Embracing the Unknown: how I learned to cope with otherworldly experiences

How would you feel if you had different experiences growing up that not many others could understand? Or worse, what if they didn’t believe you and ridiculed you for what you knew to be true? That seemed to sum up a majority of my childhood. This something I’ve kept private my entire life, but now that I’m about to become a father I feel that I need to share my story in order to help others going through similar experiences.  These experiences I had growing up were definitely unwanted, but what made things worse was that I had nobody to turn to leading to me to completely isolate myself from others. I hope by addressing these subjects those with similar experiences can learn that they are not alone and definitely should not fear the unknown. Setting the stage

I can’t say I believe in destiny. We are all born with a given roadmap to some eventual end that only we can decipher. Everything around us plays a role in creating this road map, however, we are always in control. We can chose to follow this map or create a new path or even travel far beyond what was previously expected of you. That’s where my story begins… Psychic and paranormal experiences are nothing new in my family, at least not on my mother’s side. I can still recall my grandmother (mother’s mom) telling me how various ‘spirits’ would continuously visit her during the night and she would basically tell them to screw off. Some of her experiences were even physical, pulling down the sheets and slapping her to wake up…she would get up and completely ignore what had just happened. She never gave any attention to these things… they were just a part of life and she treated it as if it was only a slight inconvenience. With me on the other hand, I definitely did not inherit her ability to merely ignore these experiences but rather, it changed the way I perceived myself and others. Before being born my mother would be approached by random strangers on the street and they would all tell her the same thing; your child will grow up to help a lot of people. In some instances they would specify that it would be through the use of my hands that I would have this ability to help (or heal). My mother never  gave much thought about these random run-ins until I myself, once I grew up, started having people approach me saying the same thing. And just as mysteriously as they would appear they would blend back into the background and go about their daily existence. It was a curious thing for me to witness and even more amazing was that my mom had these same experiences prior to me being born. Needless to say, not all of these experiences were as pleasant as this.

Some of my earliest memories were that of being waken up in the middle of the night and me having to walk to my parents room at around the age of 3 asking if I could sleep with them. According to my mother, this would later become a nightly occurrence. The only thing I can actually remember was being woken up and seeing lights shining through the cracks of a door that wasn’t there and from behind the door a shadowy figure would appear. That would frighten me enough to get up and walk over to my parents who were asleep in the bedroom next to mine. One night my mother accidently fell asleep on the bed while reading a book to me and she finally saw what was troubling me all this time. According to her, she heard what sounded like pipes underneath the foundation of the house vibrating. After which she saw a shadowy figure appear and as it began to approach she yelled at it telling it to stay away and never return. She said it with such force she woke herself up and from that point forward it never returned to bother me during the night. Even though I was to never be woken up by that figure again, I would still continue to see it throughout the rest of my childhood. It was a shadowy figure, sometimes I would just see it out of the side of my peripherals and in some rare instances I would stare right at it in the middle of the day until it would gradually fade. In most of these instances I would see him wearing a fedora-like hat. He would appear quickly and walk past. But I remember clearly in one instance having peered out the window in the middle of a rainstorm and saw him standing in the middle of my yard, no features…just a shadow. As I continued to blink he remained there for a good minute or two until it dissolved. I wasn’t the only one who saw him. My younger brother, who doesn’t believe in anything paranormal, would see a similar figure outside his window (in my old bedroom). According to him, there was a man pacing back and forth in the backyard holding a shovel, he would see occasionally through the curtains at night as the shadow figure would walk around back and forth. My brother assumed it was just my father, however, upon his realization that it wasn’t he got a little worried. There was definitely no real context for these experiences growing up. My father didn’t believe in such things  (at least he would never admit to it), and my mother’s family stories weren’t helping. Similarly, I had several experiences with U.F.O.’s which further led me down a rabbit hole that there was no getting out of. I had nobody to turn to. On occasion I would bring it up to my friends and family, and they would always give me the same blank stare. In some instances they would mock me or try to explain to me how such things didn’t exist. That began the inward trend to keep things to myself. How could I explain to others what nobody could understand? I would spend more and more time inside the library reading up everything I could get my hands on regarding paranormal phenomena which left me with more questions than answers. I remember things began to get worse after fourth grade. I began to feel these negative feelings about myself which led to many socially awkward situations. I spent an entire year just leaning up against a drainage pipe just watching all the other school kids play. I kept to myself and rarely socialized with others. This was the beginning of what I understand now as depression, which started to dominate my every action. This stress and anxiety made me pull at my own hair, I had no other way of dealing with this stress.

