Cambo's What Has Gone Before

[Cambo]

Christmas is approaching, and so is my 21st birthday, the supposed ascent into adulthood. So I thought it might be appropriate to have a look back over my spiritual development. This will be good for me, in my efforts to consciously know myself as well as possible. Hopefully it will also be interesting and helpful for anyone who wants to know about this part of my life. My beliefs have never had any organised or theological framework, so when people ask me what I believe, I often have to think hard about a concise way to explain. So this will be, if I do it right, more or less the complete story.

I figured I'd separate my posts into my major spiritual influences and events so far, leaving a couple of days between posts for anyone interested to comment. Sound good?

[Cambo]

Age 13 to 16- Atheism/Anti-theism

From the time when I first started to think about spiritual matters, to about 16, I was an atheist...and also an anti-theist. Not only did I have no faith in a higher power, I was very much opposed to all forms of religion and spirituality per se, in anyone. This was something more than the arrogance of the adolescent who believes he knows what's best for the world. It's no coincidence that during this exact same period I suffered from cyclic depression. Constantly. For three years. The atheism was a result of the general despair and meaningless of my existence. The anti-theism was an externalisation of the impotent rage that meaningless made me feel. I was, to borrow from Donaldson, a victim and enactor of Despite. I viewed religious or spiritual people as deluded, inferior and even contemptible. Those religious people who I had grudging respect for, I maintained would be just as admirable without their religion. That Martin Luther King, for example, was Christian had nothing to do with his acting on his conscience for social issues ( )

Ah, the curious mixture of self-loathing and narcissism inherent in the depressive. I am nothing, yet the world revolves around me and my opinions. My conceptions of both anti-theism and atheism have evolved considerably since then, despite not partaking in any of those beliefs at this time.

Atheism is simply the absence of belief in a higher power. It has nothing to do with despair or meaninglessness, at least in a causal sense. I was unable to believe in a higher power because of my despair, not the other way around. I forget who, but someone on the Watch has a cool quote by, I think, Avatar as their sig. About the beauty of seeing no inherent or cosmic meaning being the freedom to create your own meaning. Atheism can embrace beauty and meaning as readliy as religion does.

Anti-theism is a result of oberving the negative effects of theism on the individual and the world at large. These observations are perfectly valid in themselves. I am still apalled at much of what orgainsed religions have done, and continue to do. But anti-theism deliberately refuses to acknowledge any good that theism brings to the world. It's illogical to claim that religion makes people commit atrocities, while refusing to give it credit for the good actions of believers. Someone with a powerful faith acts, for good or for evil, directly from that faith. Of course Martin Luther King acted according to his understanding of Christianity, not despite of it.

So that was my spiritual beginning. I'll try to make following posts less lengthy, but beginnings are important. I think I'll finish each post with a relevant quote, so here is one from Fat Freddy's Drop:

You gotta know what you're running from
Before you know what you're running to
What'd you leave behind?

[Fist and Faith]

It's balon!'s sig:

The beauty of not believing a meaning exists is that you don't feel compelled to go out and find it. Maybe just living is the meaning of your life. *shrug* It can be anything you want. Because you decide.

But then, the answers provided by your imagination are not only sometimes best, but have the added advantage of being unable to be wrong.

My guess would be a pretty big percentage of teens go through an atheist phase. That's when people begin to find their own identity. To do that, we have to separate ourselves from our parents, and their generation in general. We have to turn away from them; what they believe; what they taught us. And religion is a big part of all that.

Most come to learn that their parents weren't entirely stupid. Maybe not all that stupid at all. Mark Twain said this:
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”


Just a guess...

[Cambo]

Haha I love that quote by Twain. So true. I went through something similar with my parents, but not to do with religion. My dad is a staunch atheist and my mum keeps fairly quiet about but the whole thing, but does have her spiritual side. They deliberately raised me in an open environment when it came to spirituality, no particular view advocated either way. Something I am eternally grateful for.

[Cambo]

Age 16 onwards- Bill Hicks

Just before I turned 17, I was given a copied CD that changed my life. On that CD, I heard a dying man stand up in front of a microphone and give his audience the gift of his laughter, his rage, his passion, his love, and his faith. That man was Bill Hicks, and for those who don't know him he is the man in my avatar. He remains my greatest role model, and my original spiritual teacher.

