reply to post by starhill
You have been getting lots of replies. I hope you are open to one more. I know its long, it took me a long time to write.
First off I am not totally square to all of this stuff, I have experimented with hallucinogenic drugs, read into the occult a lot, and been a member
of groups of people who are very into the occult. I find it all very fascinating. This post will upset a lot of people on this forum, but I think it
is exactly what you need to hear.
Very often the occult attracts insane, mentally unstable people. You could say there are two types of people that get into the occult in modern day,
one is the philosophically inclined person interested in ecclectic studies of other cultures and alternative models of reality. This first type
enjoys thought experiments of mysticism and pondering metaphysics, but they keep themselves protected from buying too much into it all with a firm
layer of agnosticism about everything they encounter, even their own personal experiences. The other type of personality that comes into occult
studies is already somewhat unstable, and sortof tumbling down a rabbit hole. When you meet someone of the first type, they will often speak of how
hard it is to find a group of peers to study with, because there are SO MANY unstable personality types are always flooding these social circles.
You sound like a very good person, and it saddens me to hear you talk the way you do because you sound like you are in a lot of pain and you genuinely
want to heal yourself. But I am going to give you some unsugar-coated tough love. The fact is that to the average person, the things you are saying
and describing make you sound absolutely schizophrenic. I don't say this to be mean, but to give you a reality check. You have chemical imbalances
in your brain to begin with. This makes you predisposed to be in the second type of people, whom reading into the occult poses a serious danger to
your mental health. You began as an unstable OCD possibly bipolar disorder, and your pursuit of the occult has filled your imagination with knots of
confusion and garbage that your brain is desperately trying to make sense of. You have lost your healthy skeptical agnosticism about it all which
should be protecting you from many the insane ideas of the things you read and hear from people.
In being so blunt and telling you that in fact, YES, you ARE imagining these negative influences, I run a huge risk of pushing you away and making you
ignore everything I say. Because in my experience many people I have met in your exact situation simply want desperately to find others who will
validate the experiences they have had, the way their confused mind has chosen to interpret them. But you sound like you are right on the verge of
healing yourself and being able to accept that this is all in your head, which is the first step towards putting it behind you.
You are asking for advice on this forum because you are looking for people who will understand where you are coming from and not judge you, perhaps
the way you percieve I am. But often unstable people are drawn to other unstable people and they validate each other and keep each other from moving
on. I signed up for ATS just now, for you, because I feel for you in your confusion and desire to heal yourself, and I feel that so much of these
three pages of replies are doing you so much more harm than good. I don't want to say that these replies are from bad people and I don't want to
insult them, because I'm sure they are well intended, but many repliers are the types of people who, to put it mildly, are toying with their own grip
on reality and have no business trying to give you advice. Specifically, ignore posts of people telling you to do banishing rituals, that in itself
is an action to symbolically protect you from a hallucinated danger, and is actually a validation of OCD. "I wont feel protected from my delusions
without repeating a ritual over and over". That is the very definition of OCD. Ignore the people trying to go on about other dimensions and other
planes of reality. That is so far from anything helpful, they are just as lost as you are and are just offering you new paths of schizophrenia to go
out on. Ignore the posts like "yes its a demon, and its stronger than you so dont try to fight it". That is TERRIBLE programing for your brain.
Your brain IS in control. This is the key: Your brain IS operating PERFECTLY -- trying to act in the most beneficial way it can figure out BASED ON
THE MODEL OF REALITY YOU HAVE GIVEN IT. The problem is that your model of reality has been polluted for years by occult study without the protection
of agnosticism. You need GROUNDING, back to the physical world.
Normally, I would never give someone the advice to go with the flow of everyone else and do what they do, it's good to be an individual, but the
extreme form of being an individual with a model too different from everyone else is schizophrenia which you are describing in yourself to a tee. The
hallucinations of trees with human traits, trouble holding on to your identity, etc, and especially seeing yourself as especially important in the
scheme of the universe. All insanity is in some form or other an attempt for an individual in an incomprehensibly more massive universe to feel
special or elevated amongst the rest of the people in the world, to think they have magical powers, to think they are a "chosen one", to believe
they can channel, or they are a mother goddess or whatever.
I feel like I am betraying many of my occult interests and friends by saying this, but all occultism is some form of (hopefully) controlled insanity.
