305 replies to this topic

[Beany]

Nothing like a wake up call to change our lives. You know, not everyone would have responded the way you did. Some people would have blow it off. That you didn't is to your credit. It's a mysterious, complicated, wonderful world we live in, isn't it?

[Seeker79]

The Id3al Experience, on 17 April 2012 - 04:29 AM, said:

Well my life was full of depression, and unfortunitly I turned to drugs.

One day about 2yrs ago now I took some magic mushrooms.

That expereince changed my life forever.

I came in contact with a being - Some call it god. and I was healed, phyiscally, mentally and spiritually.

After that night, I gave up all drugs, got my life on track.

Practise in Zen mediation and studing Spirituality opened my eys further.

I do no suggest to take this method. This happened to me accidently due to my drug habits.

(Sorry mods if this is saying to much about drugs, please delet if so - Regards)

2 yrs later here I am, the happyest I have ever been. I still have much much more learning and growing to go as do we all.

Kind Regards,
Me

Nice, I have never needed an entheogene to learn these lessons, so I have never taken one. It seems I can do it on my own. These substances are not to be triffled with or used for recreation, but spirit guides have made it clear that I should understand them. Your experience is exactly why. The beinefits's of altered state healing can be tremendouse. The native american church, has very very low rates of alcoholism and depression compared to other native American groups.  

( we should be allowed to have this discussion in a spiritual context) I would hate for um to be apart of the push ( mostly Christian) to stamp shamanic culture out of existence.

[Seeker79]

_Only, on 17 April 2012 - 03:43 AM, said:

Guilty of bumping an old-ish thread, but thanks jugoso for letting me know about it. I have felt odd and a bit alone recently ("Head in the clouds" so to speak) thinking and feeling the way I have been. A sudden, very powerful train of experience/dream/thought/feeling rushed at me one week, just about a month or two ago, and I have shifted my thoughts and feelings in a total opposite direction from what I had been devoting them to(or making a massive attempt to ignore them, really).

My experiences that led to this shift are personal to me, so I am bashful to tell them, and that's how they are meant to be; personal. But I will just say that for too long I was in a downward spiral of emotion and thought, which eventually led to a stagnation of myself. I didn't know why I felt this way; I didn't want to think about it. So I didn't. And that was me.

I had had very personal experiences a few times in the somewhat recent past that gave me a hint as to what I would come to experience later (the big one), from which I would realize about something more than what I have known all my life. But at the time, those past experiences would be amazing at the time, but would fade in meaning and my belief of them very quickly. Then I felt extremely sad, and almost betrayed that what I had seen as a possible life changing way of thinking disappeared from me so fast; like waking up from the best dream.

But this last mind changing experience that I had was the one, I feel. Something "stuck", when the others had faded away so quickly. In the week after it, everything I came into contact with had such a connecting meaning. It all was one, including me. After some more days, the feeling faded in strength a bit, but has never gone away. I am still finding meaning in seemingly non-related, random things, situations, and people around me.

Like nutball Carrey alluded to in the video you put on the first page, it feels like riding a wave. At some times, things just rush in, and it feels so great. And other times, I have pretty deep feelings and thoughts of dread, sadness, and hopelessness in the same way I feel that positive connectedness. And also, like he said about having that one experience that "...was an expansive, amazing feeling of freedom, from myself, from my problems" and being a part of something bigger than myself, I have had that same experience, just this Easter, very early in the morning. "And ever since that day.. I have been trying to get back there!" I know that feeling so damn well! *fists clench*

This was my "bigger than me" experience, which incidentally, wasn't my first epiphany, but my most loved and revered: http://www.unexplain...1

As expected reading it back now, I wish I could do it near half the justice of how it felt personally to me, but I realize that is impossible.

Anyway, I'm writing too much it seems, so just wanted to thank you for showing me this thread, and seeing people talk about the same things I am feeling.

