# THE ANSWER!



## Michaek (May 17, 2010)

Hello all,

This "Regaining Reality" Section on this forum is the perfect name for what I'm about to tell you. I acquired "depersonalization" after smoking marijuana about 9 months ago. I know that some of you have experienced this horrible feeling for years and years, much longer than have, and have probably gone in circles over trying to figure out what this thing is and how to get rid of it. Maybe you think you found the answer, maybe you've given up, maybe your just trying hard to get through each day and not think about it in the hopes that you will slowly and gradually regain reality. Maybe you have philosophized and pondered countless and countless ideas about what this feeling is, what the universe is, why we are here, what is the meaning of us being here, is there a god or not, how did we get here, etc... the BIG questions of LIFE. Everyone ponders these questions but your feeling of depersonalization has made the questions unable to escape. You feel like you MUST know the answer. You come up with your own theories, you read countless essays by philosophers, scientists, priests, ministers, rabbis..etc... And it is so frustrating and scary because trying to find the answer just puts you right back where you started, its all a vicious circle, every theory lands you in a dead end and before you know it you don't know where to go. The answer is nowhere. You've lost all sense of self and all sense of reality. You feel like you don't know where you are anymore or who you are anymore, you don't know "you"..... I have been doing all of this for the past 9 months. And every single hour of it has been my own personal hell. I read, talked to philosophers, doctors, professors, spiritual leaders, I started taking anti-anxiety meds, anti-depressants, and ADD medication.

(By the way I know there are a lot of you who are against medication and I respect your opinion and somewhat agree with you. That being said, my anti-anxiety meds have been a huge help to me. They are safe and I know I will be able to eventually get off of them, but I don't know if I would have gotten to where I'm at today if I had never started taking them. They helped me get over the hump of my fears, where I used to hide from this feeling I now was more interested in exploring its meaning and finding the answer.)

Anyways, I was constantly looking for an answer. There were weeks where I was obsessed with it, and weeks where I would just be too tired of it and give up. If you think that I don't know what you're feeling, I do. There was a point where like many of you, I thought I was going crazy. I even almost tried to kill myself and I ended up on a 51-50 and placed in a psychiatric ward for 3 days. I didn't know who I was, where I was, and sometimes most frighteningly- WHAT I was. There were so many disturbing thoughts I could write a book on it. I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE GOING THROUGH, I KNOW HOW YOU FEEL. There was a point where I felt like I had it worse than all of you, I know many of you have felt like this. To those of you who would say I have no idea what it feels like because I have only been feeling it for 9 months and you might have been going through this for years or even decades- you're right I cannot imagine what it must be like to have lived like this for that long, but I do know how you're feeling right now. You feel like there is no cure, no answer, this is just the life that you must now live. You feel like you're going to feel like this forever, saying, "I've been going through this for decades so theres no reason for me to think that I won't be going through this for the rest of my life."

You don't have to believe what I am about to tell you. I can't prove it. I will never be able to. There are already millions of people who share this same belief with me. You might share this same belief and you don't even know it. But I feel compelled to tell you. This is what I now believe. I was raised Christian, but never really knew if I believed in God. I had little faith and sometimes I had none. When I got to college and started taking philosophy classes, my entire world view changed. I became an agnostic. Shortly after, when I was induced with "depersonalization" after smoking, the next 9 months would include me going back and forth between being an atheist, being an agnostic, and being a theist. I would say that the majority of those 9 months I declared myself to be an agnostic. I thought, "Nobody really knows for sure why we're here and who created us so why would I base my life and my beliefs around something that I don't know is true." I had a deep disdain for anyone who declared that they KNEW the answer and KNEW where they were going after they died. After all, it is undeniably impossible to prove anything. In fact, the ONLY thing we CAN prove is that we CANNOT prove anything. We cannot even prove science and mathematics to be correct. We can prove concepts IN science and mathematics to be correct, but science and mathematics ARE BASED OUT OF PHILOSOPHY, which we cannot prove. I'm Rambling. Back to what I was saying; all up until yesterday afternoon I was a self-proclaimed agnostic, I did not believe that a God exists but I acknowledged the possibility that a God may exist. My personal moral philosophy was somewhere in the realm of post-modernism (There is no right and wrong). Today, I am a THEIST, I believe in a God, a higher power that exists beyond this universe. My moral philosophy is mostly still post-modernism mixed with a few other concepts (I'm still learning).

