...Have you ever experienced something that you can’t fully explain? I mean, ...not by conventional methods anyway? ...Something that due to the very nature of it, you just, ...don’t tell people?
...I suppose I should give a brief backdrop before delving into this, and I only delve due to a friends interest, as she experienced something similar at one point in her life. Her and I are supposed to sit and discuss all this over wine soon. I will start with a *very* brief overview of my childhood. My mother died of cancer the day before my fourth birthday, about a month and a half after my sister was born. I never had any religious upbringing at all. I practically lost my entire youth to depression. I was a very depressed child with, I guess you could say, "emotional problems". I hated myself and I think I hated God. I hated life. (I think I recall being at my fourth birthday and asking "Why can't my mommy be here?", and my Grandmother replied "Because God took her, honey."--Perhaps this is where my loathing for God originated...) I also had a strong loathing for organized religion which is still manifest within me to some extent even to this day. ...For the longest time, months even, I prayed to the Devil, for the "Lord of the Underworld", or whomever, to take me away. I would pray to him/it and say that if it took me I would serve him. (I was young, maybe around ten or so, I can't recall exactly.) I was *so* filled with chaos and rage and anger and sorrow. Sometimes I would just cry...in private of course.
Anyway, this one night, after "praying" to be taken from my body, etc, I lay there drifting to sleep. I hated myself and life and I just didn't want to be here anymore. I was still wishing this as I was falling asleep. I had been wishing to be out of my body for about three months or more, and no, I was never molested or physically abused in any way, except for what I did to myself with the cutting and stuff. I think I was in that state where you are somewhere between sleep and awake, where your conscious is closer to sleep, but your subconscious is still awake. You know, ...ever been laying there, say, after waking up on a Saturday morning and turning on the TV and watching Saturday morning cartoons (as a kid of course, because, you know, we wouldn’t actually do that now), after having a bowl of cereal and then you get a little sleepy again due to the insulin spike from the high glycemic carbs and insufficient protein and so you start to drift off back to sleep and you drift into "dream state" and you start to dream and your dream doesn't make any fucking sense (not that they ever do) and when you awaken you realize that not only the dialogue, but some of the dream as well, coincided with the words from the TV? It was sort of like that I guess. As I was lying there I started to feel a little "light". You know how after laying on one of those air-mattresses for several hours while out at a lake and you feel all the waves, and then when you go to bed that night in the tent or whatever, as you are laying there trying to fall asleep you can sort of still "feel" the waves of the lake even though you are laying on solid ground? It was sort of like that. I got really light and I sort of started to float. It was a little more violent at first in that my "soul" or "self" or whatever was sort of bouncing around inside of the shell of my body. Like it was trying to break away but couldn't or something. So I tried to allow myself to relax and just "go with it", just like when you are laying there in the tent and you try to "go with it" when you feel the waves cuz it feels neat. I tried to go with it...and then I started to be pulled downwards. I use the word "pulled" because it was a definite pulling sensation. It was similar to that "drifting" feeling like after being on a lake, but it was a "pulling" feeling instead. It wasn't fast, but rather slow. I sort of went with it because it was kind of relaxing, I think. I didn't really know what was happening, but, ...I just went with it. I wanted to see where I would go. I also figured it wouldn't last long cuz all those times back in the tent when I would start to feel the waves of the lake and tried to go with it cuz it felt neat, it would go away. As I started to be pulled downward I just started to see the shell of my body. I was about half way out of it at the time. I continued downward and as I did I could see the "shell" of my mattress. It is really kind of hard to elucidate upon this whole experience via words. I was definitely being pulled downward, or so it felt. I was going with it and I continued downward, through my mattress and into my box-spring. It wasn't until I got about half way through my box-spring (half way through the bottom of it) that I really focused in on the shell of my body. I could just "see" it there, ...and I was still slowly being pulled downward, further away from my body. It started to feel cold. The earth perhaps? I don't know. But after I focused in on the shell of my body and realized that I was close to the ground, almost all the way through the box-spring, I suddenly lost the feeling of awe and it was replenished with that of fear. I fought like mad to get back into my body. It wasn't working at first. The pulling started to get stronger as I was resisting. The more I resisted the harder it pulled. I was terrified. Suddenly I was not the tough little kid who showed no emotion. I was, as I truly was, I suppose, a scared and lonely child. So I fought and fought and cried and panic