An article you might find interesting... You may want to jump around its long.
http://www.rivier.ed... Psychology.pdf

[ChloeB]

_Only, on 17 April 2012 - 03:43 AM, said:

Guilty of bumping an old-ish thread, but thanks jugoso for letting me know about it. I have felt odd and a bit alone recently ("Head in the clouds" so to speak) thinking and feeling the way I have been. A sudden, very powerful train of experience/dream/thought/feeling rushed at me one week, just about a month or two ago, and I have shifted my thoughts and feelings in a total opposite direction from what I had been devoting them to(or making a massive attempt to ignore them, really).

My experiences that led to this shift are personal to me, so I am bashful to tell them, and that's how they are meant to be; personal. But I will just say that for too long I was in a downward spiral of emotion and thought, which eventually led to a stagnation of myself. I didn't know why I felt this way; I didn't want to think about it. So I didn't. And that was me.

I had had very personal experiences a few times in the somewhat recent past that gave me a hint as to what I would come to experience later (the big one), from which I would realize about something more than what I have known all my life. But at the time, those past experiences would be amazing at the time, but would fade in meaning and my belief of them very quickly. Then I felt extremely sad, and almost betrayed that what I had seen as a possible life changing way of thinking disappeared from me so fast; like waking up from the best dream.

But this last mind changing experience that I had was the one, I feel. Something "stuck", when the others had faded away so quickly. In the week after it, everything I came into contact with had such a connecting meaning. It all was one, including me. After some more days, the feeling faded in strength a bit, but has never gone away. I am still finding meaning in seemingly non-related, random things, situations, and people around me.

Like nutball Carrey alluded to in the video you put on the first page, it feels like riding a wave. At some times, things just rush in, and it feels so great. And other times, I have pretty deep feelings and thoughts of dread, sadness, and hopelessness in the same way I feel that positive connectedness. And also, like he said about having that one experience that "...was an expansive, amazing feeling of freedom, from myself, from my problems" and being a part of something bigger than myself, I have had that same experience, just this Easter, very early in the morning. "And ever since that day.. I have been trying to get back there!" I know that feeling so damn well! *fists clench*

This was my "bigger than me" experience, which incidentally, wasn't my first epiphany, but my most loved and revered: http://www.unexplain...1

As expected reading it back now, I wish I could do it near half the justice of how it felt personally to me, but I realize that is impossible.

Anyway, I'm writing too much it seems, so just wanted to thank you for showing me this thread, and seeing people talk about the same things I am feeling.

I'm glad you bumped it.  This was one of my favorite threads in my time on UM.  I read your other post you linked and I was really intrigued to see you referring to the experience as a "She".  I have always felt the same, but with me, I just assumed it was because I am female, but that didn't feel like the reason.  Anyway, it was interesting to see you felt the same and being male.  When I try to tell people about when I had something similar, I always wait for them to give me some blank look and say, "Yes?  And so....what's the big deal?" because there's no words to describe it and that's probably what makes it even more real to me, if that makes any sense.  You made me remember something, just that I'd kind of forgotten, but you said personal experiences that hinted at what was to come and not that this is anything like what you had, but around the time it happened to me, the one that I mentioned in this thread, I believe, but I think right before it happened I started noticing this weird kind of clear glow around trees, and I kept asking everyone to look and see if they saw it too.  It wouldn't even be a glow maybe but like there was just a tad bit more light around them in the shape of them and I don't know what it was or if I always saw it, but I was kind of in a place at that time where I started paying attention to things which led to what I experienced.  I can still see the tree thing if I try and kind of change my focus, I have no idea if it's related or what it even is, I could be just a freak, lol, but then I think I sort of learned to change perspectives or something, but it feels to me sort of like it was the beginning of that shift you mentioned, or to me it felt like that was happening.  I always describe the day it happened to me it the car, like someone interrupted my channel for that brief time.  At the very least, my tree watching was meditative and kind of probably put me in that place, maybe a more receptive place.  Who knows, ancients revered them, maybe there's something to that old wisdom.  Anyway, I really enjoyed reading this.  It's an experience that's stayed with me always, motivated me to keep trying and searching, show my butt up at tai chi class on Saturdays.

