Suicide
I have not posted in quite a while. I’ve been going through a lot. A couple months ago I was seriously considering killing myself. I struggled for days between “we can end it tonight” and “maybe one more day”. It was truly awful.
Trigger warning: from here on will be about the whole experience. I will start with some dramatic imagery for analog experience of the event. I will then move onto what I learned. This too served its purpose.
The Metaphor
I was a man walking in the crimson desert. Its rusty sands dried my skin and burned my eyes. It seemed as though I passed many an excarnated skeleton. Every sight was only death and its reminder. Rushing winds rang through my skull ceaselessly. It whispered and yelled to me that there was no hope. It was right.
I had been caught in a despair that made itself known as final; and it was final. These winds had no source nor end. “There are no familial ties”, I heard. “Everyone I know is transient and selfish” it screamed. “There is nothing in the world so valuable that this is worth continuing”. “The world is awful and I help make it that way because I am the same.” “This simply isn’t worth it”. “All circumstances lead to the same emptiness”. My mind spun in the gales. I had been alone my whole life, surrounded by bodies with blank eyes, and that would never change.
I looked left and right and I only saw endless desert. The wind-whipped sands took shapes around me. They appeared to be friends or family, but they were only apparitions crafted from the chaos around me and my minds desperation for companionship. I could no longer pretend that this facsimile of life was satisfactory. Some days I swore I saw others, in the distance or deep inside the masks the sand wore, but always it was just more sand. Nothing more.
The tempest raged around me for days. When I slept under some debris it sung me to sleep with its siren melody. When I awoke it regained the cutting edge of clarity. Though I stilled, my eyes never found rest.
Sometimes the sweet song of dreams found me during the day also. As my feet dragged through routine paths I remembered past events and how they might have been different. I saw vaporous dreams of futures that could still be. Both these were bittered by knowing their impossibility. All things left and all things would continue to leave. Only I will remain. Want became fantasy; fantasy became poison; the poison sickened and starved me further.
I found myself at the edge of a ravine. I gazed down into the blackness; its gaping maw caressing me into the silence. It is the sole color in the red desert. The winds stopped. I heard the final call for alcohol. My time came. The voice that stopped the winds was reason when illusions are stripped away.
The Message
I was at work. Another board came down the line and I saw it jiggle as it slammed into the LAM beam. I realized first that all things are like water, and second that rhythm was a circular motion. The order of rhythm allows it to overcome the surrounding chaos and make conformity. By reinforcing like motion with like motion more is pressed into servitude by momentum. Anything that is self perpetuating utilizes this principle to create the world around itself; thus there could be no perception except that which is created by that which perceives. All things are cycles which perpetuate themselves, and rhythm is the exterior effect of such a rotation. This was only an adjacent truth to what I saw next.
I half remembered the Tibetan Book of the Dead. According to the text when we die we enter the bardo. We are presented first with images of beauty and serenity. They sing to us and pull us back to karmic existence. Perhaps these are family, hopes of love, want for money or love or joy; all of them are illusions shaped by the mind in the random chaos of Spirit. If we do not realize the illusory nature, we are presented with images of horror and fear. These drive us into karmic existence from behind. Perhaps these are hungers, lusts, and fear of having nothing; these too are illusions constructed by our minds from the chaos around us.
The psyche is merely aggregate flows of cyclical information. Spirit-substance entangles itself by vibrations that hold each center together. These entanglements also gather other entanglements to them. Each system of item-identification, narrative of self, and feeling attribution pulse with their own rhythm that holds the entanglements near each other. These are self reinforcing cycles which have come to exist solely because they maintain and reproduce themselves.
I had been driven by fear of loss and want of gain. My existence for the last several days had been endless alternations between impossible fantasies of loving futures, and the knowledge that all these are false. There could be no love because all was selfish impulse. There could be no reconnection because we had all changed in these years. I had already known continuous loss, and so I would know it again. These too were merely illusions.
At some unexceptional moment another two by six came down the line and the gales silenced themselves. I felt something like a pressure surround my head and clarify my vision. Though the unceasing wails of my mind were only illusions, I could not deny their truthfulness. However now I saw that all life too was another bardo; another illusion. My fantasies exist to draw me in. My fears exist to drive me forward.
