Have you ever talked with God? I mean, actually had a conversation with them, a full dialogue, back and forth for half an hour or more. Since my “spiritual awakening” I’ve had interactions, or at least, what I could see as being interactions — with God, with the universe, with an understanding that goes beyond my realm of understanding — but I’ve also chatted with it. A few times.
To talk about this, I’ll need something from you. As I’m talking about discussions with God, I’ll need to you follow me along for the ride. Call is suspension of disbelief if you like, in the same way that, if a person told you that they spoke to the ghost of a passed-on relative, you might go along, and empathise how it would be to do just that, because that was the experience for them.
Also, I might mix things up: One moment I’m speaking to God, then it’s the universe, then I’m the universe conversing with myself — just go with it, it’s just how I felt at the time.
And lastly, “God” means a lot of things to a lot of people, so this is just my experience of that.
All set? Ok, here we go.
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The first time I spoke to God was with Dora. I remember only one thing. They said: “I don’t know what you’re going to do”. I thought, well bugger me, if even God isn’t sure then I most be on the wrong path. That was after I prayed for the first time, and had a genuine reason to. I thought I was about to die. My paranoia was spiralling completely out of control, and [it’s hard writing about this, but I’m pushing myself to face it] — and, with each phase of new delusions, I would realise how the logistics of them couldn’t add up, and therefore, the true horror had to be even vaster. The world wasn’t real, I knew that, and I was living in a waking nightmare, I’d already known that; all those life-destroying delusions were still too rooted in reality, and I wasn’t inside the normal reality anymore. So, they got bigger and bigger, and eventually I’d become convinced that [fuck me this is hard to write, I can feel that “realisation” crawling its way back into my mind] — that I was the target of an alien torture experiment. The walls were about to fall, any second now, to reveal the real reality, and the real horror was about to start. I felt the way I did when I was a child at Disney, on the ride where a monster has teleported to earth and has gotten loose. I was very young, and I believed that the jets of air being shot from the seats were really the alien breathing down my neck. I remember that, and the terror, and screaming in terror when the ride was over, when I was outside, because it was had all been real. That’s where I was at. And so, at the pinnacle of dread, the very moment before my life was about to be stretched out into infinite unfathomable torture, I prayed. I asked to be saved. And I was. […] My life changed forever in that moment, and I don’t remember much of what happened in those minutes after I was rescued. Only what Dora had said. Only what God has said to me ,through Dora.
The second time, they spoke through my friend Malcolm. We were communicating telepathically. I only know this for sure because my other friend, Les, was also there, and he voiced his frustration at not being part of the dialogue, because it was wordless.
The first night of the holiday: The weed hit as Alistair said, let’s go back in. I had just embodied the boy I once was, experiencing the full force of their hidden emotions for the very first time, after reciting my poem. That had passed, and now, back with me again, was that old familiarity. Where have you been, my mind asked, and I already knew the instant response: I’ve always been here. Oh yeah, I thought.
The specifics of what we discussed are a blur, but I knew that I was speaking with God, ,and this time, I was determined to probe for the answers I knew I’d wanted for so long. Keep in mind, in the reality me and my uncle had been inhabiting just previously (the one within which we’ve lived most of our lives) hadn’t changed for him. So I was talking to God. He was talking to his nephew.
Why is their badness? He didn’t understand what I’d asked. I clarified, talking about the darkness that’s so prevalent. And I said, if you have my consciousness within you, then you must understand — so, how is that ok, all this darkness?
I don’t see it like that, he said. It’s more grey. I didn’t understand at first, but eventually, I did. I saw a cross-section of myself, an outline of a man, filled with oil. The balance is all wrong in me, I realised. I put my hands to my sides, like Iron Man does to use the jet engines in his hands, and expelled the inky blackness, and I became grey. I felt, not numb, not content exactly, but perfectly balanced and entirely tranquil.
That made other conversations go a lot smoother. I now understood the concept of greyness, and I’d experienced how having one person with an abnormally high volume of oil inside them doesn’t offset everything else. It’s still balanced. This thought would later fill me with great hope (thought I think this was part of another evening) as I realised that if there exist people like me, drowning in darkness, then there must exist the equivalent. I also realised that my family, who I was loving being around, weren’t filled with that darkness; how not-normal it was. My sister could be close to an exception, but having locked away her darkness, the balance with her was still mostly light.
