ForEverAfter
Ex-Bluelighter
0:00 - Consumed 14 gel caps, each containing an average of 0.32 grams dried mushrooms (psilocybe subaeruginosa). Total dose, roughly 4.5 grams. Directly after consumption, started watching ‘The Tree of Life’ by Terrence Malick. I knew it was going to be a slow and relatively inaccessible film, hence the mushrooms; they keep me open-minded. What I didn’t realize was that the combination would alter my perspective permanently. This trip was the big one. The most psychologically influential psychedelic experience I have ever had. Most people would just call it a bad trip and try to forget about it. The pain I experienced, both physical and psychological, was like some sort of beautiful hell.
‘The Tree of Life,’ moved me more than any piece of art I have ever encountered. It had such an incredibly profound effect, that I – a lifelong agnostic – suddenly found myself with religion. By the end of the film, I had cried six or seven times. Some of the tears fell as a result of drama – my connection to the characters and the story – others fell as a result of sheer aesthetic beauty. Never has there been a film so ambitious, so pure, or so visually stunning.
I’ve grown tired of cinema lately. It’s all so fake. I don’t believe the characters or situations. The reality of narratives often takes second place to the effectiveness of scenes; characters are inconsistent, they say and do things in order to evoke emotional reactions from audiences and propel the plot. This forced drama, that forced comedy. These films, they do back-flips and cartwheels. They juggle chainsaws. Anything they can think of to get asses on seats. There’s this desperation that takes precedence over the integrity of the work. I’m sick of dialogue that has been re-written and re-sculpted four thousand times. I’m sick, basically, of dialogue that is too good. I’m not a Shakespeare fan. I don’t need extraordinarily witty multi-layered speech to empathize with a character or connect to a story. Often, it does the opposite. The fictional world, where characters live, it is not our own.
‘The Tree of Life,’ does not compromise one frame. Not a single word is forced. There are no cheap tricks at play. It accomplishes the impossible. It is simple and complex simultaneously. It transcends itself. Quite simply, it is a film that – for me, at least – has redefined cinema.
I was a logical person last week; intellectualism was my religion. There was no religious presence whatsoever during my childhood. Throughout adolescence I mocked religion, laughed at the idea of God. It was an easy target. A carpenter, being the son of God. A man with an elephant head. Absurd, ludicrous. In high school we had to go to chapel. I spent my time scratching crude images into the pews. I hated religion and God in one thought; they were inseparable.
As I grew older, I became obsessed. This hatred towards religion (particularly Christianity) grew and festered. I read the Holy Bible back to front at least six times. I read the Apocrypha. The Mormon Bible. The Quran. The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Every religious allegory I could get my hands on. Mistaking them for literal stories, as many misguided religious people have, I proved each one wrong. Now, post-revelation, I understand my motivation for doing so.
Everything has become crystal clear.
2:30 – The credits role. Moments later I pray to God, sincerely, for the first time. I pour my heart out. I confess everything I’ve ever done; everything I’ve ever repressed. I open myself up like never before. Trade arrogance for humility. For the first time in my life, I am humble in the face of God. I do not presume to understand things that are beyond my grasp.
Animals live by the laws of nature. People, on the other hand, live vastly different lives and – as a result – have a wide variety of contrasting values. We make our own laws. Not just as individuals, but also entire countries. Governments. Sub-cultures. Organizations. There is no right or wrong, just different approaches. Which means that you are free to create your own approach without limitation. What you believe is what you chose to believe and people often chose to believe for the wrong reason. I have justified my lifestyle, excused myself for things that – deep down – I know are wrong. I have twisted morality for my own selfish reasons; the ego part of me, defying my soul.
I never strayed from the righteous path, because I never set foot on it. I have come close before. In fact, I have been getting closer and closer for years. This trip was the last in a series of spiritual experiences. I can no longer deny their significance. I cannot deny how I feel. That inner part of me that I have ignored for so long must never again be repressed; without it, I am incomplete.
