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Your First Time

12:00 / 25.10.07

Call it whatever you like - an initiation, an epiphany, an awakening, a moment of clarity, etc., but nearly everyone I know who has a firm grip on their own spirituality has one of these stories. Somewhere along the line, we've all had the one experience that once we'd accepted what we'd perceived, we knew there was no going back, and that we couldn't keep ignoring what was going on around us.

13:34 / 25.10.07

You show me yours, I'll show you mine.

;-)

Tryphena Absent

13:40 / 25.10.07

Sadly when I saw this in the recently updated list I really thought it was going to be people splurging embarrassing stories about losing their virginity.

13:53 / 25.10.07

Dear Temple Forum:

I'm a student at a small Midwestern college. When my girlfriend told me that she was throwing a surprise party for my 20th birthday, I never expected what she and her sorority sisters had planned. It involved the Goetia, a pentacle, and more blood than I could have imagined . . .

06:06 / 26.10.07

Bwhahahahahhaha, that shits amazing!

06:07 / 26.10.07

Hmmm. I don't know, Unconditional... Well, firstly, to answer your question on it's own terms, I remember being really blown away by by my dreams. The same symbol had been recurring for months and when I understood what it meant, and that there was a logic behind it - wow. A par to of me speaking that's wiser than you know. I'm sure this wasn't the first thing that happened to me. Perhaps the very first was having some alarming experiences with Taoist meditation which were very overpowering. This would sound a bit "Readers Wives" if I were to narrate it fully, as it involved some spontaneous "arousal".

However, I'd also question the basic terms of the thread - do we have to have something unexplained and mysterious happen to us to develop a spirituality? While I accept that there are some things which are AFAIK unexplainable, I don't really like mystification for it's own sake - I wonder to what degree this is just inability to focus on what's happening, or if it serves the purpose of evasion of difficult situations of emotions.

This is reflected in my own practice. Some of the teachings I've been exposed to are just very simple but profound explorations of being human. One of my biggest "epiphanies" or moments of change was the realisation that I was putting myself under lots of pressure and I could act with a lot more self-compassion. In its consequences, that's been more profound for me than any spooky occurrences.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

08:15 / 26.10.07

I was going to say something along the same lines, unconditional. This kind of thread can be fun, in a stories-round-the-campfire kind of way, but they never really seem to achieve much. The spooky-inexplicable stuff happens, sure, but for it to mean anything you kind of have to be there. I worry also that spotlighting the big events can cause people to neglect or overlook the importance of the less glamourous but often more vital elements of a magical life.

11:59 / 26.10.07

True enough. I was hoping for more of the "stories around the campfire" kind of thing.

I've always been curious about other people's experiences. You might even say I collect stories of all kinds from the people I interact with. By way of example, although admittedly an odd one, I'm a hairdresser by trade. I see scars on my clients' scalps that not many other people get to see, just by virtue of being up close and focused on it. I nearly always ask how they got them, and then I get to add their stories to my collection.

I'm not sure what I hope to gain from having these collected tales, if anything, but I've loved the act of collecting them since I first started. There's something incredible about someone sharing a tiny piece of their life with me, even something as simple as "when I was five, my big brother pushed me off the swing set, and I bonked my head".

That's all I'm really after here, when it comes right down to it. In my (admittedly insufficient) experience, people will share things online that they wouldn't be as comfortable sharing in person. This is a tricksy topic to bring up with people, since by it's nature it implies that I too have had one of these experiences, and that's been enough to trigger the "wow, she really is that crazy" stares. I try to avoid that situation in general, since I don't particularly enjoy being the target of that look, and I hate causing that tense silence in a group while people sort out whether I actually just said that, or if they're going to pretend they misheard me.

18:28 / 26.10.07

My problem with a thread like this is that weird shit happens all the time, and also - that I couldn't explain? There's always ways to explain - dozens. Some of 'em wrong. But coming up with an explanation isn't generally hard. That's a technicality, though. My bigger problem is that I don't clearly remember my earliest weird-shit experiences, since they happened before I was 5 years old. It's far more "When did you first realize the stuff you'd been seeing wasn't stuff other people could see?"