set in and I fought *SO* hard, ...and finally, the pulling sensation started to lighten a little and I started to go back towards my body, ever so slowly, but I could still feel the pulling, though it was lessening in strength. If I had stopped fighting, it would have pulled me downward again. All I wanted to do was get back into my body. After all those months of "pleading" and wishing and yearning to be free from my body, when it was finally happening, all I could hope for and fight for was to get back in. As I returned to my body I tried to awaken and get up...but when I "came-to", ...I realized that I could not really see the ceiling or anything really...which seemed very strange. Then...at the foot of my bed...there it stood, a very large, maybe around eight or nine feet tall or so, dark "demon like" being with huge wings, though they were not outstretched. They were sort of just draped around it. It just stood there looking at me...it didn't look happy. It was just so massive compared to me...so massive compared to me. There were dark flames around it, which did give off some weird type of "light", if you can call it that, though they were dark flames--not the type you would roast marshmallows over. Even with the flames, it was still very dark in my "room". It just stood there...looking at me. It looked right at me...right in the eyes. Right in the eyes. It looked angry. Paroxysms of fear, terror and helplessness erupted within me. I tried to scream. As tears ran down my face I tried to scream. But I was in such terror that *nothing* came out. I tried and tried and nothing! I then started to get out a scream, though ever so slight, and then, with all I could muster, I let it bellow out of me. I just screamed. I screamed as hard as I could...I wasn't even in control any more and every ounce of energy I could summon I put into my scream. Finally, a light started to form at the top left side of my view, over the demons right shoulder, slightly behind it. As it did, the being started to fade out and then the light got really bright and then I couldn't see the demon anymore, though I couldn't really see anything at all. The light was blinding. When I started to "come-to", I realized that the light was that of the hallway light and standing in the doorway was my family; my uncle, my dad and my sister. And so the "experience" ended. They kept asking me if I was "OK?" and all I could do was say yes and say "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry I woke you. I'm fine. Go back to bed. I'm sorry." I didn’t know what to say. All that came out was “I’m sorry.” I remember the door closing and then I sort of just crashed out after that. I felt more exhausted than I can ever recall being in my life...mentally, emotionally and physically. I quickly fell asleep.
...I suppose I like to think that I stared the "Lord of Chaos" in the eyes and refuted him, as one who is writing a philosophy of religion book had mentioned to me as a possible hypothesis. If such is true, then I wonder what awaits me in the afterlife. When I am called upon to fight in the next great battle between Law and Chaos in the afterlife, I’m sure he/it will be gunning for me...seeking it's vengeance. Waiting to wreak his vengeance. It knows my face. ...If such be the case, then so be it. I’ll go down fighting.
I had only shared this with a very few people and they were mostly religious people and I only did so in some desperate attempt at sort of "seeking answers". I told them in confidence at the time. It wasn’t until my mid/late twenties that I even told my sister. ...Now I don’t care if people know. I no longer care what people think and I open myself up to be judged I guess. Through my desperate attempt to seek guidance or answers, ...I have come to learn that others have had similar experiences. Call it what you want, ...ghosts, ...demons, ...angels, ...bullshit. The labels are irrelevant, ...the experiences were real enough to the individuals and had a profound effect on them.
But there lies a conundrum, ...how is this experience to be explained, whether visceral or intellectual? What is the "correct" interpretation of what happened? I mean, perhaps it was just as it sounds. Or is it just some sort of psychological manifestation do to my dwelling on it for so long, thus it manifested into a dream? Sort of like when you are stressing over a math test for several weeks and then one night you have a dream about math problems. When I worked at this horrible job for a company called R.P.S.--which is kind of like U.P.S., but worse-- (it is supposed to stand for "Roadway Packaging Systems", but to me & my fellow co-workers at the time, it stood for "Ruthless Promotion of Slavery"), I loaded boxes onto a truck at 3:00 in the morning and when I would get home I would nap and when I would nap I would have dreams about the fucking boxes and the belt and the trucks, etc. So, ...is all I did was have a dream, as with the boxes and math problem scenario? Or was it something else? Something of more significance than I would care to imagine? I don't know. A paradox of sorts, I suppose....
As I said, I kept this from everyone for a very very long time. Now I don’t care who knows. As I’ve said before, ...we all have a past. All of us. I think we can all learn so much from each other if we were all willing to speak with an absolute honesty, ...even though honesty be as much a thing of the beholder as beauty, ...but that’s beside the point. ...Let ego give way to veracity, ...etc, etc, etc.
