My brief flirtation with the rabbit hole

Rory

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I don’t think I’ve ever been much of a conspiracy theorist, but I’ve certainly dabbled in my fair share of wild beliefs – most of them spiritually-based, and most of them, perhaps in contrast to the average CTist, of a positive slant. Paranoia hasn’t been something I’ve experienced, but rather, as astrologer Rob Breszny calls it, pronoia – that is, that all things are conspiring for my benefit.

I suppose my early life was fairly ordinary, other than with perhaps a more pronounced disposition than most to think outside the box. I remember as a small child of around ten wondering if “this is all there is” and contemplating what I was, beyond the physical body. I grew up in a small mining community in Yorkshire that seemed to offer nothing more than drunkenness and television. I couldn’t wait to get out.

One night, when I was nineteen, I ate five hits of acid and had an experience I described as “the best and worst night of my life, heaven and hell, all rolled into one.”

I sometimes suspect that this changed me. Though it may just have been part of an ongoing process. In any case, a year later I began my travelling life, and after finding dissatisfaction in everything I attempted – work, money, women, hedonism, possessions, friendships, material security – I took to hitch-hiking and, in the kindness of strangers, and in time spent in nature, as well as ultimate freedom, I felt that I had finally found something beautiful that resonated with me. I travelled like this for about a year, and after covering most of America, I found myself once more satiated and bored, and unsure what to do next. I decided to go home.

Except, the next thing I knew, I was on my way into Mexico, and ended up spending four months having my mind blown in a whole new way. The previous year had felt like scaling a mountain – but what I realised was that I was really only atop a false peak, that there was so much more to see and explore.

In a nutshell, I had a series of mystical experiences that showed me I really knew nothing about the nature of the world, and which gifted me an ecstasy and happiness far beyond anything I’d ever experienced.

I then spent a year living on trust; undertaking vision quests (alone time in nature, free from all distractions); doing meditation retreats; meeting gurus and healers and teachers; and, of course, other bright shiny young souls such as myself, all excited and on the journey and, presumably, heading somewhere good.

This was in 1999. I was aged 23.

It was a marvellous time, and though I’ve spent a lot of time mulling it over in the intervening years – and though I know the nature of this forum – I’ve no reason to doubt certain of my experiences, nor certain of the teachers I encountered, outlandish as they probably appear to the sceptical mindset who has yet to taste such things.

At the same time, I can clearly see how my openness to new possibilities made me open to all possibilities, including some which were fairly bonkers, and those are the ones I’m reflecting on here.

It started, I suppose, with my first teacher, shaman and vision quest guide who had spent at least half a century cultivating his spiritual energy and knowledge. He was a good and kind man, and he definitely had ‘something’, including what I would term ‘powers’ (siddhis) which, for the most part, seemed beneficial. Through him my life changed 180 degrees for the better – as a quick example, I’d been a massive and problem drunk in the ten years before, but after meeting him, after having my second ‘mystical experience’, and after doing my first vision quest, drinking simply ‘left me’. There was no trying, it was gone – and, with it, most of the emotional detritus that I suppose was causing it. Plus, there was plenty more besides.

At the same time, good though he was, he used to tell some fairly outlandish stories, and since I could see certain wonderful things he said were true – though I would previously have seen those as outlandish, before my own experience of life was broadened – it made some kind of logical sense to at least entertain the possibility that all of it was true.

In recent years I’ve contemplated how this has worked with something like meditation or qi-gong – both of which I practised with him. He would say, for example, that if we practised for long enough, certain effects would take place, and I found they did. (This, I feel, is more than suggestion – just as when a physical trainer tells you to pump iron, it’s not ‘suggestion’ that makes your muscles grow.)

Thing is, he also said further practice would lead to even greater effects, which I of course strived for – and which I now see as pie-in-the-sky nonsenses.

There was logic in feeling there ought to be truth in this – a youthful naïve logic, perhaps – but now I see it doesn’t logically follow that him knowing and being right about a certain stage of the path means he knew and would be right about later stages. Back then, however…

After that first period of awakening, and having had a number of very ecstatic and liberating experiences, I became what is known as a “bliss ninny”. It’s what happens, I think, to a lot of people once they get ‘spiritualised’. They’ve touched on something incredible. Something mind-blowing. Something far beyond anything they’ve ever experienced, and they lose touch with reality. It’s not so much a conscious thing as it is a natural by-product of the change that has taken place – especially when it takes place in an environment such as the west, and especially the US, where there is little context for this sort of thing; and lots of ego; and a tendency towards hedonism; and no system of wise masters to keep you humble and grounded.