Here is what happened to me: Yesterday afternoon I had lunch with my dad and his friend, a philosopher of 40 years and a theist. The purpose of this meeting was to discuss philosophy. My dad knew what I was going through and knew that this friend of his had a deep knowledge of philosophy and 40 years of experience studying it, historically and theoretically. He is also just a very intelligent guy in general. He's a natural deep thinker but also knows a great deal about technology, as he once ran a computer chip company, and science. My dad had set up this meeting after talking to him and telling him all that I was going through. My dad's friend replied that he once went through the exact same thing in his early 20's for about 4 years. He had not heard of "depersonalization" back then, but he completely identified with every feeling and thoughts that I had. This is what originally made him interested in philosophy. He knew exactly how I was feeling and the pain that I was going through. His pain was so great at the end of these 4 years that he was seconds away from ending his life. As he was about to end his life, he prayed. He did not believe in a God, but he prayed anyway, just in case. Soon after he started to pray, a feeling and sensation of complete warmth, wholeness, and contentment wrapped around his body. He claims that he then talked to God, face to face. And after that, his whole perspective changed.

This is all that he told me about that experience. The rest of our discussion was about other basic philosophical concepts and history. Before we parted ways, I asked him if next time he could tell me more about what he went through during those rough 4 years as well as the details of his "conversation with god". He said he would gladly be willing to do that, so I am exited for my next conversation with him. He usually doesn't tell people about this experience unless they ask because he has been called "crazy" or "full of shit" by too many people in his lifetime. I usually am very skeptical about a person who claims this sort of thing, but this was an honest, genuine, sane man that I knew I could trust. I know that he believes in what he saying 100%. I still know that there is a possibility that what he's claiming is bullshit, but I genuinely believe him. We then got sidetracked into a short conversation about the book he is currently writing, which is basically a philosophical, scientific, and spiritual chronicling of what he believes to be the best answers to the BIG questions of life; what he believes, why he believes it, and how he believes it. Just before we parted he left me with one "cliffhanger" ,as he called it, for our next discussion. He said that after years of pondering and researching, this is the gist of what he currently believes: (For him believing in a higher power is already the given) In the beginning of existence, there was "God". This "consciousness", "energy", "being", whatever you want to call it, was all-knowing, all-powerful, and knew that "he" or "it" was magnificent, "it" also knew that it was the only thing in existence. What would happen if you were all-knowing and all-powerful and you were the only thing in existence? You would essentially be "bored", because although you know that you are all-powerful and all-knowing, there is no way that you could experience this magnificence. You could know this magnificence to be true of yourself, but you could not experience that magnificence, just know of it and just be aware of it. This was because there was nothing to relate himself to. There was no such thing as relativity. There was no goal, nothing to exist for. God was everything, he was unlimited in his powers. But there was ONE thing that he was not: he was not LIMITED in his powers. To be limited in his powers, to exist as "less", would be the only way to "experience" his true magnificence. So what did he do? He created the universe, out of himself. The Big Bang, evolution, human beings, us. We are essentially his "other half". We are part of him. We are all connected, we are all ONE, we are all "God". But right now we don't exist as "God", we are its other half, we are limited. We have an ability to experience its magnificence.

This is what he told me. This theory made haunted and disturbed me. But it also made perfect sense to me. For the rest of that day all I could do was think about this. It bewildered me. During the past 9 months, there were times that I believed that I was the only "mind". The only thing that existed. And that this whole life in front of me was an illusion. Why? Because your own mind, you own experience, is the only thing you can prove to be real. I needed proof. I didn't want to believe this, and it was my most disturbing and haunting thought. It was completely ludicrous but It could not be disproved. So it was always there in the back of my mind, always haunting me. This isolation as the only mind in existence was the only theory of life that worked with this absolute proof of existence. The proof that your mind, your experience, is real. But after hearing this theory from my dad's friend, this too fit that proof! You cannot prove the theory, but to me it is the theory of existence that makes the most sense. I was astonished by this, finally a theory that works that is a good theory! It doesn't make me the only thing in existence, the only mind. It doesn't say that my experience, my life, and my relationships are an illusion or untrue. But the thought was still disturbing to me. But then my dad showed me a book he was reading, "Conversations with God", by Neale Donald Walsch. You may have heard of it, it used to be a bestseller. My dad showed me it because he remembered that in that book there was a similar theory. But what amazed me was that my dad's friend had never heard of that book.

