THE CLOSET MYSTIC

I’ve long been daunted by the magnitude of this project. Where to start? Where to end? Of course, a story of like this doesn’t necessarily have a specific starting point, and, seeing as I am (presumably) perhaps around a quarter into my life, I cannot say anything about what the “end” of my spiritual awakening really is. 

That being said… 

I have had a hard time pondering what to share and what not to share. I long thought to myself that there is danger in revealing some of my spiritual/psychic experiences. First things first: they are not party tricks, and they have nothing to do with me. 

Psychic events are side effects of the heart’s opening. As the spirit gradually dissolves into the ocean of all that is, the inner world will begin to reflect and better sense the outer realm that it has opened its senses to. In this way, compassion and love lend into the possibility of the “supernatural.” But, again — they are secondary. They are not to be sought, not to be pursued. I think they should be accidental, treated without attachment, a mere side effect of a genuine desire for truth, love, and the divine. 

So, then, I’ve been conflicted in sharing some of my experiences, being wary of my own ego, and being wary of conflating the beauty of the divine and spiritual with what I again would deem mere secondary side effects of our connecting with it. These experiences have nothing to do with me, but rather the glory of what is beyond us. They are testament to the power of the divine spirit available to all with an open heart. 

There are some experiences that will demonstrate exactly what I mean in that the “psychic events” were directly after heart-opening events of extraordinary magnitude. The love came first, then the event. 

I am reminded of something I used to tell myself: with the spiritual, seeing is not believing — believing is seeing. The belief comes first. The openness and purity of spirit comes first. The childlike wonder and goodness of heart comes first, then everything follows.

I ultimately do feel strongly about one thing, however. In the first chapter that I posted, I touched on how my lens of skepticism and scientific rationalism presented a barrier to believing in any divinity. I was left agnostic because of the prevailing scientific mentality of our time. I am not saying this was a bad thing, for what this did was act as a filter for me placing my belief in that which was not deserving of it. In this way, I was like a virgin maiden saying no and saving myself for the suitor that I would finally open myself to, to give it an… odd sort of analogy!

Anyway —  I believe I finished the previous chapter by hinting that I at last did have the exact experiences that I needed to satisfy the scientist and skeptic within me. I needed proof to place my belief in any one model of the universe — the empiricist within me needed concrete, tangible evidence. 

So, given that I at last did have those experiences, and they did allow me to believe, how could I withhold the beauty of what allowed my heart to open to something so much greater than me from others? 

I am left wondering here, however, if I am better off recounting the experiences in their entirety, or if I am better off saying what processes of internal transformation led to them being had. However, perhaps a mixture of both is best. 

So, without further ado, here it goes.

…

I need to first touch on my experience with Hallucinogenic Persisting Perception Disorder, otherwise known as HPPD. As I said before, high-school me was desperate for meaning, and thought that the psychedelic experience could be a ticket to finding some sense of that. Alas, I did not ever have the experiences that I had read about incessantly and voraciously. Those experiences included ego dissolution, a sense of oneness with the universe, an alleviation of depressive symptoms, and so on. 

I never had any of that. My experiences featured laughs, bright and vivid colors, and seeing some geometry form on walls (how fascinating is it that our brains show us geometry, by the way?). 

What I was left with, however, was continued visual and psychological disturbances that stayed with me into sobriety. Yes — I would continue to see (mild) strange patterns even while sober if I focused hard enough or let my eyes space out. The world continued to look somehow fake, unreal, distant, like I was witnessing everything behind a glass wall. I felt imprisoned in my own mind, a nightmare that wouldn’t go away for months on end. I just wanted it to end, I wanted to feel real, I wanted to feel connected to the world around me. 

But nothing gave. I continued to smoke weed and do psychedelics on occasion, which did not help my cause. I felt… far away. Numb. Distant. Empty. Hollow. Nothing helped. I desperately wanted to feel better, desperately. It didn’t make sense to me. I’d see colors when I closed my eyes. I’d even occasionally see colors and geometry around people. I had no idea what in the fuck I was seeing, nor what was happening to me. I researched the Internet relentlessly to find a way to cure myself. I would search, search, search, dig, dig, dig, read and read and read about people who were trapped in the same hopeless, bleak Hell I found myself in. I tried herbs, I tried vitamins, I tried countless remedies to just feel better. Nothing helped whatsoever.

Eventually, however, my senior year, things began to change. What was it? I think I had grown tired of the worry. I think I at last decided that I did not care. That state of mind began to scare me less, and I simply… relaxed. I felt numb to it — numb to the numbness. 

Then, a variety of things began to shift and change. What was it, when did it start?

If I am to really dig into my memory, I think it was intermittent fasting that began the shift. It started as just another attempt at something strange and novel to help myself. I read about how intermittent fasting — fasting in general, really — had a whole slew of benefits to one’s health when done right, including reduced inflammation, enhanced cognition, kickstarting the process of autophagy (the body’s process of breaking down and recycling old/dead cell parts and materials), and so on. 