Quote

After some more days, the feeling faded in strength a bit, but has never gone away. I am still finding meaning in seemingly non-related, random things, situations, and people around me.

Maybe it's synchronicity......some people say they are kind of landmarks or signs that you were on the right path.  I notice them sometimes, some of them almost too unbelievable to think it's just random.

Edited by ChloeB, 17 April 2012 - 06:45 PM.

[Beany]

Sometimes I think Spirit taps us on the shoulder when we're ready, that we have little to say about the when & how of it. While the feeling of being one with everything isn't as bright as it once was for me, it is deeper and more meaningful, and becomes more so with the passing of time. It has integrated into my body & consciousness, and guides me. It's an essential part of who I am, for which I am grateful.

[_Only]

ChloeB, on 17 April 2012 - 06:31 PM, said:

You made me remember something, just that I'd kind of forgotten, but you said personal experiences that hinted at what was to come and not that this is anything like what you had, but around the time it happened to me, the one that I mentioned in this thread, I believe, but I think right before it happened I started noticing this weird kind of clear glow around trees, and I kept asking everyone to look and see if they saw it too.  It wouldn't even be a glow maybe but like there was just a tad bit more light around them in the shape of them and I don't know what it was or if I always saw it, but I was kind of in a place at that time where I started paying attention to things which led to what I experienced.  I can still see the tree thing if I try and kind of change my focus, I have no idea if it's related or what it even is, I could be just a freak, lol, but then I think I sort of learned to change perspectives or something, but it feels to me sort of like it was the beginning of that shift you mentioned, or to me it felt like that was happening.  I always describe the day it happened to me it the car, like someone interrupted my channel for that brief time.  At the very least, my tree watching was meditative and kind of probably put me in that place, maybe a more receptive place.

Well, I don't want to stir you up, but I just find that really interesting. On Friday (two days before I had that ecstatic meditation moment), I had driven a long drive to someone's house, where he was being kicked out for being strung out on drugs. I was taking my cousin; she went there to kind of give him an intervention of sorts, and we took him back to our city.

Well, I stayed in the car while she talked to him inside. It was a very long time - a couple hours or so - but I was just sitting inside the car, oddly very peaceful. It was a semi-wooded area, and sometime during the stay, I was just looking outside of the windshield at the tress in front of me, and saw that "clear glow" you mentioned. You're right, it's not a literal glow... well, kind of, but kind of not. Like seeing the outline of them in a different way, while looking at them, which happened to seem a white-ish, or clear, glowing outline. Which came with a real appreciation of their beauty. It just felt really good. This made me feel happy, and I just shut my eyes listening to the radio, and fell in and out of thought. The time passed very nicely. I didn't really have a sense of how long it was. I figured it was awhile, but despite how I would usually feel, I wasn't waiting for them to come out.

I also had the same moment at my house recently, looking left at a wall of ivy against the back fence in my backyard. I looked at it, saw that outlining glow, and all of the ivy blew from the wind. Again, just a very appreciative feeling of the beauty. I still catch myself looking at that back ivy, wondering if I'll see it again.

Like you, I don't know what that means, really. I just strangely identify with what you explained.

edit: And even as recent as that tree watching moment was, I had forgotten it until you nudged it back into my memory. A shame sometimes how often, and how much, we lose from the front of our minds.

Edited by _Only, 18 April 2012 - 01:18 AM.

[ChloeB]

_Only, on 18 April 2012 - 01:11 AM, said:

Well, I don't want to stir you up, but I just find that really interesting. On Friday (two days before I had that ecstatic meditation moment), I had driven a long drive to someone's house, where he was being kicked out for being strung out on drugs. I was taking my cousin; she went there to kind of give him an intervention of sorts, and we took him back to our city.