Through Jr High I had only a few close friends who would hang out together in an isolated bench or inside the school library. Some of us would get picked on and others would be the target of bullying. The experiences did not stop there.  By the age of 12 to 13 as my grades began to get worse as the experiences began to accelerate dramatically. It was during one random school day that I had my first out of body experience. I recall trying my hardest to stay awake during a quiet reading session, however, I had taken a pill for my allergies which were acting up about an hour earlier. I knocked out on the desk and next thing I knew I was looking at myself sleeping however, I was somehow floating at the top the ceiling. I could see everything in clear detail, it was definitely not like any dream…I had full control and a fully alert consciousness. I gradually moved over to see my teacher reading a book that I had no idea of, and once I snapped back into my body I walked over to her desk to see that very same book she had been reading during my experience.

Spinning out of control…

During high school things began to hit their peak in terms of my unwanted experiences, and I had no control over when or what I saw (at least, so I thought at the time). I began dreaming things before they would happen, in most instances the situations I would witness were over-dramatically represented within the dream framework. An example of this was when I was dreaming I was walking around, everything was very much a dream and nothing really made sense. However, within the dream there was an earthquake and I witnessed a nearby school on top of the hill collapse and everyone was in a survival-type of mode for the remainder of the dream. When I woke up, I told my parents…and oddly enough, even had an assignment that day regarding dreams, so I described the earthquake dream I had that night. Sure enough, there was an earthquake in the late afternoon, but nowhere as dramatic as my dream had made it. Lucid dreaming was also very natural to me by this point and the prophetic dreams continued. However, things took a really bad turn by the age of 16 when the peak of my experiences hit and I had absolutely idea how to stop these experiences before they took the ultimate toll on my life and my sanity.

Depression hit its maximum. On top of being picked on constantly and harassed the experiences enhanced an innate ability within myself that made me believe I was losing my mind. I began to feel other people’s emotions, not so much empathetically, but rather involuntarily being overwhelmed with other people’s negative life experiences. I couldn’t control it, being around certain people that had rough situations within their lives seemed to latch on to me. Furthermore, slowly these emotions were accompanied by actual visions. There’s no way of describing these visions. It’s almost as if scanning through random channels, seeing only a momentary glimpse of another person’s life. The emotions associated with each glimpse were so beyond overwhelming that I always tried never to focus on one ‘channel’ for more than a second or two. On one particular day, as I sat facing the other half of the classroom, the visions began as I started to shift my focus slowly across the room. Flashing images along with their emotions continued quickly until I shifted my attention to one particular person in the class. The emotions became so overwhelming I could hardly sit, I was going into a panic attack. I saw a man laying on the street bleeding out, I saw people running, and I saw an attempt to help the man before it was too late. My panic attack peaked until I snapped out of it in a cold sweat and ran out of the classroom as soon as class came to an end. For the following days and later weeks that student was absent from school.  I began to wonder why, and finally asked another of his close friends what had happened to him. Apparently, one of his best friends was shot in a drive by in front of him and died. A moment of shock and realization took over my body as I recalled what I had seen previously.  Was what I saw something that had yet to happen? or what it something that had already happened and I was glimpsing into his mind? These questions greatly bothered me and I felt like I was responsible for not saying anything. Slowly, I began shifting into a deeper state of depression and thought I was losing my mind at the same time. Looking back, I feel very thankful that I did not turn to drugs as an alternative for what I began to experience I would have needed every bit of strength to maintain control and drugs would have otherwise created the perfect storm leading to an unfortunate outcome. Needless to say, things took a turn for the absolute worst for me and I considered taking my own life. One day on the way to school my mother told me a story would shake me to my core. As it would turn out my mother was curious regarding my well-being, which was not uncommon, however, this time there was a deeper meaning for her asking. The reason she asked, she explained, was due to something that took place several years before I was even born. My father in the 1980’s was rather active with the Rosicrucians, a mystical society that focused on spiritual development, and on one occasion underwent guided hypnosis. During this particular session rather than exploring, for example past-lives, they decided to focus on the future to come. While under deep-hypnosis my dad saw everything to come in vivid detail. Each detail of his future life played out in his mind like a movie, he saw everything to come…and the details he wanted to change were easily changed because as they instructed, the future had yet to happen. He saw himself getting married, having two kids, and on and on up until that present day. My mother went on to explain intimate details regarding my life that nobody else knew, and I do mean nobody. He began to see things that greatly disturbed him and he began lashing out. The people that were guiding him were trying their hardest to help guide him to change the future that was unfolding before him, but he couldn’t, and so they had to snap him back to reality. My father was shaken up regarding what he saw and feared that telling anyone would somehow cause it to become a reality. And so my mother was telling me all of this to make sure I was doing alright at this point in my life. Even though I quickly replied “yes, mom,” the details she was regurgitating were frightening to say the least. That’s when I realized I had to change my life and regain control. This wasn’t the destiny I wanted however, it certainly was the one I about to fulfill and the one that would have led to my ultimate demise. Moving forward I knew I had to do everything in my power to block these experiences that were negatively affecting me, so that’s exactly what I did. I began to focus more and more on my music and keeping my mind active on positive experiences. I began playing in various bands in and outside of school which kept me preoccupied to the point where these experiences began to fizzle out. Not only was music helping me express myself but it was helping unleash all my built up frustrations. Furthermore, I knew had these experiences continued to overwhelm me at that point in life without any proper  context or support I knew it would have ended very badly for me.