The first thing that grabbed me about Bill was his rage. He was seriously pissed off about almost everything. And he was angry about everything I was angry about: war, stupidity, nationalism, religion, the media, the war on drugs, and just general humanity. In particular I shared with him a bitter grudge against Christianity. Bill had his reasons, he grew up in what he called "the buckle on the Bible belt," enduring a pretty repressed childhood. Me..not so much. There are a lot of valid reasons to criticise Christianity as an organisation, but really I think it was just the closest religion to get mad at. Bill expressed it far better than I ever could, and looking back, he knew far more about true Christianity than I did at the time:

Couple of guys came up to me after a show one night. They said: "Hey buddy, we're Christians and we didn't like what you said up there!" I said, "so forgive me." It seemed so obvious, you know?

But the life changing thing about Bill was his faith. He would rant and rave and make dick jokes, and then suddenly he would launch into profound expositions on the nature of God and the universe:

And I realised that God's love is unconditional, and there's not a thing in the world we can do to change that, it only our illusion that we are separate from God or that we are alone, the truth is, we are One with God, and he loves us. Now if that isn't a threat to this country...

Folks, it's time to evolve ideas...we are the free and holy children of God, and that's kind of our role...there's more dick jokes on the way, please relax.

I couldn't dismiss Bill's faith the way I did pretty much anyone else's. My immediate and cumpulsory admiration for him made this impossible. So, slowly, I began to wonder about whether I was blindly excluding something vital about the world. I still identified as an atheist, but I was no longer an anti-theist. Soon I would begin to call myself agnostic. In the next post, I'll talk about some experinces that set me on the way toward the very strong spiritual convictions I hold today. But for now, here is Bill's famous "It's Just a Ride" speech. I find this passage one of the most moving, peaceful and life affirming things I've ever heard.

The world is just a ride at an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think that it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly coloured and very loud, and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a very long time, and they begin to question, "Is this real? Or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us. They say: "Hey! Don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because it's just a ride." And we...kill those people. "Shut him up! We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and family. It just has to be real." It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok? But it doesn't matter, because...it's just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as One. Here's something we can do, right now, to change the world, to a better ride. Take all of that money we spend on weapons and defence each year, and instead use it feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, not one, and we could explore space, both inner and outer, together, forever, in peace.

[Cambo]

Age 17- First mystical experience

The point when I could no longer call myself an atheist or an agnostic came late in my last year of high school. I was walking to a play rehearsal, listening to the Mars Volta on my CD player. Music has always had a trance-like effect on me, I will happily sit with my eyes closed for hours just losing myself in my albums. This day, something different happened. It was like a quiet explosion in my head. There was a sense like something bursting, and suddenly the world around me seemed to...fill. That's the best way I can think of to describe it. The sense of fullness and depth in everything around me was overhwelming. Very soon after I would read Thomas Covenant for the first time, and I felt intense recognition when I read the passages on Andelain and health-sense. There was a pulse of life running through the perfectly ordinary trees, the pavement, the bushes. The smallest events took on metaphysical significance. A woman was walking her dog, and myself, the woman and the dog regarded each other across the empty street. She waved. One soul- my mind employed the concept as if it had never been alien to me- acknowledging another. One soul reaching out, as if it cost nothing, simply because one of its kind was near. I reached the play rehearsal, and my friends, those dear and those distant...shone. Some of them simply poured light. They weren't doing anthing special, just being who they were. Who they were was what was special. They were the light. I don't know how to explain what a dramatic and immediate change this experience wrought in me.The most concrete example, since that point my depression has not had a hold on me. It is a part of my nature, it will be lifelong, but since that time, it has never dominated or cowed me in the way it did when I was 14. There is perhaps only once since then when I have been depressed to the point of despair, and I have reason to believe that time was unique.

Philosophically, that initial experience, followed by others of the same nature, taught me a deep distrust of definitions. I immeidately felt strongly that to define what I went through was to limit it, place it in a box where it could never belong. I eventually discovered the word "panentheism" and cautiously identified with it, but the distrust remained. It has been deepened by encounters with that certain group of scientific-materialist thought, who prescribe no end of definitions. Euphoria is perhaps the kindest of those words, all the way down to "psychosis." I have first hand evidence that the latter is of a completely different nature. Much is made, at times, of the positive effect on my mental health. That the experience helped my depression is seized upon as evidence of wihsful thinking. I liked the feeling so much, I tricked myself into believing it was true. This last always makes me pause. Not because I find it convincing, but because I think: "what if I did?" Suppose my resistance to depression was indeed reliant on delusional conclusions based on an illusory mental occurrence. And they're doing their best to take that away from me? Would they steal methodone from recovering heroin addicts?