Like many young people in that situation, I took it and ran. It was something like being on a really wonderful drug, except a drug that seemed to have no comedown.

It did have a comedown, though; it was just a comedown that took a year or two to begin. And during that year or two I was high as a kite, and having a really and truly and genuinely marvellous time – but also being, on occasion, a little bit doolally.

So, like I say, I was open to pretty much everything. I’d been closed before – a devout atheist, ignorant of spiritual matters, cynical of hippies and any talk of 'energy' – and now, having seen that there was something in it after all, I figured I ought to at least entertain some of these wild ideas. And I guess at some point entertaining them turned into assimilating them, and before I knew it I was repeating them as though they were gospel.

So I had friends tell me of “the hundredth monkey” and things teachers from the past were supposed to have said and done. The Bible was all changed and suppressed, and there were other channelled accounts of Jesus’s life that were actually better and more accurate, transcribed from the ‘Akashic Records’. There were methods we could use to heal ourselves, based probably on Louise L. Hay’s bestselling book, and then, later on, wilder ideas about transforming/restoring our DNA into 24-strands (or something; I’m not sure I remember that one rightly, and never really followed it up).

I also remember believing very heavily that some proper cataclysm was around the corner, and I was quite excited by this. It was in the whole build-up to Y2K and I was reading channelled newsletters predicting financial crashes and the tilting of the Earth’s axis and it all tying in with ancient prophecies and blah blah blah. I’d also by this time spent some weeks with 3HO’s Yogi Bhajan in New Mexico and he fed all that stuff too. I mean, it wasn’t just that – they also said a lot of things that seemed to resonate with my own personal experience (you’re opening, you’re growing, you’re seeing it in all the people around you, etc) – so, again, there was a kind of logic in it. And, like I say, in my ungrounded state, it was quite exciting: it wasn’t so much tribulation and awfulness that was promised, but rather a shift to a more harmonious way of life, more in touch with nature and spirituality, less materialistic and conflicting, a shift to a higher vibration, and we – those who had realised the spiritual nature of the world and learned how to move beyond our fears and master our minds – were to be the teachers and the leaders of this new world, so that was pretty appealing too (to the youthful, deluded, blissed-out ego).

It was all leading to something, and, though I suppose it was really just a tiny fraction of a tiny population, it didn’t feel so much like that, given that almost everyone I met seemed to be going through these changes, and seeing and feeling the same things, and it really did feel like there was both a momentum and a goal to the whole thing.

“You attract what you are” may seem like a New Age platitude, but I still believe there’s some truth in that. And I also think it explains a lot of what was going on back then.

Of course, now I see I really wasn’t seeing the whole picture. These channelled predictions I was reading that felt so relevant to the time – well, I had no historical framework to place them in, but now I realise people have always been saying these things, they weren’t particular to 1999, just as they rolled them out again in the build up to 2012, and just as they’re repeating them now. Same stuff that's always been said. And it never, ever happens – except by coincidence.

Similarly, all these ‘brand new teachings and books’ that I kept encountering had been around forever, it was just that they were new to me, and new to those I associated with, and so it felt like ‘new information for the planet’, when really – even though some of it was certainly good – it was just that I was in a place to comprehend it.

Going back to England helped snap me out of this: and realising that pretty much everyone was still doing the same thing, and ‘global universal enlightenment’ wasn’t ‘just around the corner’. It was all still drinking and shopping and watching TV, and with a tiny group sat in the corner working on their souls or consciousness or whatever it was we were doing, same as it ever was.

The other thing that happened is that: a) I met a woman who I first got incredibly (‘spiritually’) high with – she was as delirious as I; we both had Messiah complexes, and figured we were destined for any-day-now greatness; but she only ended up breaking my heart and (inadvertently) helped slam me back to Earth; and b) in 2002, aged 26, I went to university, and there got into the cold dry world of academia, which was the polar opposite of what I had lived, and not that thrilling, and yet very, very useful.

