real world and reality as it is, which is a felt experience and a knowingness and a beingness, of love and enjoyment.

My greatest fear is that I'd lost my childlike wonderment and awe and enthusiasm and curiosity, you know, that special feeling you had when you were a kid.

Well I'm here to report that it's still available, for those with the courage to be the hero in the unfolding of their own drama amid all the projections of an outmoded reality filter that just isn't functioning any more like it used to and simply has to go no matter how much we might cry over mourn or go crazy over its loss.

I believe that the mental hospitals are filled with the most sensitive and the courageous among us, but who, in attempting to fight the good fight lost to the demons of insanity, and to egoism and insecurity and all manner of neurosis that substitute for a legitimate suffering, although who's to say that their particular version isn't legit or meaningful..?

They are trying to make sense of it, and the weight of the world just crushes them almost to a one where I'm just one of the lucky ones who made it through the ordeal by the grace of God and a big mind and heart.

So much humor, love, mirth and joy is available when everything that' s unreasonable, no matter how reasonable we think it might be, or have been taught to believe it is, is rejected, and that places a person in a very strange predicament out on the edge and off the beaten path (the road less travelled?). It's lonely being sane and real in an insane and unreal world. The tendency is to allow seeds of doubt to spring up and cause that quintessential thing to be chocked by the attachments of the world and of our own ego.

I've done a LOT of reading to try to make sense of my experiences, in particular Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung, and what I've discovered is that there's a pattern to it, and an outcome that has the potential to be infinitely more splendid and happier and more joyfilled than we can at present imagine only because we are still immersed in our same old BS drama.

By clinging to what we call "sane" we were insane. "Whoever keeps his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake (sake of truth and life) will keep it!"

What wells up from within is like living water filled to overflowing with mirth and humor, joy and love, and once the mind and heart changes shape it can never go back to its original configuration, so yes, it's formative, to the degree that we're able to communicate to others something that's capable of touching, moving and inspiring them in some way, by whatever means including the Internet and places like this, yeah.

I am here to tell them that it's both very frightening but equally humorous, if you're willing to take my hand and allow yourself to go all the way into your fears.

For most I think the problem involves a loss of humor over a perceived injustice, real or imagined. That's the real killer of the Spirit - resentment, bitterness, anger, lack of forgiveness.

What I've been engaged in really is a process of self-forgiveness and acceptance, but like the prodigal son who came to his senses, I've already been received, "hugged", and had a party thrown in my honor, but it's just no good without any friends with whom to share in the celebration, because you too whoever you are, are/were also a lost son or daughter found again, and rendered alive again. Come along, you are loved and beloved, and a sacred child of a loving God who envelopes it all as the all in all (how great is such a love as that?).

The domain that I'm pointing to, is very much like a house of great celebration at your own arrival, however late you might be to the party, and like my mother who referred to her work with others to be like that of a doorman, so am I like a doorman.

But just like Morpheus, I can only show you the door. You still have to have the courage to walk through it.

At it's threshold, according to the formula of the hero's journey, there is suffering and sorrow and tears and attack and all manner of things to trip us up, like booby traps set for us in particular, even by fate and circumstance itself, but, there is also immense joy and a great sigh of relief if you can but have the courage to face it, and if need be, fall down in a heap of tears, and right there in your brokenness, is the loving hand and smile to take you the rest of the way through and in. It's paradoxical. Who among us has the courage to go crazy to go insane to go into sanity? I was one. It's not THAT bad, after you get it all over with that is.

It had to be that way, where the horror of it, of the crackup, was also experienced, in order so that the joy might be rendered true to itself, which by it's very nature is timeless, spaceless, and therefore, everlasting.

It can only be fully expressed in love, how strange is that?

It's a search and a question for the solution to the failure in love, this hero's journey. Then, after securing the boon for humanity, is the challenge of bringing it back to them.

This is what many "crazy" people are attempting to do in their own feeble-minded way.

Our mental wards are filled with Shamans!

On courage

“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.

There is nothing the universe loves more, than courage."

― Terence McKenna

Life in present day world getting you down? Caught up in the middle of a cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil?

Fear not!

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

probably so, my friend, probably so, as in our mental wards are likely filled with shamans. There is a long history of what "society" sees as awareness and healing powers, and even clairvoyance, and a whole other interpretation given lawfully: as in, imagine this: imagine a clairvoyant shows up and tells you her friend has been murdered and she's just seen it in a vision: the police, with good reason, i admit, will simply think she is the murderer.


