Yes, I have a proudly deep and ric
I used to feel this way a lot more than currently, especially as a child. I'm not sure of how old I was when I first began thinking about this, maybe about 5 or 6, but I'd have this feeling about everyone, even my own parents. It's difficult to describe exactly, but it's as if there is something fake about everyone else, like they're not really there(that is to say present) on the same level that I am, or that maybe it's the other way around, I could never really decide.
Rationally I know that this is entirely in my head, and that it's likely a projection due to me observing others treating me differently(at least that's my guess but it could be something else). Actually I have some reoccurring thoughts that are pretty paranoid tbh, like everyone else is putting on some sort of facade exclusively for me, and that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world and everyone in it, in an eerie sort of way, but I can never figure out exactly what it is, only that it deeply disturbs me. I consider the possibility that everyone has something planned for me, but again, I can never decide on what that might be. Sometimes when I wake up I wonder how long I've actually been alive, as when I think about the previous day the experiences, thoughts, and emotions from that day don't entirely feel like they belong to me. It's as if I'm recreating the memories, feelings, and even beliefs of someone else. This perception makes wonder if "I" essentially cease to exist every time I fall asleep(this I'm honestly convinced is true, but also that there is something wrong with me that allows me to realize and truly believe it). To put it another way, it feels like I lose something or maybe a piece of myself every time I sleep.
I've never mentioned this to anyone irl, as I suspect that they either will think I'm bullshitting them, or they'll just think that I'm completely insane.
Yes, on my phone with no access to a keyboard. If I had a keyboard+my notes(which are most likely lost) and a good +8 hours, I could really do justice with my reply. Unfortunately I'm not.
I plan on making a YouTube channel in the future, I'll dive deep into this type of "meta" stuff.
I need to Switch Jobs, and move to a different apt(my apt sucks, old in general 30-40 or so years old), old carpets, old walls, no hardwood floors which I want, old carpets, antiquated kitchen and bathroom. ...Then I'll have some free time/new space/atnosphere, and I'll create a corner for video production..or at least organize the apartment with the idea of video production in mind(having nice backdrop for vids) and having a change of place and atmosphere.
Anyways, ill leave this copy pasta, since I am not in front of keyboard, hope its of some use.
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Today, I've had one of those profoundly moving experiences. An experience that you only have a couple times during your life. An experience that breaks your everyday monotony, an experience that makes you experience the outside world with greater intensity, with greater immersion. Often times, so much of our wakeful existence, simply consists of doing the same mundane tasks being only half awake or not awake at all.
Before I get to this experience, which took place in the airport. I will briefly reflect back onto my childhood, when I for the first time, had this type of an experience. An experience of being fully awake, fully emerged in the moment, an experience where you the "being in time" experience the current moment with the full intensity of the senses, where the brief moment in time, overwhelms and swallows up the person completely. The moment of awareness happened, when I was 5 years old.
I woke up in the morning, in the warm bed, facing the balcony, presented with the the overarching landscape of the world. I thought to my self for the first time, "How did I get here, how did I come to be in this bed?" Up until this point, all of my actions as a "being" were played out without me, as if my body, my being was running on autopilot up until this point. Like some type of a biological machine, it was simply responding and reacting to the world, without me... and the "conscious part, the self-aware part arose" that morning. I remember having my memories of the previous days before that morning, but it was as if they were merely implanted in me. Everything before that moment did not really have "me" present, at least not in its entirety. That morning I woke up, and I had a feeling of self, as being part of the world, and at the same as being distinct from everything around me, being awoken out of my deep eternal slumber, having an identity, having sentience.
I had the access to the memories that this body accumulated through the 5 years of its existence. Although, I need to note that having access to these memories was alien and foreign to me. Indeed these memories were "my memories" or the memories that this form has collected through its 5 years of existence , but like I've mentioned just a moment before, up until this morning, I(the being, the conscious self-aware agent that inhabited this body) wasn't really fully there with my body. "I" was in a deep slumber, waiting to emerge, "I" was dormant, waiting for the moment until this body would reach a certain level of maturity or physiological development, before the body could fully accommodate me, or "express me fully".
Well that level of physiological development(or complexity), was attained that morning. I could describe it as being similar to downloading a file and having 99% of the data downloaded. Without the missing 1%, the file is not complete and cannot be "booted". It is only once you get the last 1% downloaded and installed, that the file is complete, and you are able to "boot" it. So the night that led up to that morning must have completed the installation of that 1% that was necessary. That morning with the waking of my physical body , I woke as well.