I remember the first day I tried fasting, I left school early because my mood was horrendous. I didn’t last past noon without the most intense feeling of “hangry-ness” I’d ever in my life experienced. I skipped 5th period and went to Pete’s Breakfast House across the street and treated myself. 

However, I stuck with it. I gradually was able to last longer and longer until I could go an entire day without feeling the slightest bit of hunger. 

And… some really, really fucking great things began to happen. 

This constant, omnipresent brain fog that I’d had for as long as I could remember — a constant lethargy, a constant heaviness, a constant sense that there was something preventing me from joining the rest of the world in what seemed to come naturally and easily to the rest of them — vanished. Suddenly, I felt light. I felt present. I felt sharp mentally. I felt happy, I felt like I was gradually beginning to live, whereas before I was merely surviving in a constant, dreary molasses, weighed down by some unknown burden that would not leave my shoulders. 

No, I suddenly felt okay. I do not know why the fasting did it, but it did. 

Then… a whole other slew of things happened. 

I began working out like a horse. I got on ADHD medication (and an antidepressant) which I took for about a year and a half. (I will say that the stimulants acted like a catalyst to get my flame going — they kickstarted my system. I formed positive habits that remained with me even when I got off of the meds.)

I joined theater, stopped playing water polo, opening myself to a whole world beyond me. The shift from the athletic culture of the water polo team to the openness of the drama department was like going from black & white to technicolor. A whole. New. World. Opened up. I found my feminine side. I went to school in chokers, eyeliner, and nail polish. I was rebellious in my own way. I made love to men, which I did find, quite frankly, a lot better than the times I was with women. 

When did the realization that I was bi even come in? That’s… quite frankly probably a story for another time. There isn’t a clear start to that, but I will say that connecting with my bisexuality, for some reason, was one of the most spiritual things I’ve ever experienced in my life. The sex felt tantric in nature. You wouldn’t think that something seemingly crude like hooking up with someone you found on Grindr could be spiritual, but I vividly remember sensations that I later came to equate with the force of Kundalini climbing up my spine, which I will touch on soon enough. 

So… that last year of high school. I lost weight. A depressive cloud vanished. I came out as bisexual. I stopped worrying about the HPPD. Things simply shifted for me, tremendously. 

Then, I graduated. This… this is where the story really fucking begins. 

I was encouraged by some of my cast-mates from the drama department to try the Rubicon Theater Company after high school. I fell in love with theater, and naturally wanted to stick with it, so I went for it. They did Shakespeare. I auditioned for their upcoming production of The Tempest, and I got cast as Caliban. Rehearsals started soon that summer, and they were 8 hours/day, 5 days/week, for about a month and a half. 

The director’s name was Joseph. His approach to acting involved strict control of the breath. He taught us that proper acting began with proper breathing. He taught us that we needed to breathe all the way into our diaphragms in order to properly pour forth sound, find presence on stage, and calm anxiety. I took this very seriously. I focused on my breathing as much as I possibly could, nearly nonstop for the duration of rehearsals. When I wasn’t acting, I was focusing on my breath, waiting for my turn to act and receive notes. 

So, as I began to pay attention to something so fundamental, so basic for existence, something so seemingly simple, an entire vivid, complex, and intricate internal world full of so much I was not previously aware of began to make itself known. I began to breathe into my diaphragm and noticed some very strange things. I noticed this… immense tension on the right side of my body. It was like the muscles on the right side of my abdomen could not expand to allow any breath in whatsoever. The left side of my body could, for some reason, expand easily to intake air. But the right side was, for some peculiar reason, tense. 

So, there I would be, mid-rehearsal, withdrawing from the world around me and instead focusing on these strange things I began to discover as I paid close attention to my breath. I began, with concentration and effort, to forcefully expand the tense spots of my abdomen to allow breath in there. Suddenly, I was hit with waves of very strong emotions. Things I hadn’t felt in years that I had held tightly bottled up began to resurface. The state of depressive apathy that I had long found myself in left me numb and emotionless; however, somehow, it was like forceful breathing was a pickaxe that allowed me to break into the subterranean caves of my own being that held all that I hadn’t allowed myself to feel because it was too painful. 

I breathed, I breathed, I forced my abdomen to relax and intake air, and I felt anxiety, fear, panic, sadness, and a whole wave of things that I had long been estranged from come to say hello. To be frank, I… relished it. I absolutely loved it. I had spent so long being numb and emotionless that it felt like finally coming up for air after suffocating for years. It felt good to feel. 

Here’s where things get interesting. I was well-versed at that point with certain New Age veins of spiritual thought that I had a rough blueprint of what I needed to do in those moments. 

This is what would literally happen:

Mid-rehearsal, I would be breathing, breathing, breathing into myself and having subtle, silent emotional releases unbeknownst to anyone around me. I visualized and felt my inner child and all that he went through as a boy, with all of the familial instability that he had to endure. I began to offer myself words of unconditional love. I treated myself like my own mother. I literally talked to myself lovingly and sweetly. It seemed like an equation, a matter of yin and yang, a positive charge and a negative charge, a puzzle piece that needed to be fit properly: my emotional self had very specific needs because of what it endured, so I became that force that I needed — a loving mother. I literally talked to myself like my own mom, and gave myself genuine, heartfelt love. I told younger me that he was safe and loved. 

