Enter Imago

What do I believe about the nature of things, and why?

Essentially I believe that there is a single source of…call it truth, call it God, it does not matter to me…that runs in and beneath the fabric of our reality like an underground spring. I do not believe people are born fallen. I believe we are born completely open, little pools at the surface. And as we grow, as we become somebody, the pool lies deeper and deeper beneath the surface. Every human is like a well for this spring, though the most effective method of retrieving the water differs, different minerals and flavors are added near the surface, and some drink from tainted cups painted with lead. Some of us find that no bucket can reach the water, and we have to dive in completely to taste it.

As for why I see things this way, that is a very long story.

A little about me

I am somebody who has always wanted to understand. Myself, other people. Who wished I could experience life from every single perspective, and felt it was quite unfair that I could not know what it was like to be everyone who ever was and ever will be. I never felt quite right here, the feeling only intensifying after hormones came into the mixture. In moments of overwhelm, I would feel the urge to tear my face off, jump out of my body. To collapse in on myself until I disappeared. Anything to not be here. “Why am I here? Why couldn’t I have been someone else? Why did I have to be…this?”

Never pretty enough, funny enough, interesting enough, talented enough, loveable enough, never enough.

I was raised Christian, and I believed, although looking back, primarily out of fear of hell. I became a pretty hardline “any religious or spiritual person is dumb” type in my late teens and early twenties, although there were moments where I dabbled in spirituality before deciding it didn’t work and I was an idiot for considering it.

This period of my life, late teens to early twenties, is also what I now refer to as entering the chrysalis. I withdrew into myself, shutting everyone out, wishing I could will myself out of existence. Trying to find someone to love me while I hated myself. I couldn’t even remember what real happiness and content felt like at this point. Truly, utterly lost.

One day, as I was thinking about going to work, I realized I would rather kill myself than live like “this” one more day. I decided that if killing myself was on the table, I could be brave enough to do something far less permanent and equally radical. I left. I quit my job, left my house, took what I could in my car (which I lost eventually, and everything in it). I did all the things, the panhandling, gas jugging, eating out of trash cans, dumpster diving. I became someone I was not to make room for who I would become. I call this “becoming caterpillar soup.” This was the first year of my travels.

The second year was full of anguish, and from that anguish, I transformed. I have always sought love from the special someone who could help take away my pain. Whose presence would calm me and whose arms would always be ready to embrace me, without me ever having to ask. They’d just know.

I tried to find that in men, and as I’m sure you understand, that never goes well. This man, like many others before him, was like a drug I couldn’t quit. People like me, we always go after people who don’t want us like we want them, who cannot be what we want/need them to be (but honestly, who can be? More on that later). He was the most powerful lesson I’ve ever been given.

Anyway, at some point, I felt looming abandonment from this person. When you are like I was, you know. You can feel it coming. It feels like impending death. Every time it happens, it feels like they’ve died and you’re dying to yourself.

This time, I decided I needed to figure some things out. Being a homeless traveler in San Francisco at the time, I had access to psychedelics and was very familiar with them by this point. So I thought, hey. I’ll ask some people to dose me, and ask I did.

Purification

I received. This was the first of four trips (although there were many before and in between, and a few after) that were extremely profound and taught me many things that I integrated in the years since I emerged from my chrysalis, just over 7 years ago now.

As I started peaking, I felt compelled to be alone. Except for my dog, because I knew no matter what, I would know she was real. I found an isolated spot under a tree and sat with her.

Before long, it appeared like reality was crumbling around me, into what looked like black digital ash. I was panicking, wondering what was going on. In my disorientation, I suddenly realized I could not remember who I was. Or why I was. Or why things felt so weird and scary. It was horrifying. I thought it would be that way forever. Until, in the midst of my panic, I got the thought, “You did this to yourself for a reason.”

That thought shone like a beacon of truth in my state of fear and confusion. “If I did this to myself for a reason, I must know what I’m doing.” The conclusion seemed obvious. And that was what I held onto, until the chaos settled and I could remember myself again. If I had known who I was, I never would have been able to trust that voice. I was so full of self doubt, but stripped of any of my stories, I had no reason to think I couldn’t trust myself.

Afterwards, for a period of weeks before I was drawn back into my stories, the positive force was monumentally stronger than the negative one. I didn’t even know there was a light, a dark, and a me holding them both before that trip. The negative voice would try to tell me all these horrible things about myself, and the light would knock it back into submission. Yet I would also imagine myself embracing the darkness. Loving it, forgiving it.