So, I look out the balcony window, into the world... Which the body has done before... and I think to my self, "Where am I, how did I get here?" This experience of looking out the window isn't even new to me, since the body has gone through this experience before, and I have a sense of familiarity attached to it... but today I am experiencing the world, not only as a "machine" that responds to stimulus. Today I am experiencing the world as a "being" in time. So I get up out of bed, and I had the memories of my friend living next door(who was a 5-6-year-old boy like me). I got up, got dressed, and went ahead, left my home, went to his apartment, knocked on his door... and he came out... it was so strange. It was like meeting a stranger for the first time, yet having full familiarity and memories of the person, and he recognized me. What I am getting at, that the wakeful part(the conscious part), had this weird transitioning period, where it got woken into existence, and it needed to fully synthesize itself with the body(or with the machine)...
Anyways, we went outside... it wasn't my first time outside, but TODAY I've experienced this day being fully emerged in the world, being aware of it, and being aware of myself being in it. To be completely honest, I've experienced the world with such intensity; in this fresh 5-year-old body, all of the senses were sharp and brand new, all of the experiences... new and stimulating. The world seemed so mysterious and interesting, so good. To exist, to be alive, seemed the greatest "good" imaginable, the world seemed so promising, so exciting.
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Now in hindsight, if I were to be reunited with my early childhood friend(from whom I've been separated at the age of ~6), the friend whose name and face I don't even remember. I think if we were to be reunited, the feeling would not be that of happiness or rejoice, rather than of dread and a huge disappointment.
"If two men who were friends in their youth meet again when they are old, after being separated for a lifetime, the chief feeling they will have at the sight of each other will be one of complete disappointment at life as a whole; because their thoughts will be carried back to that earlier time when life seemed so fair as it lay spread out before them in the rosy light of dawn, promised so much — and then performed so little. This feeling will so completely predominate over every other that they will not even consider it necessary to give it words; but on either side, it will be silently assumed, and form the ground-work of all they have to talk about." --- Arthuer Schopenhauer
"In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means. Nevertheless, every man desires to reach old age; in other words, a state of life of which it may be said: “It is bad to-day, and it will be worse to-morrow; and so on till the worst of all.” - Arthur Schopenhauer
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"We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey. So it is that in our good days we are all unconscious of the evil Fate may have presently in store for us — sickness, poverty, mutilation, loss of sight or reason." - Arthur Schopenhauer
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Also in hindsight, I envy my 5-year-old self, not only for being so naive and ignorant at that moment in my youth. Ignorant of the coldness and harshness of the world and the suffering that that awaited me. I also envy my 5-year-old self for having the vigor and clearness of the senses associated with the young body... senses that were capable of examining the world with such intensity, with such clarity; clarity of the mind and sharpness of the senses which have dulled with time, and lost their previous "edge", just like a sharp knife loses it's edge with the passage of time, and is no longer the instrument that it once was.
The sheer power of the "intellect" or if you like the sheer processing power of the brain that I had at that moment in my childhood was probably TEN TIMES greater when compared to the state in which it currently is(aging is brutal beyond comprehension).
It is something about the development of the body, that the intellect, or the processing power of the brain ...is capable of taking in so much new information with such ease, and in such quantity at that age. The body needs to furnish the brain with the knowledge of the world so that the individual could survive in this cold harsh world...
I remember the two distinct peaks in which the body prioritized it's energy surplus to the brain, for the overall good of the organism. Those periods were; ages 5-6(leaving mothers side3, and exploring the world independently for the first time), and ages 14-17(sexual maturity, competition for reproductive rights, survival of the germline/selfish gene).
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When I was a child growing up, for my summer vacations, I use to leave the big city that I've lived in. I use to travel to my grandfathers' farm for the purposes of visiting him and spending time with him. I use to spend about two months living on his farm every summer. The farm was far away from civilization or the modern world. You had to take a dirt road to get there. It was surrounded by deep, thick forest, separated by patches of land that were used for agriculture.
Anyways, when I was 6 years old, I remember waking up in the middle of the night for no good reason, and I wanted to visit our horse. The horse was left in the fields to graze on the grass. Halters were secured to the horses head, ~20-30 ft rope was connected to the halters, the other end of the rope was connected to a small metal pin, which was pummeled into the ground in order to secure the horse a piece of land.
I don't know what time it was, but me waking up in the middle of the night... has never happened before. Furthermore, I would never leave the home at night... but that night, for whatever reason, I woke up in the middle of the night, and I was just drawn, or compelled to visit the horse. So I got up and left, the horse has been stationed in the field about half a mile away. It was night time, so it was dark outside. There were no artificial sources of light present anywhere, although the moon was out, and the moon illuminated the land below. (Also, your eyes quickly adapt to the dark, and even with the slightest amount of light, you will be able to see in the dark.)