Well, I stayed in the car while she talked to him inside. It was a very long time - a couple hours or so - but I was just sitting inside the car, oddly very peaceful. It was a semi-wooded area, and sometime during the stay, I was just looking outside of the windshield at the tress in front of me, and saw that "clear glow" you mentioned. You're right, it's not a literal glow... well, kind of, but kind of not. Like seeing the outline of them in a different way, while looking at them, which happened to seem a white-ish, or clear, glowing outline. Which came with a real appreciation of their beauty. It just felt really good. This made me feel happy, and I just shut my eyes listening to the radio, and fell in and out of thought. The time passed very nicely. I didn't really have a sense of how long it was. I figured it was awhile, but despite how I would usually feel, I wasn't waiting for them to come out.

I also had the same moment at my house recently, looking left at a wall of ivy against the back fence in my backyard. I looked at it, saw that outlining glow, and all of the ivy blew from the wind. Again, just a very appreciative feeling of the beauty. I still catch myself looking at that back ivy, wondering if I'll see it again.

Like you, I don't know what that means, really. I just strangely identify with what you explained.

edit: And even as recent as that tree watching moment was, I had forgotten it until you nudged it back into my memory. A shame sometimes how often, and how much, we lose from the front of our minds.

Yes!!  That's exactly it, that whitish or clear outline.  I can't believe you saw that too and right before, that's really incredible.  Now I'm pretty convinced those 2 things were related somehow, they always felt to me to be.  You're the only person I know who has seen that or knows what I'm talking about.  But it is something with plants I believe, I would try other things that were kind of near trees, like a telephone pole or such and it wouldn't have that around it.  And I'm not really a person that "sees" things, ghosts, visions, none of that, just really this is all.  Wow, I really am surprised this happened like that to you as well, 2 days apart even.  Makes me even more curious about it now.

[jugoso]

ChloeB, on 17 April 2012 - 06:31 PM, said:

I'm glad you bumped it.  This was one of my favorite threads in my time on UM.  I read your other post you linked and I was really intrigued to see you referring to the experience as a "She".  I have always felt the same, but with me, I just assumed it was because I am female, but that didn't feel like the reason.  Anyway, it was interesting to see you felt the same and being male.  When I try to tell people about when I had something similar, I always wait for them to give me some blank look and say, "Yes?  And so....what's the big deal?" because there's no words to describe it and that's probably what makes it even more real to me, if that makes any sense.  You made me remember something, just that I'd kind of forgotten, but you said personal experiences that hinted at what was to come and not that this is anything like what you had, but around the time it happened to me, the one that I mentioned in this thread, I believe, but I think right before it happened I started noticing this weird kind of clear glow around trees, and I kept asking everyone to look and see if they saw it too.  It wouldn't even be a glow maybe but like there was just a tad bit more light around them in the shape of them and I don't know what it was or if I always saw it, but I was kind of in a place at that time where I started paying attention to things which led to what I experienced.  I can still see the tree thing if I try and kind of change my focus, I have no idea if it's related or what it even is, I could be just a freak, lol, but then I think I sort of learned to change perspectives or something, but it feels to me sort of like it was the beginning of that shift you mentioned, or to me it felt like that was happening.  I always describe the day it happened to me it the car, like someone interrupted my channel for that brief time.  At the very least, my tree watching was meditative and kind of probably put me in that place, maybe a more receptive place.  Who knows, ancients revered them, maybe there's something to that old wisdom.  Anyway, I really enjoyed reading this.  It's an experience that's stayed with me always, motivated me to keep trying and searching, show my butt up at tai chi class on Saturdays.



Maybe it's synchronicity......some people say they are kind of landmarks or signs that you were on the right path.  I notice them sometimes, some of them almost too unbelievable to think it's just random.

Two comments. The first regarding synchronicity. I went through a period of amazing coincidences. I was really wrestling with all kinds of spiritual questions and was in my head a lot. As I became more aware of my environment, I started to feel as if all the questions i had in my hhead were beingg answered by everything around me. At first I rejected it as loco but they just kept occurring. I was getting my answers from nature, from music I was listening to at the time and from people who I didn´t know and could have no idea what I was thinking. My problem was that they just seemed to fit so well with my situation. I was unclear as to whether or not I was just attaching my own meaning to everything. Then I think that I started to try and control it and started to slip into a mild solipsism and decided I was just creating all these connections and was losing my marbles.   