But I am not an addict of delusion. I do not know if it was possible for me to draw conclusions other than I did. My conclusions seemed, at the time, both natural and compulsory. But I do believe that I have the right to interpret my subjective experiences any way I please. I believe that others who had the same experience- and it is not unique- might interpret it differently, and that is their right. If I sound overly defensive, it is not intentional. I am including this as part of the moral and intellectual framework that arose from that first taste of mysticism. Subsequent, more premeditated, tastes will be described soon.

It's like the pattern beneath the skin
You gotta reach out and pull it all in
And you feel like you're too close
So you swallow another dose

The pinnacle of happiness
Filling up your soul
You don't think you can take any more
You never wanna let go

Cause it's the root of experience
The most basic ingredients
To see the unseen glitter of life
And feel the dirt, grief, anger and strife

Cherish the certainly of now
It kills you a bit at a time
Cradle the inspiration
It will leave you writhing on the floor...


It's the jewel of victory
The chasm of misery
And once you have bitten the core
You will always know the flavor

The split second of divinity
You drink up the sky
All of heaven is in your arms
You know the reason why

It's right there, all by itself
And what you are, there is nothing else
You're growing a life within a life
The lips of wonder kiss you inside
And when it's over the feeling remains
It all comes down to this
The smoke clears, I see what it is
That made me feel this way...

[Cambo]

Hmm. Almost 100 views. 1 reply. 99% of this thread's readers prefer to lurk. No-one's got any questions/responses/challenges/anecdotes? Much as I like the sound of my own voice, it's getting kind of echoey in here.

[Savor Dam]

Do not be discouraged. Consider two parallel examples here in The Close -- Menolly's 60 Day Journey and Auleliel's Advent, from a Catholic Perspective. Both have lots of views, but virtually all of the posts are from the originating authors.

Yes, those are not as personal as your thread of spiritual journey, but all the more reason that we are reading along and not butting in much.

Carry on!

[Cambo]

Well ok then. Next post coming soon. But please do feel free to but in whenever you like.

[Cambo]

Age 19- Acute Psychotic Episode, or, My Big Fuck-Off Mental Breakdown

From 17 to 19 I was right into psychedelic drugs as a spiritual tool. I considered dedicating an entire post to that era, but really, the mystical experience is explained as best I can above. All I will say is that, more often than not, powerful psychedelics (I tried acid, mushrooms, mescaline, salvia, and even cough syrup) triggered spiritual experiences in me akin to that mentioned above, with a whole lot of other interesting stuff besides. I smoked pot as well, but that was more recreational than spiritual. I smoked pot the way my dad drinks. Come home from work, smoke a bowl, chill. So really it's just psychedelics that affected me spiritually.

I mention them here because they were one of the contributing factors to an Acute Psychotic Episode (clinical term) I suffered at the end of my 1st year at uni. This was a mental, not a spiritual occurrence, but the effects were truly life changing, across the board. Including my thoughts of spirituality. So here we go.

Around late September/early October 2009 was the beginning of the downward spiral. I had two take home exams to complete before finishing the year. Working on those, I began to lose sleep. This is nothing unusual when I have assignments due, but I began to be unable to sleep even when I went to bed. As this pattern accelerated, I became a fully-feldged insomniac. For at least two weeks, I survived on two or three hours sleep a night. By the time anyone else realised what was going on, I had been up for three or four days straight.

I didn't feel tired. I felt hyper-energetic. Strange, compelling thoughts began to enter my head. This was likely not helped by the fact that my Film assignment was on Stanley Kubrick, and my method of study was getting really blazed and watchin 2001: A Space Odyssey and Clockwork Orange. I got this great idea wbout how I could combine my two assignments under one thesis, write the whole thing, and submit them separately. Then my idea for the thesis became a meta-thesis. Let's combine all the optional questions from both assignments into one piece of work, then break it in two. Somehow I imagined this would be less work for me, not more. (These concepts with my uni work give a good framework, I think, to the whole episode. Logical barriers began to break down in my mind, until everything was a combined, confused jumble.)

I spent a few nights sitting on my computer writing non-sensical meta-thesis plans. I began finding notes to myself I didn't remember writing. Then I discovered YouTube. Well, I already knew about YouTube, of course. But I discovered it nonetheless. People were leaving messages for me, or perhaps it was for my future self. (This is the point my logic really begins to break down completely. It became like dream logic, ideas arising and being accepted as truth immediately.) In another tab, I discovered someone was trying to break into my internet banking account. (Heh. It was, in fact, just a general warning the bank posts on its home page. I wasn't even logged in.) My thesis would become a video project, going viral on YouTube. It would be a collaborative effort, but no-one would know who was collaborating with who, only I would be pulling all the strings, according to my master plan. It would change the world. I would compose it so it would grow independently of me, progressing even beyond my death....