After I began to reclaim my life and control all the various aspects within it, that’s when I made the decision to start studying everything I could get my hands on. I began studying the ancient Rosicrucian teachings regarding psychical development and joined various organizations at different points in my life. In many instances I was approached by various people that would help me at that moment and tell me what I needed to know for that time. In one particular instance a Medicine Man approached me out of the blue one day and helped me with some issues I was dealing with after blocking my experiences. We still remain friends to this day.

Final outcome

Things got better once I realized that I was in control. After high school I continued my studies and began mastering various abilities that were seemingly innate within myself. The only problem was that once I had blocked off my psychic self at the age of 16/17, I was never able to fully regain those abilities, at least not to that degree I had left off. I felt more in control during the experiences I had during my college years, and I enjoyed very much being able to master those abilities. I had a passion to learn mystical perspectives which eventually led me to a great opportunity in college where I got to travel to Peru and learn straight from a community of curanderos (healers) revered as the last of the Incan high priest tradition.

In retrospect I would certainly say I had a pretty normal childhood, however, there were things in between the normality which affected my perspective. With this sensitive subject there is a lot of negative stigma so I keep most of my experiences to myself.  It was a gradual process of learning to embrace it as something normal only for me that made me appreciate it under a new light. It is definitely something that most people cannot begin to comprehend  and my mistake was holding it inside rather than accepting it for what it was. When I turned to doctors for help the  result was being put on various anti-depressants that made me lose sense of who I really was and I quickly got off of them. As I was taught growing up there are certain things to be expected from me and showing emotions and feelings was definitely looked down upon. I kept them inside bottled up until it was too much to bare. To this day I’ve met many frauds, mystics and everyone in between. I began to learn and appreciate more secretive teachings that I then would apply to my own life and in turn, would use to help others. I joined various organizations and learned a lot from each of them and saw first hand amazing things I never thought possible. As I type this today, I must say that I’ve continued the path of self-discovery now on my own. I’ve learned what I needed to and moved on. Many of these groups are wonderful, but are not without human error. And so, I move on today keeping what I know very secretive about this aspect of my life so that I do not draw attention to myself as many are unable to comprehend who I really am. Many in my position would go as far as claiming themselves to be psychics, shamen, curanderos, healers, etc…but those titles are ridiculous to me. Such titles maintain powerful cultural significance and are always given by members of that community and NEVER created for the purpose of entitlement. So if you ever meet someone claiming to be such and such, be VERY weary it’s a 99% chance they are a fraud. However, if someone humbly denies everything but yet others affirm otherwise, then perhaps you may have a sincere individual with a special gift. In the end I feel that I’ve accomplished a lot. As I took upon the task to better myself in every possible way new opportunities opened up. Doors opened up were there were none before and I never took anything for granted. There were people coming out like moths to a flame to try and bring me down, however, I simply ignored them and they quickly faded away. By not giving those who negatively seek attention (not even a second thought!) they quickly move on to something else. Lastly, I will give the best life lessons to those in similar situations which are the following:

• NEVER do drugs. They will only make things worse. Even if you think it will help achieve some level of spiritual insight, believe me, it does not and only creates an escape for you to fill the void.
• Share your feelings! Find someone who is truly accepting of you for who you are. Open up with what you’ve experienced and be honest regarding the attached feelings you may encounter.
• Don’t trust others who claim to be something they’re not! The rule of thumb is, if they ask for money or refer to themselves as some sort of authoritative figure (i.e., shaman, healer, psychic, medium, occultist, etc) do not believe them. Real practitioners are humble and never reveal themselves for what they really are.
• Do not dwell on things! Should you think about past experiences or something that has negatively affected you in the past, just let it slide through your mind…do not dwell on it. The more we live in the past the more we lose sight of what great adventures lay ahead.
• YOU ARE ALWAYS IN CONTROL! Always remember that. No matter how bleak a situation might seem, always remember that there is always a way out of it. Only you can control your own destiny. There are always alternatives that will bring clarity and a deep sense of perspective if you so chose to open up to them.
• Listen to your intuition!  The answers are always within yourself. There is no need to seek out others for guidance. Quiet your mind and the answers will come. There is no need to seek guru’s, shamen, ‘psychics’, or any other authorities. If there comes a point in your life where you become stuck and feel like you don’t know what to do– once you submit yourself to your own free will, that is when someone or something might come by and give you a nudge or remind you which way you should be heading. As the saying goes, when you are ready, the master will appear.

Additional reading: The true nature of ghosts, spirits, and other entities