In the silence I finally knew the one way out. By willfully choosing death I could end the cycle. I could obliterate myself wholly. By making my final act my own death I could eliminate myself both bodily and spiritually. My willpower directed toward the void would leave nothing left. No more fear. No more want. No more loneliness. All things are little swirls in the great Karmic Ocean, and I now knew I could end my own rotation and truly be no more. I would not reincarnate. I would not be dragged to some awful afterlife. I would not be.
Answering L’appel du Vide
I planned my death instantly in that moment. I could end myself in such a way as to be unsalvageable. Though I will not detail my plan, since it will get me banned here, it should suffice to say that all interventions had been answered and dismissed. I thought through nearly every caveat so that my death was all but assured.
I needed help.
I had already tried everything. I have been meditating for years. I built a life for myself in spite of extremely difficult circumstances. I tried to reconnect with my family to no avail. No new friends or clubs or activity would balm me. Something had changed in these last few years: it was me. I had changed.
A person is not merely flesh. Humanity is formed of commonality. Our shape builds our body. Our psyche is formed by common notions. Both these are required to create a person; visible form, and common understanding. Once those common grounds are lost, though the body remains person-like, the psyche does not.
I could no longer believe in unconditional love, for I had lost all the love I had. I had no ties to persons nor place. They were all transient, and I had no home. I no longer believed in government nor social paradigm. They are systems to harvest the weak minded, ambivalent in their aim at self perpetuation. I could no longer believe that “it would be all right”. It wasn’t and it wasn’t going to be; I am the sole force in my life that makes anything better. I was no longer human on the inside. Thus all connections with humanity became vaporous lies to me. I had seen their falsity, and there was no way to communicate my perception to anyone without hurting them. I had seen that life was not worth living, and I could not unsee it.
I needed help, and there was one holdout I still held as taboo: medication. Previously I had believed that medication “stole your soul”, by which I mean that it left one addled and different. They were high or in stupor. They had lost the core of their humanity by hiding behind what was essentially illicit drugs. I still did not believe their use was good when I chose to try, but it was my last chance. I could not bear it if I died and only then realized that waiting would have resolved my qualm. For my death to be final I had to know that there was no other way. If I died and found regret my death could not be final. Regret would pull me back. I had to know there was no other way, and I did not yet know that. I to try every possibility in order to refute it.
I called my therapist and scheduled an emergency meeting. I started using Zoloft at the minimum dose. I can say now from experience that it is effective, and my soul is not lost. Since all things are self perpetuating cycles of information, making change in that cycle was possible and beneficial. By changing the individual steps of the cycle I could change its shape and momentum.
What has come since this is still me, just a different and preferable me. I can still feel all the range of emotions I felt before, but my cycle doesn’t take me to these abysmal lows. I can still think and act basically as I did before, besides a few physical side effects. I even still experience my morose thought patterns, but they do not overwhelm me.
Medication did not solve my problem, but it did give me a little boost that makes me able to continue seeking. I am happier now, and no longer as low, and thus I can work towards a much better life.
The Pedagogy
The point of all this is to set a stack of stones in that crimson desert. If you are there now, just know that others have been there before. I would understand you if you told me your experience.
Everything that you are seeing is probably true. Don’t let others gaslight you into obeying their paradigm. Everything that I told you above I still hold to be true, even now. Medication did not steal my understanding of things. It did however allow me to see a little more. I now understand that saying “life is not worth living” is only half the idea. The whole statement is this: “Life is not worth living if I am not living out my dreams.”
I cannot be a part of the machine anymore. I must live for myself wholly. I don’t yet know how I am going to do it, but I will find a way to live my way with no strings attached. I will escape the rat race and be a writer and priest full time. I will do what I want when I want to. I will live on my own time and no one else’s. This I swear. Life is not meant to be about car payments and the nine-to-five. We are beings having a living experience, and that is so valuable that it is nigh blasphemous to waste it with mundane tasks.
Everything serves a purpose. Because all things are made of the One Substance and contained within the One Great Mind, all things are “of God”, and therefore good. All these awful, horrifying things you are experiencing are good; they serve their purpose. No one could be who they are without experiencing what they did.
