awuh1

It's time. It's time to put it out there. I have shared parts of this before but it's time to put the rest of it out there. Mostly the 'what it's like now' part, a small problem. But first some back story. Time to ef some of the ineffable.

I came into AA a mess. The god talk annoyed me. I was 'over it'. I didn't want to hear talk about god. It was nonsense. I had multiple degrees, a rational mind, and I had long ago resolved this philosophical question. What I wanted to do now was resolve my alcohol problem.

I was able to stay sober for weeks, and even sometimes a for few months, but always with the same result. I drank.

Then I started to work the steps. I was essentially told that I had a prejudice against God. That I had never investigated the world's religions. I had never *sought* God. I had to admit that there was some truth in that. So I did. I studied all of them, east and west. I set aside my conclusions about the subject and investigated with as much of an open mind as I could. I investigated because faith was just not an option. It was not something I could decide to have.

This was the time frame in which I had the most amazing thing happen to me. One morning I asked the universe if there was a God. I asked with some urgency, and the utmost sincerely. There was an answer. It was simply yes. I say simply yes, but this is where things get ineffable. It was not a voice. The response was more like the essence of confirmation was given. Then there was information. All non verbal and all extremely fast.

The experience left me shaken. My entire view of the world had changed in less than 20 minutes.

I was afraid to tell anyone, but after some days I told the person who had pointed out my prejudice. Very slowly, I have come to tell other close friends.

Fast forward.

I have sought to understand this experience. I have found striking similarities in descriptions of other mystical experiences and in the accounts of NDE's, or near death experiences. Also, my experience has given me a sort of intuitive understanding of some of the incomprehensible findings within the realm of quantum mechanics. I can relate quite allot to the Dali Lama's fascination with physics. Recently the 'holographic paradigm', as put forth by David Bohm, has proved fascinating (and btw provides an explanation for 'spooky action at a distance').

If you have made it this far in this OP congratulations. I don't expect many will. It's not the sort of thing many people can relate to. And therein lies the problem. This particular area of fascination (which borders on obsession) lies within a realm inhabited by few people. I would love to find someone who has an interest in this area. To find someone who has these interests and has had a similar spiritual experience would be like finding a jewel. I don't expect that to happen anytime soon. But that's not going to keep me from trying.

Thanks for listening.

Boleo

There was the time frame in which I had the most amazing thing happen to me. One morning I asked the universe "What is humility?" I asked with some urgency, and the utmost sincerely. There was an answer:

Next day my closest friend in rehab found Jesus. Went to staff and confessed all his sins and what he knew of mine. I got kicked out of rehab because I denied everything (did not know they had a witness). Ended up living on the streets. Shuffled my suite case from one homeless shelter to the next for free meals and bed. First time in my life I was both broke and homeless.

Then the most amazing thing happened: I lost the obsession to drink (root and branch). It happened in a flash. My entire view of alcohol had changed in less than 20 milliseconds. Nothing short of a genuine miracle could have done so much so quick.

silentrun

I love this stuff! When I quit I considered myself an atheist. I see the answers embedded everywhere in the environment. Sometimes I think it must be me that left a trail of white stones leading out. I won't go so far as to give God a consciousness just yet. Something is going on though.
I saw this thread from a younger woman talking about how Jesus saved her. From her account I knew we were talking about the same thing. I decided after reading that I would never claim a religion because choosing one seems to me discrediting the others. I couldn't see calling someone like her wrong. Glad you put it out there. It would be nice to hear some first hand accounts.

freshstart57

Awuh1, you mention quantum mechanics, Bohm's quantized theory of memory, and spooky action at a distance. Do you conflate these ideas? What insight have your experiences given you into these? I see them in terms of linear functionals, wavefunctions and eigenvalues, and my experience into these is anything but apriori.

silentrun

Do you know anything about this?

DMT, Moses, and the Quest for Transcendence

I described some of the sensations to someone on this board and they said it sounded like a mild dmt trip. Is it produced in the pineal gland or is that speculation?

Aellyce

Highly recommended documentary, related to what Silentrun mentioned.
DMT: The Spirit Molecule - Top Documentary Films

Lots of interesting stuff in it. The film is made by Rick Strassman who did research on this area and hypothesized that our brains produce DMT in small quantities that are largely related to spiritual and near death experiences. He could never really prove it, though, so yes, so far speculative. Many living organisms do contain DMT, though.

sugarbear1

I was put in that place of neutrality; I didn't realize it until a few days after working step 7...but it was there, it was real, and I'm still there. Gratefully graced.