Understanding

About 6 months later, I was solidly back in my stories, possibly more lost than I had ever been, and I didn’t even know it. I mean, I was even back with that guy who had left me before. Yeah, really. I was with him throughout this process.

This night, I was hanging out with my ex and a girl who lived in the building we were staying in at the time.

I had taken a ten strip. At my peak, in what I can only describe as my third eye, I started to perceive a sort of grid with rotating tiles. The backdrop to the grid was just black, and the grid itself was colored blue and purple, at least those are the colors I remember.

I was in a state of dual perception, still fully aware of the regular world around me. As I started trying to understand what exactly was looking at, I was thrown into a kaleidoscope of every color. All I could perceive at that moment was the feeling of understanding what this was all about. Like, “Oh, yeah! I see! Of course!” Type of feeling. Everything just made sense, every existential question answered.

Along with that, I felt a rush, a swell of delight and wonder. Like in an anime, when the child/childlike pure, innocent character sees something they anticipate, their eyes light up, they inhale, and it’s like they’re so excited to experience this amazing thing in front of them. That’s what it felt like.

As I noticed that I understood, I realized I couldn’t say what exactly I understood. That state began to slip away like sand through my fingers and without thinking about it, it just came out,  I let out a quiet plea, “no wait, come back.” And then I realized I was around people who had no idea what I was talking about.

I knew that what had happened was significant, but I didn’t grasp the full depth of it until very recently. I believe that I had, for a moment, experienced pure being and understanding. The thing they call God, that is not separate from any of this but experiencing it from every possible angle.

I have also come to realize in the years since this trip that I have been following that signal ever since that night. To, um, varying levels of success, until I fully emerged. The way the understanding and clarity felt, the inhale of wonder and possibility. It’s the feeling I get when I remember I’m free.

Threshold of Letting Go

Trip number three came after a few months. It was late summer now. A summer of pain, abandonment, and literal physical sickness brought on by the stress of the relationship with this particular person.

I, once again, took a pretty heavy dose and felt I had to be alone during my peak. While I was alone, I started to lose my perception of my body, and my vision started going white from the edges until there was only a tiny pinpoint left. As I was in this pinpoint state, I felt like I was going to disappear, and it was terrifying. Simultaneously, I had the feeling that letting go would be the most amazing thing I could ever experience.

Suddenly, everything expanded again all at once, just before my ex opened the door to the car. I felt relief, as if he’d rescued me from vanishing, and slight irritation because I thought I had been interrupted.

I feel I got a taste of what it is like to die, to get right up to the threshold. I see many similarities between that experience and people’s accounts of NDEs. Ever since, I have not been quite so afraid of death, because if that’s what it’s like to die, there is peace on the other side.

Liberation

Finally, freedom. It was late September, and I was at a rainbow gathering. My ex dumped me. The circumstances around that weren’t great, and I didn’t handle it well. I spent three days in my own personal hell, basically, barely leaving a hammock. I don’t remember taking care of myself or my dogs during that time, although I know I did.

After I came out of the hammock, I was just drifting. I had to spend 9 days in the woods post breakup, because I didn’t have a way out on my own. On the last night, I tripped once again. I’d been avoiding it until then because I felt I was in the wrong headspace. When I was offered acid that night, my intuition said “Now.” So I did.

Honestly, it was a super fun night. No crazy peak, no mystical experience. Just being present and having fun. We played some werewolf whodunnit game that I was terrible at because…acid. It’s hard to lie on acid.

During the comedown, while I was lying down, looking at the stars through the treetops, the sky now faintly glowing with impending sunlight, I realized that I was free. Not only was I free, but so was my ex. I was free to be me, and he was free to be him. And it was beautiful. In that moment, it felt like I emerged. I came home to myself. My shackles fell away. I was free.

“Me” wasn’t something I could escape from, and I didn’t have to. I could do what I wanted with it. I could love myself and cultivate happiness anywhere, no matter what. I could be okay. And I promised myself that I would never let anything break me again. That I would use my pain to forge stronger steel.

I have come to understand that that feeling I had when I remembered I was free, that is the signal that I was given access to on the night of my second profound trip. It is that signal I follow that leads me to truth. Although it must be followed with discernment, as the signal is prone to interference.

Final thoughts

These experiences made me who I am now. They are the reason I walk with the sense of integrity I now hold, and why I feel driven to love others, no matter who they are or what they’ve done. Why I can look at any religious traditions, spiritual schools of thought, or philosophies and understand them, because they all contain traces of what I tasted during these experiences.

Ever since I came home to myself, I have been much the same, but fundamentally different. The hole that I was trying to fill with romantic love, I filled with possibility.