As I am walking to the location of the field where the horse was stationed in. The "air" started to feel heavy, it felt like I was walking through dense air. When you are in a huge open field, on a huge stretch of open land, you get this sense of "vastness", you get this spatial awareness of the land. As I got close, and gained vision of the location of where the horse was supposed to be stationed in(the location was on a slight incline/hill, so I had to get really close to gain vision of the area). As soon as I got there, I saw a pack of wolves devouring my horse.
One of the wolves lifts his head up, sniffs the air, turns his head around and sees me looking at them. Instantly without any hesitation, he turns his body around and started running towards me. I was maybe 50 feet away from them. I wanted to run, but my whole body froze. I was trying my hardest to move, but I was completely frozen in fear. I could not move a single muscle. On the inside I was trying my hardest, but the body would not move. I did not understand what was happening, I did not understand why could not move, I was so afraid, I've never felt fear, not like this, to the point where it paralyzes the body.
Just in a couple of seconds, the wolf was standing in front of me. The wolf was actually about the same height as me, I could see the blood on his snout. The wolf stepped forward, his face was about 2-3 feet away from my face, he sniffed me, he stepped back, and then stepped forward, and pressed the front of his snout to my lips, and started licking my lips, and my teeth. I could actually feel his teeth press against my lips. My heart was pounding, the adrenaline was rushing, but I could not move, even If I could have... I would have been too afraid to do anything, it would have been pointless, I had no hope of running away.
The licking was very rough, very ferocious. I could feel his teeth press against my teeth, and after about 5-6 seconds of this licking of my lips, of my mouth, of my teeth, the wolf backed off. As he stepped away, his back was arched, and he was positioned sideways to me. His tail was in between his legs, he looks at me. It seemed like he wanted to wag his tail, he seemed overwhelmed with joy, almost hysterical, the wolf seemed possessed, as it tried to wag his tail(which was in between his legs) his whole body moved in an erratic way, almost unable to contain his joy, and then he stopped, turned around and ran back to the pack
As I was seeing the wolf run back to his pack, my body relaxed. I could move again. Although I was still in a high alertness/shock mode. I've noticed a human figure standing about 15-20 feet away from the wolves. Instantly, I've assumed the wolves must belong to that person standing there(I was 6). Since I saw another person standing there, and after being approached by the wolf and not being devoured by him. I've lost all of my sensation of fear and deemed it to be "safe" to approach the other person. Maybe my curiosity just overwrote the sensation of fear. I started walking towards the figure. With every single step, the air got thicker and heavier. It felt, as if I was walking through heavy dense water, also the sensation of "vastness" or my spacial awareness of the outside, began to nauseate and disorient me. With every single step, the weight and density of air increased.
As soon, I got to the figure, I've noticed that the figure was a girl, slightly taller than me. Shaggy, short brown hair. I've told her, that her wolves are eating my horse. She did not respond, look or even notice that I was there. I asked her, what her name was, I said mine is Thomas, no response. She was staring into the direction of the wolves. I've asked her why won't she respond. I've suddenly realized, the heaviness of the air, the nauseating feeling of the vastness of this space, increased even more.
As I was standing next to her, I realized that my body was now completely adjusted to this pressure, but the pressure was still there. The pressure was pressing on me from all of the directions, the feeling of this crushing pressure felt really good for some reason, it was very "all-encompassing, firm and soothing"? Experience similar to that of being really deep underwater, and being crushed by the mass of the water, yet this sensation being very pleasant.
I've asked why is she not talking to me, who is she, why won't she tell me what her name was? And then she slowly turned to me, lifted her face ever so slightly, and looked at me, and I looked into her eyes. The eyes had some otherworldly quality of the "wilderness" or just "pure raw nature". I remember the expression on her face. The eyes of complete detachment from this place, from this time. Being not connected with the world, being so "indifferent" to this place.... the face was completely expressionless, the skin was pale and smooth. Actually, when she looked at me, her gaze, her iris did not focus, she looked completely through me, even while looking at me.
I felt inferior for the first time in my life. I could not fully grasp it at that moment, but I subconsciously understood that she was above me. The sensation of fear without the sensation of fear overcame my body(it was that vibration resonating in my body, without the actual sensory sensation of fear), and the sensation of sharp lighting striking my body, without the intense pain. It's almost like like the signals or vibrations for those emotions were expressed in me, but I did not get to experience the unpleasant sensation of those vibrations. I felt those emotions without "actually feeling them."
Then her gaze... I could see such depth, such vastness in the eyes, yet they were so indifferent, so detached from the world, so above this realm. Her gaze however so faintly, focused on me. She looked at me, almost with some distant faint sense of guilt or sadness. Almost as if my fate was, my future had been laid out before her eyes. And she took pity on me.