My motivation towards denying God was fear. I was threatened by religion so I used abstract intellectual notions to convince myself it had no merit. Also, I confused religion with man. Words, with subsequent actions. People often say, as I used to, that there have been countless wars in the name of God and that Biblical texts inspire violence; popular arguments against religion. The text, however, is not responsible any more than a particularly menacing flower is responsible for causing a schizophrenic to murder a puppy. These people, that use the name of God to gain power, they are not driven by their souls. Neither are those pushy religious types that try to break down your door, the child-molesting priests, or gay bashers. You cannot blame their actions on scripture any more than you can blame Catcher in the Rye for an assassination. The words themselves do not kill; they are merely analogical/philosophical avenues to God. There is no sense in compromising your relationship with your own soul, simply because other people have.
Most of the spiritual experiences I mentioned earlier have been the result of drugs. This isn’t a unique phenomenon. Throughout history every culture has used substances, plural, to connect to God. That sense of morality that shines through the psychedelic experience – that is the source for those exploited words. Nature speaks to us. We are no longer a part of it directly, so it is easy not to listen. Hence the need for drugs.
The world we live in is much more convincing than the one we cannot understand. We are surrounded, constantly, by things that we can see and touch. As time goes on, we accumulate more things and more knowledge. As we continue to evolve, we become smarter and more arrogant. When we knew very little about our own planet and our own solar system, mystery was more of an acceptable concept. Now, we have named and dissected billions of species. We’ve categorized our planet with abstract terms. Fish, birds, insects. Minerals, elements, molecules. We like to label things and observe them.
The unobservable, therefore, not the things we have yet to discover but those we may not ever tangibly prove; these things don’t exist. In the context of the modern world, mythology is absurd. For the most part, we have become disconnected from the magical and the mystic. Most people who subscribe to religion don’t really believe it. Like the war-mongers and the child molesters, for example. They pretend to believe. But they don’t. If they were in sync with God, it would be evident. All those Christians that hate gay people, too, if they were truly being guided by their soul they would know that hatred – no matter the context – has no place in the eyes of God.
3:00 – Sometime after I finished my prayer, something strange happened to me. I cannot explain it and I have no desire to theorize (medically). What is clear to me, is that I came into direct contact with a divine presence. I asked for God in my prayer and God visited me. What followed was like something out of the Old Testament. I experienced paralysis, violent muscle spasms, and what can only described as a psychological cleansing. I was not controlling my thoughts. The confession that I made verbally in my prayer manifested. I re-experienced everything I have ever done wrong in my life. And, with each re-surfaced memory, came both physical and psychological pain. Please note I am using terms available to me; the experience was ineffable. When I say psychological pain, I mean something greater than depression or anxiety. Beyond the spectrum of human emotions. It felt as if my soul was being physically assaulted. At first it frightened me and I tried to resist it. I got up and tried to walk away. My legs gave out beneath me. I tried to turn on the computer to look up symptoms. Neither desktop or laptop would turn on. The LED power lights lit up and I could hear the fan, but the screens remained blank. I tried my phone, the television. I crawled around the house, desperately searching for a solution. Every single appliance in the house malfunctioned, even the ones not plugged in. The more I struggled, the more paralyzed I became. If I continued, I would be completely incapable of movement. So I crawled back to my bed and struggled onto the mattress. Meanwhile, the flaying of my soul continued. My face contorted in absolute terror. My body thrashing around as if I was having a fit.
I don’t know how much time passed before I realized what was happening. There was no reward, upon accepting God. I was being punished. And, I deserved to be punished. I said, out loud, “If this is a trial, I accept. It will not change my faith.” I lay there for something like six hours, enduring it, not moving.
9:30 – Finally my trial ended and I fell asleep exhausted. As I fell asleep, I didn’t blame God for what had happened to me. I thanked God.
Four days later…
I used to hate people. I’ve spent my life dwelling in a relatively negative mind state. I am no stranger to anger, anxiety or depression. I have lied. Mocked. Ridiculed. Slandered. Assaulted. Spat on people. Used them. Abused them. Manipulated them. Stolen from them. These are all the worst things I’ve done throughout my life. My demons. Having said all that, most of the time I’m a nice person. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I’m not a monster. I’m no different to anyone else. Everybody lies at some point in their life. Most people get angry when someone cuts them off in traffic. Most people have been in a physical fight, or two. We’ve all made fun of someone.
My point is that now, post-revelation, there is none of that. I have been wiped clean. There is not the slightest trace of negativity remaining in me. Part of my revelation pertained directly to this. It became clear to me that there is no purpose in being negative towards myself or anyone else. Anger is an ineffective tool. Depression is completely pointless. All problems, all conflicts, can be tackled through positivity. Pacifism as a solution to war. Love as a solution to hate. Humility instead of arrogance. Truth rather than repression. This is what scripture says. And this is my approach.