I remember being in a class on ancient Greece and listening to the lecturer talk about Plato. And then he says something about Atlantis being an allegory Plato made up and I’m like, “what? Atlantis is this whole real place we just haven’t found yet; it’s been confirmed by Edgar Cayce and others; we can even communicate with them still” (not out loud, of course) and I looked into checking it out.

This, I think, was the turning point. I’d already seen how ungrounded and doolally I’d been – finally realised it, even though many others had been trying to tell me – and so I suppose I was ripe for it. I didn’t fight it, I realised I’d been wrong. And now having seen how wrong I’d been about Atlantis and all that channelled stuff, I was determined to find out what else I’d been wrong about.

Frankly, it was embarrassing – because it wasn’t just that I’d believed wrong and weird stuff, but that I’d repeated it to others, confident that I was passing on good and useful information. I was determined not to do that anymore.

It was the process of quite a few years, looking at all my thoughts and beliefs and picking them apart and seeing where the threads led. Many of them went back to Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophists – threads I'd been taught were thousands of years old – and some were more recent misinterpretations of science, such as ‘the hundredth monkey’ or ‘the observer effect’ in quantum physics. All these pieces of misinformation that had been glibly and nonchalantly handed over to me that I’d gobbled up – I was on a mission to extract them all from my system.

Having the internet helped, of course – I sometimes mused that one of the best things about the internet was how much easier it was made it to find out the truth of all the falsehoods it also made it easier to spread – and getting into and adoring arch-sceptic and charlatan-buster Derren Brown also helped too.

More than anything, though, I suppose it was my own determination to not believe anything that wasn’t true. To not be embarrassed by what I was saying. To not want to do that disservice to others.

I like to think I developed a healthy scepticism – I suppose we all do – but, truth is, I probably went too far the other way and threw the baby out with the bathwater. This would have been around 2009, after a good seven years of ‘concrete living’, and I was pretty much not believing anything. Then I went on travels again and bumped into some healers and spiritual-types and, despite my best intentions, had to admit there was still something in it.

As some metabunkers will know, I’m still a believer in certain things most of them would consider woo-woo, but it feels healthy and grounded now, and – though they may disagree – based in reality and verification.

Ninety-nine percent of it, however, I’ve discarded; and love discarding where I can; and to the chagrin of my spiritual friends, have firmly earned myself a reputation as a pain-in-the-ass debunker.

You think conspiracy theorists hate debunkers? Try New Agers – ‘cos they have to sit there still pretending to like and love you, unable to express their anger, until it volcanoes out over everyone. ;)

All in all, I feel very blessed to have made this journey. I’m not sure why I’m one of the lucky ones to have made it out (or through) without too much trouble. I guess it was just a temporary dip into delusion for me, without any real underlying mental issues to fuel it – neither drugs nor booze (the clean-living continued) – and I suppose my sceptical nature and a desire for truth, whatever it looks like, is the main driver in all this.

It also seems, on reflection, that for many people their beliefs get wrapped up in their self-identities, to such an extent that an attack on one's beliefs can feel like an attack on their very being. It's little wonder then that people cling to them, no matter how irrational or non-serving they be.

I suppose fortunately for me I don’t confuse myself with my beliefs, and whatever momentary sadness or attachment I might detect when I stumble upon another false one really only lasts a matter of seconds. Non-attachment to anything not real appeals to my nature. And having experienced the freedom of so much letting go, I know that more of it can only be good for me. I guess it comes from a sense of security. Which is a nice thing to have.

Anyway, I’d better stop there, because this is supposed to be the brief version. I thought I might have said something about the time I stayed up all night reading a David Icke book and felt like I’d entered a different reality – got a taste of what that must be like for his believers – even though it wore off within a few hours.

I can sense that part of my brain that sees some claim for the first time – whether it be a 9/11 thing or that first well-produced hypnotically-voiced flat earth video, back when I was ignorant on the subject – where it goes, “holy Jesus, I can’t immediately explain that, what if it’s true? It just might be true” – and though it only flashes into life for a millisecond, I feel it gives an insight into the CT mindset. I guess the difference is that they take itt and run with it, whereas I – now, at least; not twenty years ago – think, “okay, let me look into that, there’s probably a rational explanation” – and there always is.

So there’s still an openness to the fantastic, but these days there's also an immediate scepticism which always leads to further research, and research that won’t stop until a reasonable explanation has been reached.

