I have recently had experiences that i believe to be a form of enlightenment. I was having trouble trusting what it was I saw and felt and was inclined to write it off as blown brain cells and delusion, but the experience has since recurred and I've been able to able to somewhat piece the experience together. I've also since visited the religious section in my local used book store to find some accounts of enlightenment. What I have found so far has been soothing and reassuring.

So I guess first I'll try to describe the vision. Basically I was engulfed in an amazing brilliant omnipotent light. The light was of a quality I've never experienced and simply being in its very presence caused me to weep with joy and I felt a sensation of being surrounded, engulfed rather, in warm love the color of the sun. At first I was afraid of the light for its brilliance seemed reminiscent of the old description of the light you're not supposed to go to cause you know why. And so my fear caused me to be a little reluctant to let myself go and be embraced by it. Once I recognized the essence of the light I let myself go and soon thereafter it began to fade into the light bulbs above me head. As the radiance was subsiding to the regular luminescence of the light bulbs, I spoke to the light and asked it to take me with it. The light bulbs momentarily flared up again in what seemed to me as a response to my request saying that its not my time. that i have yet things to do here. it was also sort of a reminder that it is always there in the light, in the sun. the very essence of life. I asked if I could come and visit it and again in a lesser radiance the light responded with what I perceived as yes of course.

Now I guess I have some more explaining to do at this point. What did I do to get there and what is my mental state. For the past three months I have been in a miserable state. Possibly the worst crisis I've ever been in. Like many of you I grew up in the patriarchal structure of christianity and a very blind and bland version at that. Furthermore my father is a domineering, wife abusing son of an asshole (Don't get me wrong I pity them both, their struggles will be harder than mine. My father must harbor something deep and dark.). Now I don't want to get too much into my religious background other than to say that this past winter I've been in the throws of internal conflict in trying to shed the dualistic view of the world that had been indoctrinated into me with the male side continually beating up the female side. I'd taken to drinking heavily and taking vicodin to sedate my pain and I just kept sinking lower and lower to the point where I could hardly carry a conversation with somebody. All sense of humor and left me and was undetectable in most everything I saw. So I'd began experimenting with some nitrous oxide as it can be a good escape. During one of my meditations with nitrous a strange thing happened. In the dark recesses of my minds eye I saw what I guess I will describe as a tiny diamond. A small sharp point of light that began to duplicate itself in a circular pattern with a bigger and bigger circles growing out of the original circle. I quickly jolted myself awake fearing some bad biology was going on. But it was immensely intriguing. So I tried another...now let me take a quick minute to explain my dosage of nitrous. I was using one to two cartridges of the whipped cream chargers and i may or may not have been stoned...so with this next one I was again able to achieve that vision and it was again very interesting and intriguing and what i noticed is that my breathing had become very quick and shallow and my eyes seemed to be in an REM type of movement and as I became conscious of this I got freaked out and again discontinued the meditation. A day or two after this occurrence, I smoked a cigarette and as a result it seemed I came down with a terrible cold that turned into an infection that only until two Fridays ago I was able to expel from my body with the aid of some anti-biotics and some mushrooms. I'm not sure how much of each was responsible for what, certainly they both helped out as illness finds easy prey of those low in spirit. So I had been wanting to get my hands on some mushrooms for some time as I felt it might help me dislodge my spiritual ailment that had been choking me. When the mushrooms took hold I found myself in dark thoughts of family issues that had yet to be called out loud and challenged as all of my family has been somehow sworn to a veil of secrecy in that the naming of the truth of the matter would somehow mean shame for all. I was volleying between murderous rage and thoughts of suicide as I was struggling with what it was I needed to do that I might expel this demon that had taken hold of my spirit. I tried a trick that I had heard Terrance Mckenna used to use to get beyond a bad point in his trips and that was to sing something to get you past what it was you were hung up on. It wasn't working. I was extremely restless, pacing up and down the hallways of my house wondering if I should call someone to help me. Somewhere in that confusion I remembered I had some nitrous chargers and I decided to have a go with it. So I laid in my bed, took a shot and thats when IT happened and with it the healing tears of joy that I had needed for so long. After that my trip went smooth and I began thinking about all the things that I've been longing to do. Goals started to come to mind. Ways to improve my life. The first of which was to confront my father and let him know that I was onto him. I know about his lies and his cover-up and the scapegoating of my mother as glitch in the system that cost us our family. She had been the fall-guy for far too long. It was time to shed light on and air out this dank and moldering structure. So I did. And it did not end well...the conversation anyway, it isn't over yet of course, but I unloaded the burden I'd been carrying for so long and dumped it right where it belongs and I've since been feeling very light.

Now I've since also been experimenting with mushrooms and nitrous and I've again seen that light. Though this time it was more like the diamond blue color I had seen prior to the mushroom enhancement. But this time it was burning blue and I felt like it was right on my eyeball. The very vision of this light made me laugh hysterically like I hadn't laughed in a long time. I had a friend with me on this occasion and he was also snagged in a fit of this laughter that I feared was going to kill him if I didn't shake him out of it and so I did. I thought he was seeing the light too, but when he came to he was confused and didn't know why he had been laughing so hard only that something was hilarious.

SO.....where does that leave us. with some questions I presume.

one issue i would like to address is that of the light bulbs. i know many people might want to write off the light bulb thing as some drug hysteria. it is certainly hysteria, a hysteria i'm happy to engage in, and it does not discount that the light in that bulb is the light of the universe, the energy out there and within us. of course god is in the light bulb, that is the very essence of life. the light. the energy. our bodies the bulbs. we are the energy....