The world is my family. I can no longer separate myself from my own species. I love you all: every tree, every animal, every person.
We are one.
‘The Tree of Life,’ moved me more than any piece of art I have ever encountered. It had such an incredibly profound effect, that I – a lifelong agnostic – suddenly found myself with religion. By the end of the film, I had cried six or seven times. Some of the tears fell as a result of drama – my connection to the characters and the story – others fell as a result of sheer aesthetic beauty. Never has there been a film so ambitious, so pure, or so visually stunning.
I’ve grown tired of cinema lately. It’s all so fake. I don’t believe the characters or situations. The reality of narratives often takes second place to the effectiveness of scenes; characters are inconsistent, they say and do things in order to evoke emotional reactions from audiences and propel the plot. This forced drama, that forced comedy. These films, they do back-flips and cartwheels. They juggle chainsaws. Anything they can think of to get asses on seats. There’s this desperation that takes precedence over the integrity of the work. I’m sick of dialogue that has been re-written and re-sculpted four thousand times. I’m sick, basically, of dialogue that is too good. I’m not a Shakespeare fan. I don’t need extraordinarily witty multi-layered speech to empathize with a character or connect to a story. Often, it does the opposite. The fictional world, where characters live, it is not our own.
‘The Tree of Life,’ does not compromise one frame. Not a single word is forced. There are no cheap tricks at play. It accomplishes the impossible. It is simple and complex simultaneously. It transcends itself. Quite simply, it is a film that – for me, at least – has redefined cinema.
I was a logical person last week; intellectualism was my religion. There was no religious presence whatsoever during my childhood. Throughout adolescence I mocked religion, laughed at the idea of God. It was an easy target. A carpenter, being the son of God. A man with an elephant head. Absurd, ludicrous. In high school we had to go to chapel. I spent my time scratching crude images into the pews. I hated religion and God in one thought; they were inseparable.
As I grew older, I became obsessed. This hatred towards religion (particularly Christianity) grew and festered. I read the Holy Bible back to front at least six times. I read the Apocrypha. The Mormon Bible. The Quran. The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Every religious allegory I could get my hands on. Mistaking them for literal stories, as many misguided religious people have, I proved each one wrong. Now, post-revelation, I understand my motivation for doing so.
Everything has become crystal clear.
2:30 – The credits role. Moments later I pray to God, sincerely, for the first time. I pour my heart out. I confess everything I’ve ever done; everything I’ve ever repressed. I open myself up like never before. Trade arrogance for humility. For the first time in my life, I am humble in the face of God. I do not presume to understand things that are beyond my grasp.
Animals live by the laws of nature. People, on the other hand, live vastly different lives and – as a result – have a wide variety of contrasting values. We make our own laws. Not just as individuals, but also entire countries. Governments. Sub-cultures. Organizations. There is no right or wrong, just different approaches. Which means that you are free to create your own approach without limitation. What you believe is what you chose to believe and people often chose to believe for the wrong reason. I have justified my lifestyle, excused myself for things that – deep down – I know are wrong. I have twisted morality for my own selfish reasons; the ego part of me, defying my soul.
I never strayed from the righteous path, because I never set foot on it. I have come close before. In fact, I have been getting closer and closer for years. This trip was the last in a series of spiritual experiences. I can no longer deny their significance. I cannot deny how I feel. That inner part of me that I have ignored for so long must never again be repressed; without it, I am incomplete.
My motivation towards denying God was fear. I was threatened by religion so I used abstract intellectual notions to convince myself it had no merit. Also, I confused religion with man. Words, with subsequent actions. People often say, as I used to, that there have been countless wars in the name of God and that Biblical texts inspire violence; popular arguments against religion. The text, however, is not responsible any more than a particularly menacing flower is responsible for causing a schizophrenic to murder a puppy. These people, that use the name of God to gain power, they are not driven by their souls. Neither are those pushy religious types that try to break down your door, the child-molesting priests, or gay bashers. You cannot blame their actions on scripture any more than you can blame Catcher in the Rye for an assassination. The words themselves do not kill; they are merely analogical/philosophical avenues to God. There is no sense in compromising your relationship with your own soul, simply because other people have.