This represents the ultimate paradox of what we are speaking of, and its place in realistic living....whatever that is.

I've enjoyed you anecdotal story of how you've chosen to see this particular awareness and deal with it, and I give you kudos for that, if you cant still with that particular awareness and not let it affect you to the point of bipolar mechanism that makes it very hard to live with the real life we have to see , judge and evaluate around us while keeping our brain chemicals static and homeostatic so that we can deal with that hyper awareness and still maintain in this presencesce of what we societally judge to be reality. It is a fine line my friend, but I certaily support your speaking of it in these honest terms, so that those out there, perhaps, lost, have a way to go....
Regards to you , always,
tetra50

Humanity seem to be going thru a rough patch where old ideas/views have not been discarded yet.

It's a search and a question for the solution to the failure in love, this hero's journey. Then, after securing the boon for humanity, is the challenge of bringing it back to them. This is what many "crazy" people are attempting to do in their own feeble-minded way. Our mental wards are filled with Shamans!

All beings can become "Shamans" if they move towards that goal. Some being do not listen to their souls and create states where they suffer needlessly. Technically we could help the ones suffering if we created/used the right tools. If not recalibrating their senses, we could energize other part of their body so it blisses and feel calm with tools like Reiki.

We probably want to end up in a state where heat energy (fire) in the spine and vibrational energy (water) are somewhat equal and give of a low level bliss so we do not create a state where the body cannot handle other people touching it since the nerves are to sensitive.

I had a similar path as yours... Unfortunately the path of self-realization is full of suffering and misery... I don't know if it can be any other way? I wish it could, I tried to find it so hard but to no avail. Maybe in some other world but not here. Think about it, we are put here in these fragile mortal bodies that require constant feeding upon other living creatures in order to survive. Isn't that recipe for misery any way you look at it? I realized that this place is some kind of school for those with lerning disabilities of sort. For those that are desperatly stuck at some place and cannot move forward. It's upon each of us to find it and "fix it", bring awareness to the problem and transcend it.

originally posted by: LittleByLittle
Technically we could help the ones suffering if we created/used the right tools. If not recalibrating their senses, we could energize other part of their body so it blisses and feel calm with tools like Reiki.

That's very interesting, and very synchronistic relative to something I'm working on or intent to get back to working on.

I choose to take it as a sign.

Thank you! You've helped me greatly.

Yes, people need a leg up, and the kind of change and transformation that I'm talking about, short of going insane, requires a gentle impact on their neurological substrate, to serve as a catalyst to evolutionary and involutionary growth and development.

That's another thing that's very difficult in the midst of all this and in the world as it is - how to be most helpful and to find one's life's calling and purpose and mission as something worthy of us and our final attachment to an outcome, of which there is always one.

What I'd like to challenge people to do is to take another look at their life, and start asking the hard questions.

"An unexamined life isn't worth living" as Socrates said, but many of us just don't want to see it, having lied to ourselves amid all our failings and shortcomings, and when a person does that enough, eventually there's a breakdown in integrity and it all has to fall apart to come together again through a process of differentiation and reintegration which is probably were many people "splinter" and then, just can't put Humpy Dumpty back together again. Running with that analogy/metaphor/allegory further, while all the king's horses and all the king's men were not able to put him back together again, it didn't say that such a miraculous feat could not be performed by the King himself (whatever that might mean).

So it does have something to do with integrity, as someone else pointed out, but the question then arises. Relative to what precisely are we "integral"?

What interests me is the simplicity on the far side of complexity in a reintegration, but that's a journey that most are not willing or able, to make, so what we need are helping hands, yes, and means and methods of help and assistance even through the use of technology if applied in the right way. I agree.

originally posted by: alomaha
I had a similar path as yours... Unfortunately the path of self-realization is full of suffering and misery... I don't know if it can be any other way?

I wish it could, I tried to find it so hard but to no avail. Maybe in some other world but not here.

Why do you say that?

Theoretically, since you've been there once already, that "touchstone" on the far side of the ordeal is still available, and the spark of true life in you, still there.

I'm not saying that it's "easy" to get there, again, or even for the first time, but it could be much more simple than we might think in our fear and unwillingness to try and try again where even in the trying it becomes available even if only as a possibility, which is enough, since it's all about the journey and not simply the destination as they say.

Ha, no one wants to go next, and I can't blame you!

For me it was like getting playfully punk'd by a real joker of the highest order.


One night, when I was having "difficulties" and was dealing with night terrors and awakenings, I decided to just forgive them all, Dick Cheney and the Aliens. Everyone, myself included.