I think that’s a good place to be. Quite Buddhist, really. And we all know how groovy Buddha was. ;)
 
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I remember being in a class on ancient Greece and listening to the lecturer talk about Plato. And then he says something about Atlantis being an allegory Plato made up and I’m like, “what? Atlantis is this whole real place we just haven’t found yet; it’s been confirmed by Edgar Cayce and others; we can even communicate with them still” (not out loud, of course) and I looked into checking it out.

This, I think, was the turning point. I’d already seen how ungrounded and doolally I’d been – finally realised it, even though many others had been trying to tell me – and so I suppose I was ripe for it. I didn’t fight it, I realised I’d been wrong. And now having seen how wrong I’d been about Atlantis and all this channelled stuff, I was determined to find out what else I’d been wrong about.

I should have interviewed you for Escaping the Rabbit Hole, that's such a classic turning point moment: the supplying of missing information, the eventual realization that you were wrong about one thing, the slow but seismic shift as you realize that you might be wrong about other things too — and you start to look into them.

Thanks for sharing your story. I think it's great that you have come out of it with this understanding of what it feels like to believe in something special. There's a definite similarity between new-agers and the more vanilla conspiracy theorists. The "messiah complex" you mentioned can certainly be part of it.

It seems like your journey there and back again was fueled by a desire to learn. You are open to new ideas. But what got you out was perhaps a more genuine openness — the ability to accept mundane explanations if that's where the evidence leads. A lot of people prefer to stick with the special.
 
Most of my experience is with deeply religious folks but the thought and belief process walks hand in hand with all other off kilter beliefs.
Some can identify the enemy and others do not bother.

One observation is the deeper one goes to an extreme the farther one goes to the opposite to escape it. Hopefully leveling out sooner or later.

I never bought into religion as both my parents did. Different faiths both telling us kids the other was very wrong. I made the only possible choice that both were right in that both were wrong.
Neither could ever prove how they were right.

I tried to respect both as I took a new route of needing proof. Trust in most was them leading the unknowing into new traps.
That evolved into not knowing something meant scientific type proof would be the most trustworthy if nothing else for repeatability.

Ghosts, aliens and whatnot hunters / experts all fascinate me because they offer zero proof of the subject but are so repeatable in basic tricks of human psychology and group manipulation.
Be it by fabrications or omission that smooth TV preacher style backed by snippets of respected or ambigious proofs makes thier ideas correct.

And it goes into mainstream religion to offshoots of science and religion equally well.

My problem. I never went in deep. Into anything. I never believed until it was proven. And I still get fooled once in a while.

Even in my 5th decade of wandering the earth I find myself in Mexico learning new things and seeing good folks of reasonable inteligence do every odd little traditional ceremony or ritual to bring prosperity or whatever is important. Maybe cure an illness as they use modern medicine also.

My guess is it just cannot hurt to ask around to cover all the bases.
 
that's such a classic turning point moment: the supplying of missing information, the eventual realization that you were wrong about one thing, the slow but seismic shift as you realize that you might be wrong about other things too — and you start to look into them
I'm going to have to go with (based on the little info in this story, of course) that the girl breaking his heart was the actual turning point or at least a catalyst. Kinda like when Cters say they point out to their peers something that they know is wrong, and their whole peer communities turn on them. ie start calling them traitors or shills.
 
I should have interviewed you for Escaping the Rabbit Hole, that's such a classic turning point moment: the supplying of missing information, the eventual realization that you were wrong about one thing, the slow but seismic shift as you realize that you might be wrong about other things too — and you start to look into them.

Thanks for sharing your story. I think it's great that you have come out of it with this understanding of what it feels like to believe in something special. There's a definite similarity between new-agers and the more vanilla conspiracy theorists. The "messiah complex" you mentioned can certainly be part of it.

It seems like your journey there and back again was fueled by a desire to learn. You are open to new ideas. But what got you out was perhaps a more genuine openness — the ability to accept mundane explanations if that's where the evidence leads. A lot of people prefer to stick with the special.

Thanks Mick. That's a very sensitive and understanding response. I think I may actually have been driven to write my reflection while listening to your audiobook this morning, and a chapter that talks about a "turning point".