So I read the first 3 pages. It was amazing, so far it was supporting everything that I had been thinking of. I read a passage that claimed that God rarely communicates with words, he mostly communicates through feelings, thoughts, and experiences. Feeling is his most common form of communication. If you want to know your truth about something, look to how you are feeling about it. So I sat there and pondered awhile. I asked myself "How do I feel at this moment? How do I feel? How do I TRULY FEEL? I thought about my current life, a living hell, in shambles, confusing, disturbing, full of fear. Then a thought came into my head. I concluded that what I TRULY felt at that moment was that I NEED SOMETHING. I really don't know how I thought of this conclusion, but I did. Then I pondered over that thought. "I NEED SOMETHING". "I NEED SOMETHING". I repeated this over and over for about a minute and thought deeply about it. Lately its been almost impossible for me to concentrate on one thing, but at this moment I was. I was deeply concentrating on this thought that explained to me how I felt: "I NEED SOMETHING". I carefully dissected every word in that statement. Then something amazing happened. A warm sensation, a good sensation, from within my body came over me. "I NEED SOMETHING, I NEED HELP, I NEED SOMETHING OR SOMEONE TO HELP ME, I NEED SOMETHING OR SOMEONE TO BELIEVE IN, TO GRASP ONTO, I NEED SOMETHING TO HELP ME MAKE THIS LIFE LIFE WORTH LIVING." I looked down at the book I was holding. I thought, "THIS IS IT!" THIS IS THE ANSWER!" IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE!". An even stronger sense of warmth then engulfed me. It was a sense of freedom, and a sense of wholeness. It lasted for about 10 seconds or so. But during this moment, I KNEW I was right. I KNEW this was the answer. There was no doubting it. I don't know how i got this feeling or really how to explain it. But for these 10 seconds I KNEW I was right. For the first time in 9 months I had 10 seconds of complete relief, complete happiness. For these 10 seconds I was no longer worried or scared. When the moment passed I looked back at it and was in awe. But I no longer had this feeling of COMPLETE CORRECTNESS. I knew that these beliefs, this book am holding, may not be true. It cannot be proved. It may be all complete nonsense. But it still made perfect sense to me. More sense than any other explanation I had come across. I "looked to my feelings and I found the truth."

I then kept reading this book and taking tons of notes. It was all confirmed. All of it made perfect sense. All of it fit. There were no loopholes. There was even an answer to why we people like us are experiencing this "disconnection" from the world and from ourselves, this depersonalization. It was incredible.

As of this moment, I believe it. "God" is now the observer of life, the "creator". But we as individual consciousnesses have free will. There is no "God", no "outside force", controlling our actions. And there is no "God" that knows in advance what we will do in the future. That is up to us. That is free will. But there is a "God" that knows what we are doing right now, what we are doing at this moment. He is, after all, all-knowing and all-powerful.

In a sense, I am "God", and you are "God". Every living thing that exists on this Earth and in this universe is "God". And there is a meaning to life, there is a point to being here.

I URGE YOU TO READ THIS BOOK!!!! AT LEAST GIVE IT A TRY!!!! It may sound like nonsense to you but it may also make so much sense. It goes along with the "unitive consciousness theory", that is gaining popularity and support among scientists.

READ THIS BOOK! IT IS THE ANSWER TO YOUR PROBLEMS!

But don't rush into this. I am trying not to dive head first into this belief. That could be dangerous. It is still a theory. It cannot be proved. It is one of many theories. Rushing into it could be dangerous. I am still going to do a lot of different research on all different types of philosophy. I have not yet decided that this is the one and only truth. It just is the closest thing to it right now for me.

READ THIS BOOK! DO RESEARCH! LOOK INTO IT! PLEASE! IT IS THE ANSWER!