It is my current belief that depression is a kind of lacking; like hunger or thirst. When you are hungry, you need food. When you are thirsty you need water. When you are depressed you are starved for meaning. Your psyche knows when it is not receiving the “spiritual nourishment” that it needs.
We live in a world that does not easily provide for that need. Meaning has been systematically sapped from every area of life until we are all lonely, atomized, cogs in the machinery of another’s wealth. Depression is not some moral failing on your part. You are not sick. You have need. Just as those with higher metabolism need more food, those with a higher “spiritual metabolism” need more meaningful engagement.
Meaning is difficult to come by within the machine, but it is not impossible. Each person is tasked with finding their own meaning. For some of us it simply does not come with median existence. This is no flaw, but instead a feature of the programming.
“You are different from the rest. Rejoice! Your heart is pure. Rejoice! The broken are the more evolved. Rejoice!” — Split (2016)
It is truly alienating to be unhappy while surrounded by those who are satisfied by corporeal existence as it currently stands. We are always the odd men out. We are always only partly connected. The soul yearns for more than this.
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It is my belief that we are meant to be more spiritually connected than the lay. We are meant to be priestesses and priests. This is not meant to belittle anyone for their particular needs or purpose; the priest is no better than the warrior or worker. Better still to serve as all three in their right time. We need connection and so seeking more connection is the obvious answer. Fulfill your needs, that is what we are all meant to do.
The Hereafter
A bit of me died in that desert. I am now more free of cultural burden then ever before. I care far less about any appeals to another persons standards. I am here for me, and my own authenticity. I love to hear the stories of others. I love to see those most intimate pieces of a persons soul. No matter who they are or what they have done, I want to see them, and I hold no judgments nor standards to be in my proximity. It is a joy to share in a persons secret thoughts.
I am a priest to the Truth. I will seek It out all the days of my life.
I think that if you look within yourself you may find this to be true also. If you hunger for more, then seek it out. What’s to stop you? If you might need medication, ask a doctor. There is nothing wrong with that. Never let anything stop you from achieving your highest ideal.
Lichdom
As a final note to this article, I will tell you a bit about this old magic I have recently learned of. The Egyptians were obsessed with necromancy. They wanted eternal life and control over its forces. There is such a spell to achieve those ends (though I obviously have not yet verified its efficacy).
The spell utilizes a fresh human heart. One must starve themselves for two weeks and go three full days without water. They must deprive themselves of sleep as they are able to, though losing consciousness is not a failure in itself. The magician must ritually bathe themselves and offer up the heart to the gods. Through invocation and these sacrifices they attain a kind of lichdom.
When they die, which is usually shortly after the ritual, instead of the soul moving to the above or below, they become a kind of earthbound spirit. Their soul is shunted “sideways” into a purgatory where they have access to all souls that exist. From here they may pick any of these souls. If they are able to consume the soul, destroy it, overpower it (as in trap it), or otherwise remove it from the body, then they take that body. They now inhabit a body that is not “theirs”.
If they choose a baby they have the easiest time of this because a soul takes time to properly form or connect in the body. They may also choose any non-human body also. The same rules apply.
When that body dies, they are put in purgatory again to choose another soul. The cycle continuous this way forever. It is essentially a controllable reincarnation.
However, this process comes with a series of curses. No food will ever stop the hunger; no water the thirst; no sex the lust; no company the loneliness. Any and all human pleasure will never be enough for any who inhabit another beings body. This goes for both the lich, and the astral possessor.
That is the description.
I thought a long time about this. I believe I have come to understand it. I wondered at why the curses were what they were. The one who told me this spell told me that the earliest people inadvertently set the rules for these curses by their belief system and sense of morality. They instilled it in mankind to be passed down forever, though it was not intentional. Apparently.
The reason for the heart and deprivations are necessary because one must know the cost of what they do. They must know the feelings of the curse. They must know the cost of their perpetuity: murder. The gods have no need for human-fleshy hearts. One must take a heart because their every life in lichdom will be a murder, though they can never be caught for it since no one could prove who actually is in that body.