At this point, you need to need to program yourself back into a reality where there is no magick. Argument about whether magic/occultism is or isn't
"true" is beyond the scope of whats important. Whats important is the programming that you feed your unconscious mind. In your situation, you need
materialistic programming to bring you back from the confusion your mind is manifesting based on its current programming. You need to start to
envision yourself in a world where there are no demons or angels. Magical powers do not exist. All "psychics" are (occasionally well meaning)
frauds. There is no reincarnation (from ETs or otherwise). There are no "magical negative influences". Dont try to "fight" the negative
influence, that just keeps validating that it is real, instead FORGET the negative influence, let those conceptual nodes in your brain fade away over
time by changing the focus of your attention to other subjects. LOSE INTEREST in the IDEA of the negative influence (or bad luck) as an explanation
for your confusion. The explanation is that you have polluted your model of reality with tons of conflicting occult ideas without being appropriately
skeptical about them at first, or having kept a safe agnostic distance. And now your brain is doing its best to make sense of conflicting
information.
Rather than, magic, influences, etc, think that all there is, is your unconscious/subconscious mind. As Robert Anton Wilson said "What the thinker
thinks, the prover proves". Whatever your model of reality thinks, another part of your brain will go to work gathering evidence in your
interpretation of events you observe to prove that model. When you think you have some negative influence targeting you, your unconscious mind will
find evidence for this in your daily life. When you think you have magical powers, your brain will find evidence for them. When you think you are a
reincarnated ET, your subconscious will prove this to you by offering corroborating interpretations of things you observe which validate that
perspective.
I don't want to say that all study of the occult is bad, because I myself find it fascinating, but you MUST keep some healthy agnosticism about it.
When a person begins to get so into the occult that they lose their agnosticism for certainty about entities and influences and magick, then problems
are on the horizon for them.
It worries me that you are seeking help in the Bible, not because the bible is inherently bad or that it cant help some people, but from your
particular position, you have to realize that the bible IS occultism. Its just more of the same. Its just the particular brand of occultism that
your culture deems acceptable. If you get to into reading the bible then you run the risk of the exact same thing happening to you again, and you
could fall into religious zealotry. You need grounding in material reality. For some people, spiritual studies can help you feel like you have found
a center, for others, often for those who aren't so stable in the first place, spiritual studies are a breeding ground for complexes and paranoia,
providing fuel and validation for hallucinations. Religion, spirituality, mysticism, occultism, its all part of the same thing -- a system of
programming your brain. That's why occultism is dangerous for some people because you are essentially opening your mental gearbox and tinkering with
things, if you are not careful you will end up programming your brain with a bunch of conflicting garbage and you lose your grip on reality. Now that
I said that, DO NOT get all worried about how do I reprogram myself back to normal, your brain will do this automatically IF you get yourself back
into mundane activities. Get a job.
It sounds like I am telling you to just become an atheist, and in a sense I am. But understand I am not just promoting atheism as the solution to
everyone's problems. I am more specifically saying that FOR YOU, right now, the mental program of atheism is the antidote you need for your
confusion, to help you back into a more functional reality.
Most of us have boring lives where we feel trapped in the mundane, and so we seek out fantasies of magic and demons, or even more common, God on
Sunday. You have gone too far to the other side. What you need to do is first think (so the prover will prove it) that you have the power to heal
yourself and to move on from this time in your life. Your brain is trying to operate in the reality model you have given it, and what you need to do
is start giving it richer more grounded models to take over. Watch documentaries on the discovery channel. Since you are attracted to the occult you
obviously like the feeling of having your mind blown, I might suggest documentaries on astronomy and space. Keep feeding your mind information from a
scientifically grounded perspective until scientific modes of thought, not mysticism/occultism, begins to take the dominant role in your model of
reality. Ground yourself in science and materialism, I dont mean buy lots of stuff, but study physics and biology, rather than magic and the bible.
Submerge yourself back into the mundane of every day life. See your identity as that of a normal sane person, ie don't think of yourself as crazy,
and get normal hobbies. Let some time pass while you are submerged in the mundane, and these symptoms, such as paranoia about negative influences
will start to become memories off a previous time in your life that you are glad is over. All those painful embarrassing memories will become stories
from a long time ago when you were in a bad place.
As far as seeking therapy, I'm not big on therapy usually, at least not weekly sessions which are a ripoff, but I think you should find a
psychologist who will simply check back with you every now and then to see how you are doing as you pursue mundane hobbies and rebuild your model back
to one which is more grounded in everyday mundane concerns.
It sounds like you are already on the right track avoiding the occult subjects that originally put you down this rabbit hole. Remember that you have
the power to heal yourself, by simply continuing to exist and changing your focus from the mystical to the ordinary.