Most of the spiritual experiences I mentioned earlier have been the result of drugs. This isn’t a unique phenomenon. Throughout history every culture has used substances, plural, to connect to God. That sense of morality that shines through the psychedelic experience – that is the source for those exploited words. Nature speaks to us. We are no longer a part of it directly, so it is easy not to listen. Hence the need for drugs.
The world we live in is much more convincing than the one we cannot understand. We are surrounded, constantly, by things that we can see and touch. As time goes on, we accumulate more things and more knowledge. As we continue to evolve, we become smarter and more arrogant. When we knew very little about our own planet and our own solar system, mystery was more of an acceptable concept. Now, we have named and dissected billions of species. We’ve categorized our planet with abstract terms. Fish, birds, insects. Minerals, elements, molecules. We like to label things and observe them.
The unobservable, therefore, not the things we have yet to discover but those we may not ever tangibly prove; these things don’t exist. In the context of the modern world, mythology is absurd. For the most part, we have become disconnected from the magical and the mystic. Most people who subscribe to religion don’t really believe it. Like the war-mongers and the child molesters, for example. They pretend to believe. But they don’t. If they were in sync with God, it would be evident. All those Christians that hate gay people, too, if they were truly being guided by their soul they would know that hatred – no matter the context – has no place in the eyes of God.
3:00 – Sometime after I finished my prayer, something strange happened to me. I cannot explain it and I have no desire to theorize (medically). What is clear to me, is that I came into direct contact with a divine presence. I asked for God in my prayer and God visited me. What followed was like something out of the Old Testament. I experienced paralysis, violent muscle spasms, and what can only described as a psychological cleansing. I was not controlling my thoughts. The confession that I made verbally in my prayer manifested. I re-experienced everything I have ever done wrong in my life. And, with each re-surfaced memory, came both physical and psychological pain. Please note I am using terms available to me; the experience was ineffable. When I say psychological pain, I mean something greater than depression or anxiety. Beyond the spectrum of human emotions. It felt as if my soul was being physically assaulted. At first it frightened me and I tried to resist it. I got up and tried to walk away. My legs gave out beneath me. I tried to turn on the computer to look up symptoms. Neither desktop or laptop would turn on. The LED power lights lit up and I could hear the fan, but the screens remained blank. I tried my phone, the television. I crawled around the house, desperately searching for a solution. Every single appliance in the house malfunctioned, even the ones not plugged in. The more I struggled, the more paralyzed I became. If I continued, I would be completely incapable of movement. So I crawled back to my bed and struggled onto the mattress. Meanwhile, the flaying of my soul continued. My face contorted in absolute terror. My body thrashing around as if I was having a fit.
I don’t know how much time passed before I realized what was happening. There was no reward, upon accepting God. I was being punished. And, I deserved to be punished. I said, out loud, “If this is a trial, I accept. It will not change my faith.” I lay there for something like six hours, enduring it, not moving.
9:30 – Finally my trial ended and I fell asleep exhausted. As I fell asleep, I didn’t blame God for what had happened to me. I thanked God.
Four days later…
I used to hate people. I’ve spent my life dwelling in a relatively negative mind state. I am no stranger to anger, anxiety or depression. I have lied. Mocked. Ridiculed. Slandered. Assaulted. Spat on people. Used them. Abused them. Manipulated them. Stolen from them. These are all the worst things I’ve done throughout my life. My demons. Having said all that, most of the time I’m a nice person. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I’m not a monster. I’m no different to anyone else. Everybody lies at some point in their life. Most people get angry when someone cuts them off in traffic. Most people have been in a physical fight, or two. We’ve all made fun of someone.
My point is that now, post-revelation, there is none of that. I have been wiped clean. There is not the slightest trace of negativity remaining in me. Part of my revelation pertained directly to this. It became clear to me that there is no purpose in being negative towards myself or anyone else. Anger is an ineffective tool. Depression is completely pointless. All problems, all conflicts, can be tackled through positivity. Pacifism as a solution to war. Love as a solution to hate. Humility instead of arrogance. Truth rather than repression. This is what scripture says. And this is my approach.
The world is my family. I can no longer separate myself from my own species. I love you all: every tree, every animal, every person.
We are one.
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