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## Guest (Feb 1, 2011)

Thank you for sharing!

I have actually read Conversations With God by Neale Donald Walsch 1, 2, 3 and some of the others. It was an adventure to read those books. I forgot how impactful they were upon my life at the time of reading them. At this time I'm not exactly a follower of Mr. Walsch. But nevertheless I would recommend his books atleast as food for thought. It is mind expanding









-TOF


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## Surfingisfun001 (Sep 25, 2007)

Man I had a very similar experience to you. I had the experience of being One and "whole" for 3 weeks. These were the 3 weeks before Dp set in and I've now been in DP for 4 years. I felt like I found the ultimatum, what I had really been looking for my whole life and also realized what you realized. That no one can really "know" anything. I am too mindfucked from the DP to explain myself clearly right now but I know exactly what you are talking about. I experienced bliss, feeling whole, connected to my true nature and the world for 3 weeks and then BOOM - chronic DP for 4 years. Since then it's been a constant battle to try to get back to that "being" of oneness. Yet no matter what I do I am stuck in the limbo. Went from heaven to hell if you know what I mean. I just don't get it and honestly as time has gone by I am getting more hopeless and despondent. I just don't understand how I went from total connection to total disconnection. I've searched the internet fervently for people who have had similar experiences and relate. You are the first person who I've seen post about this, that I really understand. I totally understand and know what you are talking about and what you experienced for those 10 seconds. For me it was 3 weeks. Do you still experience the oneness and feeling whole? Are you completely out of the DP? I know of another person who went from DP to oneness but I just don't understand in my case, it's backwards. I went from being whole to DPD and ever since I've been paralyzed internally screaming "WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED." I'd love to chat with you and talk more, I should write out my story, there are some shocking similarities.


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## Emir (Nov 20, 2010)

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## Surfingisfun001 (Sep 25, 2007)

Imagine experiencing 3 weeks of feeling whole, being "One" with everything - going from that to chronic DP/DR for 4 years. That's what happened to me and I just don't get it. It seems like no matter what I do or don't do I am in the void - detached from being whole and experiencing the exact opposite.


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## Surfingisfun001 (Sep 25, 2007)

j4mtj said:


> I've also experience this for a couple of days at at time. I was out of DP but in a very anxious state, at my wits end and wound up just slowing everything right down out of desperation. Don't know how it worked but it did and the feeling of connection to everything and myself was truly amazing.


Interesting. I feel like DP is the complete opposite of that experience. I don't understand going from pure connection to pure disconnection. WTF?!


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## Emir (Nov 20, 2010)

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## Surfingisfun001 (Sep 25, 2007)

j4mtj said:


> Yeah, I wasn't DP at the time, just very anxious, and briefly 'entered into the light' so to speak. Now I'm just 'normally' anxious as I like to put it, no DP for the most part and can get back to connection by focusing, but it takes lots of effort, meditation may help. I read lots of spiritual, mindfulness books.
> It totally sucks that you experienced connection before your DP, makes it all the worse now, heartbreaking really. I feel for what you've experienced and going through now.


If nothing else it's nice to know that someone understands. It is heartbreaking. I've tried to explain my experiences to psychologists and other people but no one seems to understand. I feel like I was given a glimpse of freedom and true inner peace and then spiritually raped and left to rot in eternal torment.


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## Emir (Nov 20, 2010)

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## Surfingisfun001 (Sep 25, 2007)

j4mtj said:


> Surfing, you're an artist. Can you do a 'before and after DP' artwork for your therapist? Sometimes art can powerfully convey what is hard to put into words.


I can't even remember what it was like before =/

... that would be a good piece tho


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## Emir (Nov 20, 2010)

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## Emir (Nov 20, 2010)

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## Surfingisfun001 (Sep 25, 2007)

j4mtj said:


> View Postsurfingisfun001, on 31 January 2011 - 10:14 PM, said:
> I experienced bliss, feeling whole, connected to my true nature and the world for 3 weeks


Yeah it's weird, whenever I try to remember or think of what it's like I immediately begin to feel further from it.