Recently, I have become acquainted with the term of "Upaguru". This term must become to be understood as every being, whatever it may be, with whom an encounter is for someone the occasion or starting point of spiritual development and it is not at all necessary that this being be conscious of the role it plays. For further explanation

http://books.google....f=false         p.105

I know that Zen Buddhists believe that contained within every question is the answer, so is it not possible that if we are asking the right question(s) and our awareness is focused and we are tuned into our "inner guidance" enough that the answers may be right in front of us?

I really don´t know but am just asking the question.

Second comment is actually more of a question for you ChloeB. Is what you and _Only are describing in relation to the leaves in any way related to the article I sent you many moons ago with the plants in different stages and visualizing the transformations? I can´t find the article although I´m sure it´s in my computer somewhere.

Anyway pretty cool that both your experiences were so similar!!

Edited by jugoso, 18 April 2012 - 07:10 PM.

[ChloeB]

jugoso, on 18 April 2012 - 06:51 PM, said:

Two comments. The first regarding synchronicity. I went through a period of amazing coincidences. I was really wrestling with all kinds of spiritual questions and was in my head a lot. As I became more aware of my environment, I started to feel as if all the questions i had in my hhead were beingg answered by everything around me. At first I rejected it as loco but they just kept occurring. I was getting my answers from nature, from music I was listening to at the time and from people who I didn´t know and could have no idea what I was thinking. My problem was that they just seemed to fit so well with my situation. I was unclear as to whether or not I was just attaching my own meaning to everything. Then I think that I started to try and control it and started to slip into a mild solipsism and decided I was just creating all these connections and was losing my marbles.   

I know what you mean.  I've had the same thing, like people would show up in my life just at perfect times like that; it happened a lot to me in a dark period I had, a very lost period, but then it seems to have slacked off, but I kind of feel like I'm not in such a place anymore so, I don't know, maybe the need isn't there anymore.  What's weird is I do kind of see it in reverse now, people saying it to me, like something I'll say.  I've even been called creepy, haha, in a teasing way, but it does get weird!!  And yes, you totally start wondering if you're loco en la cabeza!  The nature thing, like my mom, she died when I was pretty young and it was hard, very hard for me, so many things left unsaid and unfinished and she loved birds, and we put a robin beany baby in her casket with her and there for months there was this robin that was almost a pest around my door, didn't even act like a typical skittish bird and it was just always, always there, up until I got to a point where I was dealing with it better and I never see it now, maybe I see them flying around outside, but not one that was coming up so close all the time and acting so strange.

Quote

Recently, I have become acquainted with the term of "Upaguru". This term must become to be understood as every being, whatever it may be, with whom an encounter is for someone the occasion or starting point of spiritual development and it is not at all necessary that this being be conscious of the role it plays. For further explanation

http://books.google....f=false         p.105

That's interesting because it's something I try to do lately and nothing really metaphysical or spiritual about this, but just kind of a shift in how I think about life, but when I meet someone new or someone comes in to my life, I always kind of think of them as not just showing up by accident, but that I'm meant to learn something from them, maybe they are especially good at something I could learn from them or they inspire me or show me something about me or the world I wouldn't have known, but the truth is those positive pleasant people aren't the ones that got me thinking that way.....the reason I started thinking that way is for the people who have latched onto me or came in and I haven't like them or they've annoyed me or done something to me and then that's the challenging part, to find something worthwhile to take away from that experience, but sometimes those occasions are the ones that provide us the most spiritual growth.  Sometimes there is someone I just cannot stand and I just want to tell them off and set them straight, but I'll think why do they bother you so much and sometimes I think it's more a lesson about me, maybe deep down inside something I can't stand about them is something within me, maybe repressed that I don't show, but that I'm struggling with it, maybe even subconsciously, but anyway, it's kind of like what you said I think, but it's just a kind of effort I make or strive to.

Quote

I know that Zen Buddhists believe that contained within every question is the answer, so is it not possible that if we are asking the right question(s) and our awareness is focused and we are tuned into our "inner guidance" enough that the answers may be right in front of us?