Shortly afterward and still skeptical while attempting to work step 10 and being wildly harassed by my cat and unable to concentrate, I asked, "God or higher power, if you really exist, can ya tell the cat I love her, but I need to get through this 10th step and prayers, THEN I will pet her," and within a split second, the cat walked away leaving me to continue.....

that was too cool

jdooner

I had an experience while running this winter. I was running on some trails that were frozen over with ice. I use my track shoes with 3/8" metal spikes. I came to a stream that was frozen over and flowed down a hill about a 200 ft vertical drop to the bottom. I heard Dave Mathews song The Maker come on and I never felt more in the moment and protected running down the iced over stream. Could I explain the euphoria by the endorphins? The timing of the song as coincidence? The safety to my thinking ahead and using the right spikes? Or was it spiritual that all three came together at the same moment providing a heightened sense of euphoria? It does fit with Bohm's quantized theory regarding consciousness though.

I entered this process like Awuh1 - void of religion and spirit. But I have had many experiences some in sober and some in altered states (LSD, shrooms) that lead me to believe there is something more. I am not there yet but much closer than where I was at. I know I am not God, nor can I control everything. The ability for me to understand what I can control and wisdom of what I can't has been liberating for me, personally.

fini

If you have made it this far in this OP congratulations.

awuh,
yeah, i made it that far.
and even to the end of your post


i have had to set aside my prejudicial conclusions after i had an experience i hadn't sought or looked for with urgency.
i didn't want to. life with my preconceived notions was much easier. so i kept shoving it away. which was easy to do while still getting drunk.

couple of years into sobriety, i made a conscious decision to stop running.
after that, i had to add some bookshelves.
so yeah, i looked. what others said. within myself. "out there". everywhere.
guess you could say i sought, even though i'd found.

still do. not that i "lost" , exactly, except...can't hear "it". or feel. any more.


anyway, no jewel here, and not real comfortable in this forum, but just to say thanks for putting it out here.

awuh1

Awuh1, you mention quantum mechanics, Bohm's quantized theory of memory, and spooky action at a distance. Do you conflate these ideas?
No

What insight have your experiences given you into these?
I believe that there is a "ground" of which we are not (normally) aware. We cannot perceive it. I believe it is outside the bounds of space and time and contains enormous amounts of information. I don't just believe this, I know it. I have experienced it.
There is an intelligence to it as well, an organized awareness. It is a part of the reality we experience every day but we cannot discern it, in part because it is woven into the fabric of (what we experience as) reality itself.
It's difficult to use words to convey these things. That's the best I can do, and it seems to me wholly inadequate. Bohm's and Bell's work comes the closest to talking about this, albeit in the language of quantum mechanics.

silentrun and haennie, I'm not very familiar with DMT studies. I'm skeptical (but that's my normal state). On the other hand any neuroscientist can tell you that chemicals are involved in the process of perception. Have there been any studies where two individuals, both under the influence of DMT, saw the same thing at the same time and (independently) reported it?

sugerbear, your story brought a smile. Is your name Schrodinger?

jdooner This sounds like a case of synchronicity. The impact can be quite powerful. I have had many. Synchronicity in now a term that has entered the vernacular of physics
Carl G. Jung

Fini, Please PM me. I'm not sure I understand. I would be interested in the details.

Joe Nerv

I've had similar experiences, but one that really jumps out at me... as I would also describe it as ineffable. A word which I had to look up, by the way .

When I was in rehab, one night I was playing pool with with one of the other patients. People started scattering about, some nurses were running downstairs (we were on the second floor), and I asked what the commotion was about. They said someone was having a heart attack. Didn't think much of it, and continued playing pool. We finished our game, and I said to the guy I was playing with, "Lets go see some action", and headed downstairs. I walked out the door, and saw my younger brother walking towards me, crying. There was no reason my brother should be there, as I I was in SI, he lived in Bklyn, and well... he had no reason whatsoever that I could imagine for him to be there at 8:30 in the evening. Was like I was tripping or something. But I wasn't, it was real. He was there.