The thing that actually powers the spell is the dichotomy between perfect valuation and complete devaluation. One must not simply dissociate and kill. They must look at their victim and understand his plight. They must empathize with him completely and look at him as a real person. They must see and hear about his family. They must know fully, top to bottom, the cost of the murder. Then when they take they life they completely devalue it and take that value for themselves.
The reason for then nature of the curses, I believe, has nothing to do with some universal ironic justice or karma or whatever. It is merely cause and effect. What happens when you completely devalue life? Life has no value for you. What happens when one becomes more powerful than death? They become beyond the reach of life also.
If you live forever, then this is not your one and only life, it is just one of infinite lives. It becomes worthless by nature of its excess. It becomes worthless because you chose not to value it.
The hunger is not some moral judgement by the universe, it is the nature of the apparatus. Satisfaction requires need, and to be without need is to be without means to satisfaction. If your death is not permanent then no corporal needs can satisfy you because they are not really needs. They are merely patterns in the body. As one rises in power they have less to rise to; sovereignty encloses the self.
A god who cannot hunger, cannot feast.
A god who cannot lose, cannot cherish.
A god who cannot die, cannot live.
A god who cannot kneel, cannot worship.
A god who cannot be vulnerable can never love.
All our suffering is a part of the apparatus that allows sufferings satisfaction. That is the meaning of depression and all human plights. You want for meaning because you are capable of having meaning. You suffer under the iniquity of others because you are capable of seeing and enacting goodness. Be glad that you are not the lich, for them this is not so.
Do not become powerful enough to have no needs, oh dark lord. Become powerful enough to choose your needs.
The Lesson of Lichdom
I realized something about this lichdom. I am not repulsed by it. That was its purpose in my life; that I might realize the extent of my willpower. I learned about it so that I could consider it, and I saw it for what it was: a legitimate gate out of this karmic cycle. Lichdom would be effective and feasible. I saw it because I needed to know that I have in me the capacity to be that and do that. But do not mistake me in believing that I intend to do so.
There are a few paths to immortality, and only one perfect one which I have yet to know its method exactly.
The first is lichdom.
The second is becoming the Bodhisattva. By becoming so enraptured by compassion and love, one can see transcendence and choose to continue incarnating for the sake of their fellow man. Its flaw is the opposite of lichdom: one so highly values compassion that they lose themselves. The lich loses the value of things to maintain the self. The bodhissatva loses the self to attain the highest value of things (people in this case).
The third is Bhuddic nirvana; the snuffing out of the light. The Bhuddist must become so repulsed by all things that they give them up. By freeing themselves from the clutches of want and fear they do transcend, but they lose all of their drive in the process. They become spiritually stagnant, frozen in their immovability or else dissolve into the Oneness.
The final path, and the one who’s method I have yet to know exactly, is the Magician Immortal. The Magician sees things clearly and empathizes with all things. The Magician loves and then lets go. The Magician moves his drive within himself so that he self-perpetuates as he brings more things into himself. Being the Magician Immortal is about seeing and understanding all things; understanding each thing from its perspective and his own. By understanding he defeats the laws of the karmic cycle and rides them. By empathy he gathers force and mass and makes connection. By wisdom he attaches and detaches at will. He is immortalized by mastery over all things.
The New Priesthood
Depression is the sense of self magnified to apocalyptic proportions. In that heightened state our understanding of place and scope is enhanced to reveal to us the flaws of our lives. That is why neurotypical encouragement, though well meaning, often fails to mend us. They believe they are confronting a lie within us, but they are not. What we see is often true, and they don’t see it yet.
Though the desert winds buff us; though the pain is sanctioned by the Most High; though we are starved for meaning and connection; though the world is truly awful; though we walk into the jaws of death, we nonetheless can emerge victorious. We can have meaning. We can be connected again.
Those of us who are broken may be a part of a new kind of priesthood. This isn’t the older orders of obedience. This priesthood is not concerned with conformity nor even unity. The New Priesthood is one of intimate experience and authenticity. We should engage with the world with our whole being. We should treat those near us as if we love them, because we often find that we do. We should look at the world as an intimate part of our being because it is.
The New Priesthood is about looking the world in the face and being able to truthfully say:
I AM