Yeah. You get the idea. Towards the end, I got some world-altering insights into E=MC2 and karma and the Buddha, as well as figuring out how to solve the world's economic woes. At one point a friend of mine, clueless to my condition, introduced me to semiotics. Signs are everywhere, and mean everything. Way to go, buddy.

It all came to a head one Friday, at work, on the checkout . Standing there, batshit crazy, serving customers. I don't actually think any of them had a clue I was so fucked up. I mean, I thought the numbers on the computer screen were adding up to my cellphone number, and all I had to say about it was, "would you like your receipt?" It was a very important day. Today I would find out what it was All About. My destiny was approaching. My co-workers knew. They were playing some kind of game with me. They didn't want me to know they knew. So, I couldn't let them know I knew they knew. Had to play everything just right...They didn't have a clue, of course, until I dragged my checkout manager into the cash office and started babbling to her about Buddhism. Then they realised I knew they knew. They began testing me, asking me questions. I had to get the answers just right. They locked me in the manager's office. The manager sat with me and gave me highly important tasks to do. (I'm not sure, but I think she was just getting me to read out names from the roster ). My parents arrived. They bought me chicken I couldn't eat, despite the fact it was dinner time and I'd only had a bag of pineapple lumps all day. We went back to the home where I grew up. Some women showed up, and they gave me a pill. Immediately lines leapt from my vision. I followed them. They lead outside onto the lawn. Dad came and got me. I went to bed, and slept for the first time in days.

Well, they kept giving me pills, I visited the mental health ward at the hospital, was almost committed there, talked to numerous councillors, psychologists and psychiatrists. And through it all, I got better. Full recovery took maybe a month. After that month, I had re-learnt and learnt a lot. Re-learnt things like how to separate reality from dream, fantasy and paranoia. Re-learnt how to slow, stop, direct thought processes. Re-learnt how to think and act and live as a sane person. Learnt how to apply for an aegrotat ant uni. Learnt how much of yourself can be taken away from you, instantly, without your knowledge. Independence. Self-reliance. Sanity. Learnt what can never be taken away. The care of others. Hope. Music, film, literature, food, drink. Love. Learnt how to rebuild a life from scratch.

My recovery was textbook. I was back at work in a month. Back at uni in two. Off the anti-psychotics in six. One year later, no relapse. But you guys should count yourself lucky. I found an active YouTube account under my name, which I don't remember creating. You'll be glad I didn't wander in here while I was batshit bonkers. Possibly I would have fit in too well.

[Menolly]

You'll be glad I didn't wander in here while I was batshit bonkers.
Possibly I would have fit in too well.

damn right.

[Cambo]

Backatcha

[Fist and Faith]

Wish I had anything to say. It's great to read, but I've never had anything remotely like your mystical experience, and I've never tried any amount of any drug other than alcohol. I've been drunk a few times, and buzzed several times. All more than twenty years ago. Realized that, although I had fun hanging with the people I went out with, I really can't stand the taste of the stuff, so I stopped.

[Cambo]

Yeesh. Count yourself lucky you've never tasted mescaline. Foul stuff. You gotta hold it down for half an hour. Choking down two bottles of cough syrup is no party either. Kinda crazy, looking back, the stuff I'd do for trips. I don't exactly regret it, but it does seem silly when now all it takes is just sitting and breathing. But I'm getting ahead of myself. All in good time.

[Menolly]

I should really drag Hyperception in to this thread.
I have a feeling he will totally relate to the most recent post, at least.

[Cambo]

Oh? Has he got his own history of psychedelic experiments? Can we swap stories?

[Menolly]

I will see what I can do.

[Menolly]

Well, Hyperception relates a lot to what you have shared, but at this time has decided not to comment further here on the Watch. I am of the opinion he has posted his thoughts on similar elsewhere: either here on the Watch, or in a few Facebook notes, or elsewhere on the web.

I'll see if I can search any out...
(He is curious if you have ever seen a brightly orange sky with puffy white clouds at midnight? He says it was like floating inside a creamsicle.

...that has nothing to do with his own spiritual revelations via psychedelics though.)

[Cambo]

(He is curious if you have ever seen a brightly orange sky with puffy white clouds at midnight? He says it was like floating inside a creamsicle.

Nope, but then I was mostly into tripping during the daytime. I did once see dragons and demons made of clouds chasing each other across the sky...but I try not to talk about Amsterdam .