Suddenly I awoke, but into a domain of absolute, unmitigated freedom and forgiveness and liberation, that I cannot begin to describe. I burst out laughing and said aloud - "what do I DO now?" So I put on some track pants and a shirt went outside and walked and spun and danced around a bit. My roommate, Gerry, wasn't too pleased though when he saw my face. I think it scared him to the core.

That experience also led to my eventual hospitalization over a Christmas holiday, but it was ok because I got to undergo a type of resurrection experience, and by Christmas I was out on passes, so I picked up a whole bunch of chips and dips and pop and threw a New Years Eve party, the likes of which might have been the envy of the drunken revelers without.

On my exit "interview", I made the mistake of saying that I'd "ministered" to the other patients.The Doctor didn't like the sound of that, but it was true.

On another occasion, also around Christmas time, in fact the first time it happened where our family doctor referred me to see the psychiatrist at the hospital the next day, a man who's face I dreamed of the night before, when he asked what I did for a living and I said I was a "headhunter" (that's what they call "corporate recruiters") and almost snickered a bit because of the connotation where in the dream he'd taken the form of an African medicine man - he promptly made a note of it and when I entered the ward it became a locked ward, on my account!

When he was doing his exit interview with me, after I begged the nurses, on my knees, to let me go home, he again asked what I was going to go "in my life" to which I replied "I'll be going back to my headhunting" to which he looked up, surprised if not astonished as his own projection.

He was also astonished at my recovery, saying that when I came in I was clearly psychotic but that now, as I sat before him, I appeared perfectly sane and rational - this was before he asked me what I was going to do now that I was being released.

The whole thing, each and every time, in hindsight, is just filled with comedic material, but at the time, when it was happening, was among the scariest stuff you could imagine.

While I was in the hospital, with nothing to do (there's nothing really to do, and puzzles with doped up mentally ill people are just too challenging, believe me), I went into the TV room and watched a Sportscaster doing his thing and just for the fun of it I focused on him and tried to make him mess up his lines, and he did, in a big way. When he was done he threw sheet he was reading from in the air and raised his hands and looked to the ceiling in utter perplexity. That scared me, so ?I went to talk to a nurse about it.. that didn't do so well either. She got upset, and exclaimed in a very negative way, worse even than Nurse Ratchet, "if that were the case then you'd be GOD and let me be the first to tell you, you are NOT God!". I'd never said anything about thinking I was God though, I was just concerned about possible quantum effects of psychic experience.

Another time that it happened, again, around Christmas (it's not happening any more though - touch wood! lol, with Christmas coming and all..), I went to see a "voodoo" type lady that was recommended by a friend of a friend, a really artsy fellow. That too was a strange experience. I thought she must have had rollers in the message table I laid face down on (with my face in a pillowy ring). I was very sceptical, but something was certainly happening.

While she was trying to get to know me before the session with the Crystals and everything began, I told her that I'd gone and swallowed hell by accident, to which she replied immediately "If that were the case then you would have thrown up" to which I told her that indeed, that's precisely what had happened!

She gave me a mantra to say, perhaps you might like it.

"I choose to live in the light. Living in the light is easy. Living in the light is fun."

I'm fine now.

I don't want you guys to get the wrong idea!

I used to be a wharewolf but I'm ok nowwwwwwwwww! JK! LOL

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

People should heed the advice given to anyone following a spiritual path. First cultivate a stable physical , emotional and mundane platform. Then you can engage in your spiritual development (whether it be meditation, witchcraft, occult, chakra work or whatever.

The majority skip the first part to dive into deep waters. No wonder it backfires.

If you have a stong platform to push against , you will make progress. If not , your
foundation will collapse and you will sink low.

a reply to: crowdedskies

Yes, the sacred is to be found in the mundane, and the hardest thing to do really well, is nothing.

But the idea that there's some gradual, easier, softer way, like a gentle liftoff, I think is absurd.

The very nature of it involves a clean break with the past, and the reality filter and personality that inhabited it.

Once the Spirit enters or is made manifest or actualized, all kinds of phenomenon begin to occur with the psychic transformation. There's a hyperawareness involved, often accompanied by legitimate signs and synchronicities. The Spirit sees the deeper meaning in everything and also sees itself reflected everywhere. Overheard conversations are filled with the metaphors that people are really expressing, and it's as if everything is a variation of the same theme, and every song on the radio is particularly evocative.

You just can't get from here, to there. A dive is required, a quantum leap, a great act of courage, and even if there are terrible difficulties or challenges to face, and tears to shed, that's all part of the territory.