I wake up in my bed, I have no idea how did I get to my bed? The last moment that I remember was me standing on the hill, looking at that girl? It wasn't a dream, I know it wasn't a dream, why am I in my bed, how did I get here?
I got dressed, I went outside... and I am in disbelief, but maybe this was a dream? Even when I know it clearly wasn't. I had the full sensory awareness of the whole experience. Feeling, hearing, seeing...In fact the experience was more real, more intense, then actually being for sure awake now... there were no gaps, no skips in the experience(like you would have in a dream)... how did I get to the bed? What happened to the horse? Is the horse dead? Where is the girl? My grandfather walks in through the door, and says that the horse has been killed by the wolves, and partially eaten by them, we go see the horse, it is a partially eaten carcass.
So this wasn't a dream? But how did I get to bed? I have no memory of this part. I don't say anything to anyone, about what happened at night.
Then we went to visit, a neighboring farmer. To see if any of his animals got attacked by the wolves, none of them did. Although the farmer had a goat, and the goat just gave a birth to a bunch of "goat babies", and I asked where do babies come from?(I did know about sexual reproduction/birth... I did not know how any of the beings that inhabit the world come into existence.)(I did not learn about the process of sexual reproduction and birth until the age of 8)
So they said, that the mother goat, brings them from the woods.... So I've asked is that where humans come from as well? The woods? Someone brings them from the woods? And they said yes.... and then, of course, I believed this "innocent lie". That girl, I've instantly assumed to be my sister. It must have been, she must have been created by the "magic of the world", and she was waiting in the woods for someone to bring her home out of the woods. It just made perfect sense, everything added up. I rationalized that the detached look in her eyes, was the result of her being really sad. She was waiting for someone to bring her out of the woods. And that strange feeling of pressure, it must be the magic of creation wearing off, or maybe she has magical powers? Maybe she can teach me magic? That would be so cool!...and the wolves... ahh the wolves must have been her guardians taking care of her! I don't know, but it was so easy to rationalize the whole experience to my 6-year-old self, as soon as I got some context(false context), to which I could attach the whole story to.
To my 6-year-old self, the world was still a magical place, filled with magic, witches and monsters, ghosts, aliens...Of course, I decided to look for that girl. I was obsessed, I was drawn, I was completely consumed.
I remember being so afraid, to venture into the woods, especially deep into the woods. I did not know, what monsters, what creatures hid deep in the woods... I remember, building up courage, to pass a certain point, and once I passed it, building my courage up again to pass even a further point in the woods. Until I've lost all fear of whatever might lurk in the woods and just searched frantically.
So I've spent the whole summer venturing deep, deep into the woods, into all directions searching for her. I really believed that she is somewhere up there waiting to be discovered . I remember, losing all track of time, and just exploring the woods from dawn till dusk, looking for her hopelessly. I remember comming back home, my great-grandmother beat me with her cane, she asked me where did I disappear to. Everyone was looking for me... I told her I was in the woods, I did not even care, all I could think about was her, nothing else mattered. Those eyes, they were the eyes of some wild animal, not even animals that that quality or that level of the "pure raw nature" embued in them. That indifferent, detached expression on her face... that overwhelming pressure, the sense of vastness. Of course, I never found her.
Just a side anecdote: I remember my Psychology professor, mentioning that his father, who was a really cold, calculated, and emotionless nuclear physics researcher. Saw something like this at the end of his bed when he was a little child. My psychology professor said, that his father was disappointed that he, namely his son became a half "doctor"(namely masters in psychology), and did not get a "real" doctorate degree. He said, his father is an emotionless bastard that doesn't have a sense of humor, he is void of any emotion, he doesn't ever joke around, he doesn't ever laugh. Yet absolutely genius when it comes to the sciences. His father swore that the reason why he got interested in science, is because when he was a child, he saw something standing at the edge of his bed....
I bugged my psychology professor to tell me more... So he told me, his father, when he was a child, got woken up in the middle of the night for no reason, by some type of pressure, he said he felt as if the air turned heavy, and that the space of his room expanded? He looked at the end of his bed and saw a dark figure standing there. He hid under his sheets and was too afraid to look at it. But ever since that day, he was interested in science, that's why he pursued sciences, and he swears it really happened, he wasn't dreaming, he wasn't imagining, he said whatever it was, scared the living the daylight out of him, he thought it was a space alien or some dimensional traveler. And my psychology professor said, to hear this from his father, knowing what kind of a man he is... just beyond comprehension... but he swears by it, it really happened, and it wasn't a dream of some type of a hallucination. He said, the experience moves his father so much, that that experience was the single reason
When I heard the words, heavy air, and space expansion(vastness), I knew this was something very similar to my experience...although I took a good look at the "being", whatever it might have been...