And I know I'm not the only one whose "first time" wasn't something that happened lately.

A thread about revelations or initiations might be more fruitful simply because both of these things happen in later stages as well, and they stand out no matter where you are in your spiritual process. The beginning - if there is one - doesn't necessarily stand out that way.

--Ember--

Less searchable M0rd4nt

08:48 / 27.10.07

Not quite what you were looking for, unconditional, but you might find these threads of interest.

Why did you get into magic?--a thread where people talk about their reasons for getting mixed up in all this, some of which include anomalous events;

Talk to the Cynic, which explores some of the reasons why people continue to practice magic; and

Temple Forum Users – Explain Yourselves! which develops along similar lines.

00:43 / 01.11.07

Well Unconditional, no one else wants to play with the fascination and levity of the campfire scenario but I'm like You, I like to hear this kind of stuff and I like to share. No, the following story isn't my first 'weird tale' and no, essentially there's no point to my sharing it and Your collecting it, but then again there's really no point to the two Newcastle Brown Ales I just clipped so...

I had just opened mysself up to the idea of being able to 'hack' the OS of this temporal reality we all cling to so nervously. I had been working on my first novel for a while, but this idea seemed to charge it. I wrote a scene where a character finds something hidden in an old tattered comic book based on an HP Lovecraft story (yes I'm one of those Howard cunts). The character found the comic in the trunk of a junked car in a junkyard. Not long after (memory says a couple days but I'd put it a tad longer, you know how we pad our memories and all) I damaged a part of my auto and went to a junkyard to see if I could replace the part cheap. As we walked around at one point I turned around and was literally almost knocked over when what sat before me but an old tattered comic based on an HP story in the open trunk of a junked buick. Still have that comic too. a reminder. That was in '01. Weirdness ebbs and flows since, and surly did b4, its just that really opened me up to what it feels like when the old 'magickal thinking' apparatus kicks on.
Thanks for listening Unconditional. I'd love to hear one of Yours.

09:02 / 01.11.07

Thats facinating Neville but, just as an aside, i'm not quite sure what a Howard vagina is and think maybe your terminology may not be a great idea on barbelith.

Also i'm curious as to what you found hidden in the comic. Something to parallel the find in the novel?

12:23 / 01.11.07

Have PM'd Neville, asking that he propose the edit on the offending phrase.

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:46 / 01.11.07

Really? Gosh.

19:27 / 01.11.07

Why gosh?

02:23 / 02.11.07

Man, I had my first telekinetic experience last week in class, and I've been meaning to ask you all about it, because its validity is a little sketchy to me, but it was still pretty uncanny...

I was sitting front and center in my Religion and Psychology class (appropriate for what was to occur...)

Something in the lecture led my thoughts to a book (The Holotropic Mind by Stanislav Grof) and the subject of moving objects with the mind. At that moment, I focused my attention on the podium directly in front of me that my professor was sitting behind. It shifted about six inches forward.

Here's the catch that threw me off though. It looked like HIS feet also pushed the podium forward at the exact moment I attempted to with the force of thought. So I'm not sure it qualifies as telekinesis since there was another force involved, maybe more of a synchronicity in thought and physical reality, but its the closest thing to telekinesis I have ever experienced (and I never believed in it before...)

Not going to read too much into it, but I would love to hear about any similar experiences. Too much Jedi stuff going on...

Less searchable M0rd4nt

10:42 / 06.11.07

Well Unconditional, no one else wants to play with the fascination and levity of the campfire scenario but I'm like You, I like to hear this kind of stuff and I like to share.

Oh, really. You like to share. Then how come the only place I recall seeing your name lately is when you were asking for stuff in the Gek thread? Do you know how many reams of text some of the other respondants in this thread have "shared" on this board? Nah, me neither, but it's per-len-teeee. Still, I guess all that personal experience and group discussion isn't tickling your palate like a good old camp-fire story since you've decided to swing by and have a dig at people you've barely ever interacted with.

Good grief.