I like your spirituality, it's humbling but also sheds light on the ideas of consciousness. We define a consciousness as being self-aware, but how do we define awareness. If we define consciousness as a moving, constantly shifting and evolving shape that reacts to it's external stimuli in complex ways, then the universe could be given the idea of being conscious.
I want to ask you a few questions on it,
First, how did you end up believing in this spirituality, did you believe other things before it and if so what? I'm interested to see your evolution of beliefs
Second, how has this spirituality affected your life, has the effect been significant and in what ways has it affected you?
Thank you, anoni.
I'll try to give the short version, because the long version can get VERY long if I'm not careful.
I actually enjoy telling people about how my beliefs have evolved, so I'm very happy you asked that question!
I was never raised with any sort of religion. I wasn't raised specifically to be an atheist, it was just that religion was a subject that never came up in my house.
One day in elementary school, a kid that I didn't even know randomly ran up to me at recess and asked, "Hey, are you Jewish or Christian?" I had heard neither of these words before, so I simply picked one. "Christian...?" I replied. He just said, "Good," and then ran away to continue playing. I was very confused, but the idea had just been put in my head that I was supposed to be Christian. Eventually, I found out through other kids—mostly by overhearing them talking—about this person called god, and this other person called the devil. God lived in heaven and was good, the devil lived in hell and was bad. If I was good and worshipped god, I would get to go to heaven, but if I was bad and didn't believe in god, I would go to hell and be tortured for the rest of eternity. Not a fun thought for a small child. I spent a good portion of my childhood—up until middle school—living in a pretty constant state of fear/paranoia, worried that I would accidentally do, say, or even think something that would damn me to hell (using "damn" as an in-context verb, not an expletive). It screwed me up pretty hardcore.
As I transitioned to middle school, though, I began to think more about it, and I eventually realized, "All this stuff about god is a bunch of BS!" Having been presented with no evidence that what Christianity taught was true, and finally realizing just how much it relies on fear to subdue its followers and deny them their humanity, I became the angriest atheist you ever did see. Oftentimes I would mock, laugh at, and/or verbally attack people if they revealed that they were Christian. I thought they were stupid, and I made sure they knew it.
Over time, though, I just grew less concerned with what other people believed. As long as they weren't trying to shove it down my throat, I let them be. If they did try to shove it down my throat, though, I would still react with hostility. I became more of an agnostic than an atheist, opting for a more open spiritual worldview than what atheism offered. Maybe there's something more to the universe, but I just can't see it. I haven't been presented with any evidence to prove that there's something more, but maybe I will be.
And boy, did something present itself. In my sophomore year of high school, I met a girl who would soon become my girlfriend. Let's call her J. She was a self-proclaimed Wiccan (I say self-proclaimed because, when I actually researched the religion and its tenets, I found that she was a massive hypocrite). Her father was a shaman, and a follower of a particular Incan religion I can't remember the name of. So the two of them, along with her stepmother, were very much the New-Agey types. J would try to explain things to me that they believed, with regard to things like magick, chakras, and all that good stuff. However, for the longest time I wasn't quite sure what to think of it. Then one day, we were all having dinner at a restaurant. A friend of ours had come along, too. Let's call him W. The conversation had turned to an esoteric subject, and it was revealed to me that W was very familiar with that J and her family believed, as well. I was the only one at the table who didn't understand a thing that was being said. When I expressed my confusion and my feelings of being left out, they agreed to show me what they were talking about when we got back to J's house.
It was on that evening that they essentially reached down my reality's throat and pulled it inside out.
Disclaimer: What I came to believe that night is not the same as what I believe now. I've continued to evolve since my time with J ended, and much of my spiritual beliefs are very ambiguous at this point.
To summarize the events of that evening: J assisted me in the process of opening my chakras, albeit in an unusual order. My third eye was the first to be opened, and only afterwards did she walk me through the other six. When we did the third eye, we performed a little experiment involving telepathy in which she transmitted a thought to me without telling me what it was. After a few moments of "listening" I was to tell her what I thought she had sent to me. When I got it right on the first try, that was pretty much enough to convince me that what she was speaking of was very, very real. I also felt physical sensations during the opening of my chakras.
After this, her father put a chair in the center of their living room, and told me to sit in it. He asked me permission to give me a healing. At this point, I was far too enthralled to say no to anything they wanted to show me. So I agreed. Candles were lit, and J's father proceeded to wave his hands slowly above various areas of my body, as if brushing away negative energy and "fluffing" my aura (that is an actual term, from what I've discovered). If you've ever been on a roller coaster, you know the tickly feeling you get in your stomach when you shoot down a steep incline. That's precisely what I felt throughout most of the healing session, and at one point, I found myself unable to stop giggling. Afterwards, I felt amazing.
From that point forward, I pretty much went with almost whatever J told me. There were some exceptions, of course, and also some things that I wasn't quite sure I wanted to dabble in just yet. However, I did do my fair share of dabbling. However, I gradually found myself disagreeing with many of the things J seemed to require of me to be a part of her life. Among these was the fact that I basically had to remove my capacity to feel things like jealousy and anger, because they were negative emotions. No matter how much I seemed to learn, how many visions I had, how many times I opened and cleared out my chakras, she always spoke to me as if I still needed to be "woken up;' as if I still needed to be unhooked from The Matrix. I grew to dislike the rigidity of her beliefs, and began to explore more on my own. I still believed many things similar to what she did, yet as I did my own research, experimented with things my way, I began to stray from what she wanted to teach me. My beliefs became much more flexible, and open to change as new information and experiences arose.
After I broke up with her, I continued to pursue these supernatural phenomena, if you'd like to call them that. I participated in mass astral projection groups (although I stopped before we actually got to project—my dabbling in that area is another massive post entirely), continued to experiment with things like telepathy and chakras and energy, and generally just continued investigating that side of reality that she and her family had shown me for two and a half years. However, as life began to seep in—as I became busy with work and college—my pursuits in this area began to slow down. At this point, I've essentially placed that side of myself on the back burner. It's still there, although many of the things I vehemently believed were true are now in the saucepan of uncertainty. As I said earlier, my beliefs have evolved significantly, and I've grown much more skeptical and analytical when it comes to strange happenings. I don't dismiss them immediately, but I no longer jump on them and immediately assume they're due to supernatural or metaphysical phenomena. This is partly due to my discovery that those who consider themselves "New Age" can easily be just as dogmatic, close-minded, and cruel as the Christians I so passionately hated in middle school.
If this evolution has affected me and my life in any way, it has taught me to be open to new and unusual things, but to still approach them with caution. To be curious, but to investigate adequately and think critically before drawing any conclusions. My time with J taught me many valuable things, which I still apply today even after all the terrible things that happened with her. One thing she said still resonates with me: "Run things through your heart," she would always say. By this she meant that I should really think about what I'm planning to do or say before I take action, especially when it involves other people and their feelings. During my time with her I learned the importance of smiling and surrounding myself with the people and things I love, as well as just how powerful positive thinking really is. I also hold people and my relationships with them in very high regard. Those I love are often the most important things in my life.
Although the scars from her emotional and mental abuse are still visible on me at times, I've learned the importance of not letting others tread on me, especially in the ways she did. I've also begun to put much more effort into understanding others, especially in times of conflict. I do my best to approach conflicts calmly, and with the intent of resolving them peacefully. I've learned to acknowledge when I'm wrong or made a mistake, yet I've also learned not to buckle under the pressure of others.
So yeah... I think that about covers it. Is there anything else about this subject that you'd like to know?
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