And… things. Things. Things began to happen. This… force of immense, unconditional love and healing began to course through my entire being. While sober, meditating mid-rehearsal, having these immensely vivid experiences without anyone knowing, I began to see colors and light geometry form on the walls. While sober. But this… this did not feel anxiety-ridden like before. This felt sacred. This felt peaceful. This felt like something very real and beautiful was happening to me. 

Then it happened. Then it happened. 

Gah, I am getting emotional even writing this. This is when it all began. 

…

I began to feel electricity forming at the base of my spine. It felt like a light tingling, an electric charge right at the very bottom of my spine, around the tailbone. It felt like it began to crawl up my spine and into the rest of my body. It would intensify when I got into the deeper and more cathartic meditations, and it would ease when I focused my attention elsewhere. It began to do very, very strange things. 

My descriptions may begin to evade mere word, but here it goes. I could perceive the electricity begin to “jump” between different spots of my body. I could feel and perceive it somehow jumping from the base of my spine to between my eyebrows; I could feel it circulating my entire being. Somehow, it felt like it was cleansing me. It felt like it filled the newly-emptied spaces where the negative emotions that I had purged were. It felt like it was replacing them with this pure, cleansing electric charge. I would continue these meditations at home and literally spasm and jolt from the intensity of the sensations. I remember meditating in bed and seeing… the brightest colors on my eyelids. I remember finally getting to cry tears that felt like they were backlogged years. 

I do not remember how I stumbled upon this next thing, the details are foggy in my memory. However, I remember somehow — perhaps by chance — finding an article on something called “kundalini” that I’d never heard of before. It was described as a process of spiritual awakening and transformation latent within every human being. A “kundalini awakening” is when the force known as kundalini, stored at the bottom of the spine, begins to awaken and cleanse the vessel, infusing it with a higher-vibrational energy that serves the purpose of enhancing, driving, and propagating human evolution.

I began to read the symptom list of kundalini awakenings, and lo and behold, down to an eery degree of detail was everything I had been experiencing. The electric sensation that begins at the base of the spine and spreads throughout the body; the emotional catharsis and purging; the sacred geometry; the spasms; the overall spiritual upheaval and rebirth, and so on.

It was beyond coincidence. I went back to rehearsals after learning what was happening was real with a new fire in me to focus and allow what was happening to unfold evermore. I focused more, and more, and more, and more. 

Things kept happening. 

I remember one fateful day during rehearsals when I really began to see auras. I remember being backstage while someone was receiving extensive notes, redoing a scene over and over until they got it right. I simply sat, observing everyone. A strange train of thought began. 

For some reason, I began to contemplate the existence of free will in consideration of what science tells us about nature vs. nurture. According to the nature-nurture dichotomy, the basis of one’s personality is a simple formula: the genes one is born with and their interaction with the environment they are born into form the personality. I began to think to myself: if it is these things alone, that no one chooses nor has any say in, that determine the nature of one’s personality, how could anyone be at fault for their seemingly evil actions? Does evil even exist?

No one chooses the genes they’re born with, which we can consider the soil of the personality. No one chooses the environment they’re born into, nor the life experiences that come their way, which we can consider the seed planted into the raw potential of any person’s genetic code. I thought to myself quite simply: if the interaction of these two things alone — all other philosophical refutations aside — determine the personality, then everyone is innocent and forgiven.

Suddenly, my heart softened immensely and a strange love for all beings erupted within me. I began to literally see all beings as innocent children, ignorantly flailing around, trying to do the very best they could. I saw all beings as fundamentally blameless for the great chaos and confusion of life. I felt genuine and immense unconditional love for everyone. I literally even remember testing the love and considering what my feelings towards Hitler for God’s sake would be — he, too, in my own heart, was forgiven and lovable.

Suddenly, something happened.

The entire room became awash in colors. The explosion of love in my soul was represented by a strange visual explosion of vibrant auras around the room. I could not believe my eyes, but I began to see these… fields of energy emanating from everyone in the room. I don’t know how to explain them — it’s almost like if you tried to visualize what Wi-Fi signals look like when they fly through the air, but you color them in greens, reds, purples, oranges, blues, every color of the rainbow, and they’re flying off of people as human energy. The colors were stronger and denser the closer I looked to the people in the room, and it’s like I could see energy flying through the air between all beings as a constant network of interconnection between all hearts.

I still wasn’t totally mentally convinced that what I was seeing had an objective basis in reality until later experiences that showed me that the colors I was bearing witness to could relay actual information hidden to the normal senses.

I need to make something very clear: it was as if the energy that I was seeing began to demonstrate to me that what I thought was merely HPPD was not HPPD at all, but the opening of the spiritual eye. I will touch on why I began to believe that to be the case later on.

I think this is a good place to stop for this chapter.