Kinda fun that my 'classic' turning point happened in a class on Classics. ;)

Interestingly, just wikipediaing 'Messiah complex', and from there 'grandiose delusions' led me to this rather apposite paragraph:
Grandiose delusions frequently serve a very positive function for the person by sustaining or increasing their self-esteem. As a result, it is important to consider what the consequences of removing the grandiose delusion are on self-esteem when trying to modify the grandiose delusion in therapy. In many instances of grandiosity it is suitable to go for a fractional rather than a total modification, which permits those elements of the delusion that are central for self-esteem to be preserved. For example, a woman who believes she is a senior secret service agent gains a great sense of self-esteem and purpose from this belief, thus until this sense of self-esteem can be provided from elsewhere, it is best not to attempt modification.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandiose_delusions
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Hopefully I can bear this in mind in any future interactions involving faulty beliefs.
I'm going to have to go with the girl breaking his heart as the actual turning point, or at least a catalyst.

It was certainly the necessary event that proved pivotal in getting me back to Earth, if not the turning point in investigating false beliefs, nor realising the folly of 'delusions of grandeur'.

I'd had opportunities before that - teachers telling me I needed to ground; peers telling me I seemed a little bit 'high'; a Tibetan monk I went to see for advice on my next step suggesting I get a mundane job; and then I did start a very good job but quit after not too long ('cos I wanted to be free, maaaan) - and so, from my perspective, it was a case of 'The Universe' saying, "Gee, he's not taking the nudge, or the carrot, or the stick - looks like the only thing that's gonna work is a boot up the arse and a slap round the head."

Another 'New Age' way to look at it would be: the message/lesson gets louder/stronger each time we ignore it.

Also: the tree that has only grown tall but has no roots will topple in a storm.

So certainly it was the catalyst in grounding - though if I'd been a bit smarter, and had a bit less pride, I'd have taken the earlier, less painful opportunities I'd been given to change direction. :)
 
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- though if I'd been a bit smarter, and had a bit less pride,
I wouldn't say that. Young people aren't really wired to listen to their teachers. Doesn't really have anything to do with smart or pride, in my opinion. Besides, a lesson you learn yourself (ie emotionally burned into you) is always more powerful then one a teacher "just tells you is true". If you had listened to your teachers you might have rebounded later and become a full fledge conspiracy theorist (or similar). The journey is more important than the end goal.

:)

what was the rationale behind taking FIVE hits instead of just one like most people?
actually the guys I knew back then always took multiple hits.. (and we women always shook our heads).
 
Rory, thanks for a peek into the mind of the new age type person. I always found them perplexing if pleasant company in most cases.

As for kids listening to a voice of experience or just plain hindsight... not probable. Not programmed into human behavior. Rebellion and the hard way of learning survival skills is just part of how we grow into adults.
 
What was the rationale behind taking FIVE hits instead of just one like most people?
No rationale, really: I was reckless and cocky and frustrated and young, and I doubt I would have done it if I'd known what was going to happen.

Though, to be fair, I took nine one day about six years ago, for completely different reasons, resulting in a very different experience.
Thanks for a peek into the mind of the new age type person. I always found them perplexing if pleasant company in most cases.

It's a peek into a tiny aspect of [some people's] New Age minds. Mostly it's about self-discovery, growth, being happy, sharing good things, learning, connecting to the divine (however one understands it), and cultivating more of the good things in life, like love, peace, joy, compassion, understanding, wisdom, security, faith, et cetera et cetera.

Believing flakey things, I suppose, though often a part of it is really just a small part of it. And maybe in this way it differs from the CTist - it's perhaps more of a by-product than a worldview, and therefore a little easier to let go of, since unnecessary - but it does also make me think that I could look at CTists more in the same way: that rather than seeing their beliefs as a defining feature, see them as a small aspect of a whole personality and life.

Obviously this isn't always the case. But perhaps it is the case more frequently than I realise. All I see of them are their comments and their videos - but who knows if, away from that, they're not just as normal and rational and amusing and nice as the rest of us?

Kind of reminds me of my ex's mum, who was a Jehovah's Witness. She did the whole knocking on doors thing, went to church, etc - but since she was the only one in the family, it was never discussed, and if I hadn't been told about it I would never have guessed. She was a genuinely lovely and funny and good company lady.

Certainly she had some odd beliefs - but they didn't seem to make any impact on the largest part of her life.

I feel like I may have learned something there. ;)
 
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