[Menolly]

Ah, I bet he will envy you having been to Amsterdam.

I found a Facebook note of his, which while it doesn't say anything about having been conceived while under the influence, I can pretty much attest that these are ideas I know he started thinking about during his own journeys in his teens. Having met him when he was 18, I can recall the seeds of these concepts. And he has continued to think on them lo these past 23 years since. So, I guess this can qualify as a story swap of a sorts...

Consequences

For my part, I see my interaction with the world on multiple levels.

Let us take the crudest sort first. Imagine I believe that I am fully disconnected and autonomous (for the record, I no longer believe this). Under those premises I accept only two sorts of consequences: the manner in which circumstances and natural laws impinge upon me (e.g.death, gravity, etc.), and the manner in which those whom I please or offend respond to me, which I can predict from statistical aggregates.

Now consider the typical educated adult level. Imagine that my behavior is constrained within certain limits based on past actions and their effects, such as decisions I have made on what chemicals to put into my body, or how to take care of my health, or how to educate myself, or in what manner to earn a living. That is, I accept that certain habits create momentum or inertia within my world, and the results of these habits demand significant will and effort to change. Further imagine that I have created a series of filters, opinions and shortcut beliefs that simplify my experience and allow me a certain sense of control. Of course the consequences of accepting these blinkers are significant: I rule out large amounts of novelty and spontaneity in exchange for what I believe I wish to experience. This level is based on a reasonably consistent/predictable exposure to variable conditions over time, with the premise that most of our actions are taken in a vacuum, effectively having neutral impacts on the world and others around us.

A more sophisticated approach tends to privilege notions of interdependence and feedback. The action I may take will not only depend on external conditions, it will alter them slightly. The manner in which I affect another mind will depend on how another mind has affected me, and will in its turn affect my tendency to respond in the future as well as altering the other mind's view of me. These effects are presumably continuous and incremental, and we generally cannot construct a priori any chain of them that will significantly change the social or physical world around us. Academic research can be seen in this context as a systematic attempt to develop chains of actions that are in fact efficacious of change. So can the art of living in general, for the individual consciousness.

Now consider another level, one perhaps more metaphysical or sacred. It is this level that interests me most. We posit that the world and other consciousnesses exist and have inherent value, and that they are somewhat susceptible to influence from our actions on any of the three preceding levels. But we further assert, pending corroborating evidence, that limits to such influence may be self-imposed, arbitrary, or even illusory. We say things like "I create my world" when we feel this level most keenly, and we wonder why the statement fails to be fully enforceable. It seems that all of us create The world, the more so if we are more conscious of our roles and judicious in our restraint. Sadly, most of us believe more strongly in the limits we have already encountered than in our ability to exceed them.

This must change, and it is this belief structure I advocate for most vociferously: limits are there to teach us something, not to harm or cage us. There is an angel with a flaming sword facing in all directions, guarding Eden, it is said. But we are not prohibited from becoming greater than we believed we could be, or from forgiving ourselves and one another. What I recommend is a systematic effort to disbelieve in self-imposed or outwardly-apparent limits. Not that one should learn to fly by jumping off a cliff, but that there are ways to increase our power, to train reality to accept our will.

Now this increase in personal oomph must be accompanied by a commensurate or even a greater increase in personal responsibility. The Golden Rule or Wiccan Rede or Tao say this in different ways; nevertheless it is clear that the exercise of power can be beneficial or harmful, but is almost never neutral. In particular the ability to alter the belief systems of another carries with it profound momentum, for there is no limit, in principle, to the range of the ripples from that splash.

Extending this argument to prayer (for the theists) or ritual (for the thaumaturges) it seems that invoking a higher or more powerful source to accomplish the purposes of a lesser mind carries additional risks. I would not want to pray for a change I know is harmful to another, but what about all the changes that would benefit me but might harm others without my knowledge? How do I know that any magick I use in fact does no harm? This is the sticking point for me. I have found that true humility (not something I can say I often display) demands a willingness to wait for right understanding before engaging upon right action or right speech. I have also found that fear, anger, and sloppy habits of mind can ruin a perfectly good (or at least carefully-crafted) set of intentions. So can lust or jealousy, gluttony or sloth--is this sounding familiar?

What I have also found is that the universe is not ultimately hostile or even very rigid. It is far more rich and complex than I could have imagined or could ever hope properly to apprehend. It welcomes co-creators but ordinarily assigns them roles commensurate with their development. And it has some user-configurable parameters in the program, for those diligent enough to search them out, although manipulating these also brings profound consequences.

So thanks for asking!