I really don´t know but am just asking the question.

LOL, well then I ought to be full of answers because I ask tons and tons of questions, drove my mom CRAZY with it.  I can tell when I'm asking the right questions, how I feel, just like on here, if it's petty debate or productive discussions and I know the difference, those my drama side and bored side and the fact that people tend to gravitate more towards the first type I have to catch myself and call myself out on it a lot, all the time, lol.  

Quote

Second comment is actually more of a question for you ChloeB. Is what you and _Only are describing in relation to the leaves in any way related to the article I sent you many moons ago with the plants in different stages and visualizing the transformations? I can´t find the article although I´m sure it´s in my computer somewhere.

Anyway pretty cool that both your experiences were so similar!!

I found that pm, I still had it, but it's gone now, the page I mean:  http://www.spiritalchemy.com/articles/ArtOfNature.html
Though I don't think so, that exercise on that page you sent me was a visualization exercise if I recall and it would be like a leaf and you would visualize it in stages and practice on making it grow.  This is really simple with the trees, you just see the outline of the tree, usually I see it better from some distance and around it, there's just a kind of transparent light than is just a little more brighter than as you get out from the tree.  Like say you look at the tree in 2d and you traced its outline and then blew it up maybe 10% and placed the originally tracing on top of the larger one, that little bit sticking out of the original is kind of the lit up part, it's nothing really obvious, just very subtle.

[Beany]

Do you think you may be seeing the tree's aura, part of its electromagnetic field? It's very difficult to describe the experience of seeing something with one's 3rd eye, as that may be how you're seeing and perceiving the aura. One couldn't see it with normal vision, but with the 3rd eye or using soft-vision, it becomes apparent.

[ChloeB]

Beany, on 19 April 2012 - 01:45 AM, said:

Do you think you may be seeing the tree's aura, part of its electromagnetic field? It's very difficult to describe the experience of seeing something with one's 3rd eye, as that may be how you're seeing and perceiving the aura. One couldn't see it with normal vision, but with the 3rd eye or using soft-vision, it becomes apparent.

I don't know, Beany, maybe, but I don't really feel like I'm looking at anything really with anything but my normal eyes; it's why I said, I kept asking other people, because I'd be like...."right there!  it's right there, you can't see that?"  Because it seems like anyone should be able to see it.  Made kinda feel kooky, lol.  But what is soft-vision?

[Seeker79]

ChloeB, on 19 April 2012 - 06:48 PM, said:

I don't know, Beany, maybe, but I don't really feel like I'm looking at anything really with anything but my normal eyes; it's why I said, I kept asking other people, because I'd be like...."right there!  it's right there, you can't see that?"  Because it seems like anyone should be able to see it.  Made kinda feel kooky, lol.  But what is soft-vision?

Hahaha welcome to the kook club.during OBEs I see a crackling energy running through trees that  slides up into my skin when I touch it. It's very pleasurable. So don't feel like to much of a kook, I talk to my oak trees.

[Beany]

I've had long & very satisfying conversations with tree myself. Soft eyes is when you look at something but don't focus on it. It allows for greater peripheral vision, so that one can take in more. It's kind of like seeing something out of the corner of your eye, like those pesky little shadows that flit around. I think maybe it shifts the energy up to the 3rd eye. I would think if you're the only one seeing it that you're not seeing it with only normal vision, but maybe with augmented vision. Try consciously using your 3rd eye and see what happens.

[jugoso]

Watched Jim Carrey´s Lemony Snicket. It was very eye-opening for me. Made me think of the opening post to this thread and some of the comments about Carrey´s sincerity. I think he´s the real deal. Judge for yourself.

Which made me think of this.

Peace to All!!

[_Only]

Just visiting his extremely eccentric website is almost enough reason for me to think there are a lot of deep things floating around in his mind. I had remembered seeing it awhile ago, but didn't know at the time that he gravitated toward the spiritual direction. It's www.jimcarrey.com, but it has so many graphical and video looped things going on in the site, that I have trouble getting the page to load. Here's a pic of the general feel.