He came up to me, and said Mommy's having a heart attack. And it was so. He had taken her to an Alaonon meeting (that I didn't know about) that was in a building right next door to the one I was in. Ambulance was there, a counselor grabbed me by the hand and came with me and my mother to emergency. She was in bad shape. They rushed her in, and said I had to stay outside... I held her hand, said goodbye, and went back outside with the counselor. I was a mess. She said there was nothing we could do but go back to the rehab. She talked with me a while, and advised me to go to bed. I was shaking, I didn't know how to deal with it, and I had no choice but to pray. I prayed, and I prayed, and I prayed... and then something I'd never be able to relate to anyone happened. Heard the little "god" voice (or lack of any voice, if that makes sense) in my head, and I became absolutely, positively, 150% certain that my mother had recovered and was going to be fine. A peace that was yes, ineffable. I fell asleep more peacefully than I ever could have imagined. And woke up in the same state of mind.

I don't remember at what time I got the news of her condition, but I remember it wasn't right away. When people asked how I was doing, I told them I was fine, but didn't relate the fact that I knew my mom was fine too. When they finally told me she was, it didn't even have any effect on me. I knew it already. Mom is still alive, 30 years later . And that night she did indeed have a massive heart attack, which was followed by several surgeries.

Side note on this whole experience is that my mom had a nurse sitting next to her int the meeting, that KNEW she was having a heart attack, and told my mother to put her head in her lap as she asked someone to call an ambulance. She said, "This woman is having a heart attack." Had my mother not been there at that time, it most likely would have killed here. My mother isn't the type to call an ambulance, and my father was on a business trip.

Anyhow... your experience reminded me of that. I've had other such experiences, but I've written more than enough.

Now I'll try to figure out what freshstart is talking about .

Boleo

Heisenberg describes something like that in his Uncertanty Principle.

awuh1

Boleo and Joe, IMO your experiences are acts of grace. Gifts of love.

Boleo, can you give me a reference to what you are referring to specifically? What about the uncertainty principle? I don't think I get your meaning.

paul99

Thanks for sharing this, awuh1. It got too technical later on with all those terms and intellectual stuff I hadn't heard of before...but I am sure it's very meaningful. Does this all come back to a HP? I guess it must for me.

awuh1

Yes Paul, In fact that's the whole point.

Joe Nerv

NO!!!! They were spiritual experiences!!!!!!!!!

I consider all them there types of things (gifts of love and grace, little recognizable miracles) spiritual experiences actually. In accordance with the 12th step I do however define it differently.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot: Eigenvalues - each of a set of values of a parameter for which a differential equation has a nonzero solution (an eigenfunction) under given conditions.

My brain don't work that way. Does not compute. It's why I'm certain some things work for some in getting sober, and others work for others. Ain't it wonderful?

Boleo

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle proposes that there is an observer effect on the object being measured. Heisenberg did not merely focus on the mathematics of quantum mechanics, he was primarily concerned with establishing that the uncertainty is actually a property of the world. That it is in fact physically impossible to measure the position and momentum of a particle to a precision better than that allowed by quantum mechanics. To do this, he used physical arguments based on the existence of quanta, but not the full quantum mechanical formalism. Heisenberg was trying to show this was not a bug, but a feature - a deep, surprising aspect of the universe

awuh1

Yes Boleo, the double slit experiment shows this beyond doubt. THE VERY ACT OF OBSERVATION CHANGES THE RESULT OF THE EXPERIMENT. Just observing something changes reality! It's been proven (at least on the quantum level).

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around that one.

DayTrader

I was essentially told that I had a prejudice against God. That I had never investigated the world's religions. I had never *sought* God. I had to admit that there was some truth in that. So I did. I studied all of them, east and west. I set aside my conclusions about the subject and investigated with as much of an open mind as I could. I investigated because faith was just not an option. It was not something I could decide to have.

Personally, my favorite part of the post. And yes, the same was true of me albeit I came in with what I thought was a solid understanding of God although it was an understanding I was taught to accept vs and understanding based upon my experience.

The willingness to seek and the willingness to set aside old ideas/beliefs/prejudices. Man that's so vitally important and yet, it's probably the main stopping point for most ppl for whom "AA doesn't work" - at least from what I've seen over my past 7 years.

I've come to believe I didn't create that willingness.....it came as a gift - and not a gift I was hoping to get. Such a game-changer though. From that teeney tiny bit of willingness, a whole new life blossomed.

Boleo

When Heisenberg talked about "quanta", he was not just thinking of particles and waves. He was including information that could be used to reconstruct objects and energy as needed depending on the circumstances surrounding it at the time.

Similar to data packets traveling across the internet. They combine with preambles and postamble code to regenerate brand new data or object attributes on the fly.