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## Surfingisfun001 (Sep 25, 2007)

j4mtj said:


> Sorry Michaek,


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## Emir (Nov 20, 2010)

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## Michaek (May 17, 2010)

j4mtj said:


> Sorry Michaek, kind of highjacked this but great post you did to start the ball rolling!


haha, its ok guys. any conversation is good.

Surfer- You know what true bliss is though. You have experienced it. You know that it exists! In one way, experiencing that wholeness for 3 weeks and then losing it makes it harder, but in another way it keeps you going. You know that this bliss exists. You know that the way you feel right now is not what you're supposed to feel! It's not how you're meant to live! You know there is something better, something bigger out there, So you keep striving to get back to that. I believe that this feeling of "DP", this disconnection from the world and from ourselves, is a gift and a curse. It seems like a curse because of the hell you go through when you experience it. You feel like you are completely in hell. But truly, it is a gift. It allows you to see the world as it really is, it allows you to see the truth. It allows you to have the capability of reaching that state of pure happiness, most don't have this capability, most are just fooled by what they think they know about the world and what they think they know is happiness.

Maybe you were given that 3 weeks of pure bliss in order to show you what your life can be. Maybe you have had DP anyways, but without experiencing those times of pure bliss, your mind would be too weak to survive it and eventually use it to your advantage.

I truly believe that what we go through with "DP", all that we experience (the feelings, the thoughts, the sensations, the realizations, the mental torment) ties into the "God", the universe, and the bigger picture of things.


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## Michaek (May 17, 2010)

Michaek said:


> haha, its ok guys. any conversation is good.
> 
> Surfer- You know what true bliss is though. You have experienced it. You know that it exists! In one way, experiencing that wholeness for 3 weeks and then losing it makes it harder, but in another way it keeps you going. You know that this bliss exists. You know that the way you feel right now is not what you're supposed to feel! It's not how you're meant to live! You know there is something better, something bigger out there, So you keep striving to get back to that. I believe that this feeling of "DP", this disconnection from the world and from ourselves, is a gift and a curse. It seems like a curse because of the hell you go through when you experience it. You feel like you are completely in hell. But truly, it is a gift. It allows you to see the world as it really is, it allows you to see the truth. It allows you to have the capability of reaching that state of pure happiness, most don't have this capability, most are just fooled by what they think they know about the world and what they think they know is happiness.
> 
> ...


Don't listen to the psychologists. I tried that too. Psychology in itself, is a psuedo-science. It is a theory. It, like other things, cannot be proved. I'm not saying that its all wrong, some of it helps a lot of people greatly. But in a case like this, don't listen to them. They see that your thoughts are not "normal" so they call them "abnormal" and think that it is something that needs to be fixed. So they label you with some bullshit "disease" and try to start "fixing" you. But they don't realize that these thoughts are anything but "abnormal". If anything, they are more normal! They are the truth! The truth of reality! They just cannot see that, they don't have your gift. So they try to "fix" you and get you to their "reality". And all that does is mislead you and bring you down the wrong path to recovery.

BUT, like i said in the original post, I am currently on a couple meds and I do think they help me a lot. They're no cure, but they can help. They can be that extra boost you need to get over the hump. I don't go to a psychiatrist I just got my subscriptions from my GP. I see him every couple of months and I've explained a little bit of this DP to him. He understands a little bit, he's a smart guy but he doesn't really get it. But what he does realize is that he says that he's "excited" for me because my interest in these philosophical questions may be a "gift" so to speak and he says I should be excited for where I may be able to go with it. I agree with him in a way but not really in the way that he thinks. But I don't need to talk to him, he's just my GP. Instead of going down the mental health road, I think you should go down the spiritual/philosophical road. There are even certain counselors and therapists that deal with spiritual problems.


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## Michaek (May 17, 2010)

Michaek said:


> subscriptions


Prescriptions*, not subscriptions haha.

Yeah the doctor gives me some great subscriptions I got Golf Digest, Women's Health, and The New Yorker last month.


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## whatthehell (Jul 27, 2010)

I read CWG three or 4 times. It is a great book, and when I first had this experience when I was 18, it was also my reason for majoring in philosophy.

These days I am feeling majorly better, but I still have my days, but at this point I kind of have a I dont care about it too much additude.


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