A person can only be reborn from above, or it's tainted, and some sort of ego-driven pursuit to "be spiritual".

The Spirit doesn't adhere to normalcy or even traditional ideas about causation.

It must be radically free, free like the wind to blow where it will, even though you can't say where it's coming from or whether it's going (can't be directed).

It's no wonder that a person in our modern day society, when touched by the spirit might go on a roller coaster or explode or whatever.

The key is to have faith, and courage, and to just believe that there's a safety net to catch our fall.

It's not for the faint of heart, to allow one's "self" to undergo a resurrection/rebirth type of experience and become something new, although it also seems to rescue the lost child within.

It's worth it, worth every tear and every amount of suffering, and petition, prayers, terror, anguish, etc, to also experience the joy and the relief of being restored and recovered at the end of it all.

That same hyperawareness can also be used as a tool.

I still notice things, signs, synchronicities etc, but for me now, it's just a hobby, something playful and enjoyable, and not anything to freak out over or get bent out of shape by.

I think part of the problems I encountered were attachments of the mind and of the ego self, such that instead of going with the flow I started looking for signs, synchronicities and deep meaning in everything, forgetting perhaps that the mundane is sacred.

I highly recommend going through the ringer - there's so much to be learned in the process, but I also believe, firmly, that absent a working theological framework of some kind, or absent faith in some higher power, it will only lead to madness, instead of to the place I ended up at, which was to have my sense of humor and childlike wonderment restored or to be restored to sanity.

The very nature of the proposition involved in spiritual growth and spiritual experience is an all-or-nothing proposition, to go from something that's a dim reality to something much more real and poignant.

There are no half measure about it.

It follows the pattern of the hero's journey, and many are not able to thread the eye of the needle or allow themselves to find the narrow way that leads to life.

He who keeps his life will lose it, but he who loses his life will keep it.

The key is to get to die and be resurrected again, while still alive and still on the way, so as to be in a position to enjoy the benefits of a greater degree of freedom and freer and fuller self-expression, even when the "self" becomes a total mystery and you just can't say who and what you really are.

Accepting mystery and uncertainty and facing the fear of the unknown, while dragging that ego-self kicking and screaming if need be to that place of transformation, is the only way.

I think if there's a measure of "success" it's in a type of mirth and humor that's rather hard to explain, but oh the joy of no longer having to take one's self seriously any more, now that's freedom.

It's something that just happens to us, when we are called. It's not something that we can make happen.

Loss of control, and throwing one's self into the hands of an unseen power even in the midst of all kinds of powers and forces vying for control, that's how it's done, if there's a way to do it.

God alone saved me and got me through it.

Grace. It can make you cry, but it can also put a smile back on your face, and grant you access to levels of awareness and power that you would never have dreamed possible.

It's not for everyone. Me, I'd rather be touched and a little "crazy" than deadish and "normal" any day.

It was totally worth it, every bit of it. Everything I've learned and have discovered came from these experiences.

It wasn't a failure.

It was God's love for me. I'm just a little stubborn and perhaps not a little passive aggressive.

In hindsight, it's actually rather hilarious and amusing, how resistant I was to it and the lengths to which God will go to retrieve one lost sheep or to throw a party for one lost prodigal son who must himself come to his senses when he's off in that distant land working for the wrong dude and finding nothing of any sustenance and at least begin to make the return journey, before he will find himself lovingly enveloped to his astonishment and surprise.

In my "quest" what I discovered, if it's not a psychotic delusion, which I don't believe it is, is that there is a God, God really does love us, and, if we're open to it, he'd like for us to get a great joke at the expense of all our prior ignorance and nonsense and absurdity.

Best regards,

Ankh

P.S. I use Christian metaphors and allegories because that was my upbringing and context. So please don't allow it to bias you in any way at all.

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

Your last post was a very long justification of the deep-end dive.

I stil maintain that you need to maintain your mundane world to land back on (i.e some kind of emotional , financial and phisical stability).

This is what keeps you from going insane; especially if your spiritual work is of the advanced kind.

Having a career and lots of hobbies and being emotionally stable has been a contributing factor in keeping me strong and sane. It enbles be to push against a solid platform and reach even higher .

When you start delving into other dimensions , visiting other kingdoms and conjuring, you need that safety net. In fact, it is not a safety net at all ; it is merely keeping a place in the material where you can still function.

Many magicians have gone insane for lack of cultivating a solid mundane domain. We are like trees; they have to have roots.If you cut a tree off , it dies. All magical work start from the material base from which you move up.