Of course I wasn’t really speaking with God, and it was my uncle who said that they see things as grey — but what hit me later was how perfect it was. As a proxy voice for the universe, he was perfect. I suppose what I was really doing was talking to his universe, his God. I liked them.
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What else: On that first night it was super intense. I kept having waves of insights and revelations, about existence and the universe, with each one leading to the next realisation — which couldn’t be made without all those prior — but I also remember, more than a few times, I actually approached the limits of human understanding. In my minds eye I saw it as a grey cluster, I could feel my mind literally pushed to breaking point. Maybe there is knowledge available on the other side of that barrier, through that cluster, but I knew assuredly that, if there was, then there was no coming back from it. If it’s knowable, it’s also mind breaking.
Those mind cluster experiences had a big effect on me. They turned me away from a life-long quest to seek the deepest possible answers, since I’ve now understood literally as far as I can go, and I’ve also experienced the toll that can take. I’m no longer inclined, as a person, to walk dangerously close to dark edges in efforts to understand deeper things.
That’s a good thing: Once you know everything, you gain a new kind of freedom, in the everyday choices you make to investigate other more personal things. The binding concepts I used to hold of determinism, of everything being a binary push/pull, which used to push me towards frequent suicidal ideation — I’ve mentally outclassed then, they’re functionally redundant. I had hoped that whatever it is that existence is made of had an explanation beyond those rudimentary life philosophies, and now I know for sure: It does.
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The paranoia tinges were interesting. My uncle shifted into someone threatening and violent, but that was just the tip of a deeper realisation: If I controlled my paranoia, and stopped myself from invention new spirals of delusions, then the reality I was inhabiting would remain stable — actually I even had some say over it, beyond just directing it away from the living nightmare world.
Have I written about this yet? Is it within this collection of drafted words, how observing those reality shifts has given me back a power that had been violently ripped from me?
[if not, @todo: realising that I could choose which reality I inhabit]
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Weed is an amazing drug, and ever since both my spiritual awakening and other personal trials with psychedelics, it’s not been the same for me. It takes me to other worlds now. Not always though, as I only spoke to God on that first evening, and the other times, I was just getting high and happy with my uncle (although, the universe did make a few other appearances).
I’d forgotten how lovely getting high can be, especially after it had been linked in my mind to something negative for so long. Alcohol is fine, but as I’ve said before, it’s definitely my least favourite drug. I kinda feel like getting tipsy or drunk with friends just makes them more like me, and it’s nice to have that freedom of being able to connect to an uninhibited and impulse-less version of them, it’s can still be a pretty depressing drug.
Weed, on the other hand, is more characterised by you, than by it’s objective effects. Cause they’re never objective. If you want to go deep, you can do that; if you wanna get paranoid, it can take you there too… and if you just wanna get silly, then man can it give that to you. The funny thing about just floating around in a weed bubble with mates is that, you have access to all your higher thinking abilities, but at the same time, you get access to all the silly parts of you too. Your memory is kinda shot so you’ll never be on one track for long, and everything needs to be figured out.
Cause that’s what you do, when you’re high, it’s like you’re in a perpetual state of working things out, with minor activities become epic missions. You know all this, you can understand everything, but you’re still half-functional, and you can’t help but know what you are, and what the friends you’re with are. It lets you see people as they truly are: grown-up children figuring things out. Bumbling around together, in ways that you could never do when sober because there are all these “important” things you should be doing and thinking about. It puts life and existence into perspective: You could understand the mechanics behind the universe — you have access to that knowledge, if you choose to pursue it — but you’d rather have fun.
With my old pothead friends, we’d have some nights when we’d get stoned, but generally we’d just smoke a tiny bit — and it’s crazy how much it takes the edge off. Your mind stops worrying. There’s no cloud of “shoulds”, you can just exist. It’s really beautiful. Everything is funnier, not just because you’re more giggly, but because you full appreciate the absurdity of everything. It’s almost like it lets you think like a kid again — with everything you know now but none of the pressure. It’s total freedom, a reminder of what makes life and people amazing. Get high, be dumb, remember how silly it all is, and how much you appreciate it all.
Anyway, what was I saying?
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As I was packing… (realising that I have a choice about which reality I want to inhabit)
…
I saw the impact of this book (stretching out into infinity, into infinite lives…)
I saw the person I could be, standing tall and proud, hands balled into fists resting on my hips, looking like a superhero. I could dip into that reality easily, with that pose, just as I could expel the blackness with my iron man pose.