How i started believing in God

I though about an article i did of "In Defense of God's Existence", and notice it would be good to show my life experience to guide and try to make people perceive through my eyes that it have something rational in my belief.

I'm collecting things i wrote in other articles i made, if you have access, you may perceive it is the same. But i'm complementing it with more details.

Many people interpret me wrongly, i believe i don't do anything against what bible commands.

In fact i'm the typical annoying Christian that think almost everything is from the devil and even some mainstream Christian concepts.

I'm a Christian mysticist:

mys·ti·cism  (mĭs′tĭ-sĭz′əm)

n.

1.a. Belief in direct experience of transcendent reality or God, especially by means of contemplation and asceticism instead of rational thought.

b. Such experience had by an individual.

"Mysticism is popularly known as any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning, but may refer to becoming one with God or the Absolute. It also refers to the attainment of insight in ultimate or hidden truths, and to human transformation supported by various practices and experiences."

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_mysticism

Some people confuse mysticism with "occultism" or whatever, mysticism is not that. In fact, the Book of Revelation can be considered a mystical experience, and so, John can be considered a Christian Mystic.

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INFANCY:

I was curious and fascinated when a kid, and this made me get inside this mysterious world and become who i'm!

I don't regret, and in fact, i feel i'm doing the correct, even if alone, i feel that, i end up discovering everything in the correct way. And i feel confidence in my faith, and i'm a Christian and i'm not doing anything that is not Christian-like.

I noticed my faith comes since my infancy, and it was made by mere humbleness and innocence, whatever came next was coated over what i experienced since ever.

When i was kid, i used to lay down and imagine things, because my mom is a psychologist and she used to make us lay down and she would tell us stories and / or scenes while we had our eyes closed and she would tell us to try to feel that in our body.

And later, when i was kid, i would use the same imagination to play, i would try to create "imaginary figures" in my mind to pretend they were alike game enemies or allies.

I played Doom in my infancy, and i would try to remember where the body on the floor was when i was playing that i was killing "demons, like Doom" and killing these "imaginary figures".

And when i was going to draw something, i would try to overlay my imagination, because i used to think that "my imagination looks pretty realistic", and i would try to draw over the imagination layer.

The same for music, i would try imagine "strongly" the music with all details and instruments, barely i knew this was developing some mind skills since when i was kid; i would also try to make some sort of "beatbox" for the music...

Since kid i had a desire and will to chase wisdom and knowledge, i had an enormous interest in solving puzzles, arts, music and science. When i was kid, i used to say to my parents, "i want to be a scientist when i grow up".

I think my mother, because her psychology knowledge, educated me towards intellect, she would give me intellectual toys and play games that would develop cognitive abilities. She bought me LEGO, would buy my jig-saw puzzles and taught me a little of piano.

My grandfather also was very into intellectualism, he had (and now we have) thousands of books, like, encyclopedias, atlas, about the universe and etc, and i would love to read those books since kid.

And i also had a computer with DOS and Windows 95, and i used to play puzzle games (loved Chip's Challenge and Sokoban), first person shooters (Doom and Duke Nukem and some Build Engine games), real time strategy (Warcraft 1 and 2, later Starcraft and Age of Empires 1 and 2), tactical game (i loved X-COM 2) games and RPGs. I learned how to speak english by getting a dictionary to use as a way to deal with the game Fallout 1 and 2, which i loved, and it is still my fav RPG, but i finished so many times that i lost will to play anymore.

I think all that was of a huge importance for my desire for wisdom. Wisdom is something that was part of my life since ever, the love for wisdom, the desire for wisdom, the idea of the importance of wisdom, philosophies. I was always a very questioning kid, i was super curious and would annoy everybody for questions. My grandpa in this case, that was an engineer, wouldn't spare teaching me some stuffs.

I should address that i have as background a Roman Catholic family, however, even if my family is faithful, my mother and father don't go too much to the church, only on special events. I would say i grew up with a pretty much "secular education". That have not stopped me, i went to the catechesis because I ASKED to, when i was 10 or 11, i used to say i love the church and i wanted to go more times to the church, which is why, if i remember correctly, when i was 11, my mother took me to the catechesis. Which is interesting, it was like i already had set myself to religion.

And when i was kid, i would treat this perception, imagination, creativity, as something "God-like" let's say, but i don't understood that at the time and neither called it like that, but i treated like that...

I used to hear and see ghosts since when i was kid, but people said those things are things of "my head", and then i began to think everyone had "things in their heads" and stopped worrying about it. At night, i noticed those faces would appear on the "noise" of the darkness (take that in mind, i'll explain later how this is meaningful), i also noticed it was not my imagination, that it had something moving there.

I had never seek anyone that messed with the spiritual and / or understood the spiritual, i have kept this to myself. The fact people told it was things from my head were small moments where i told innocently without knowing people don't saw those things. But it was not very directly, i obviously don't remember exactly the things i said and to who, but it was more like commenting about "you know when ghosts appears and stuff", and people would say "there is no ghost, those are things of your head".

I also had a strange fear of spirits, when i was on the catechesis, one of the catechesis lady asked people what they were afraid of. Strangely, nowadays i have more fears, but, when i was kid, i couldn't think about something i had fear, then i "remembered" and said: "i have fear of ghosts".

I also used to have fear of things about the spiritual, my mother once told she made the "cup game" (kinda like an improvised Ouija, but with a cup and a paper) in her school, which was also a church, and that, if i remember correctly, the cup broke, and that later, when they were doing a theater practice, the lights began to get dim or turn off. I had fear of stuffs like that. I also had fear that my toys could become aware. And i remember i watched the Blair's Witch and that made me get very scared of a Power Ranger toy i had, i used to sleep with that toy, but for a week, i left it at the living room, haha.

Someone might ask "how you distinguished between imaginary creations and spiritual experiences, especially as a child. Were there specific moments where you felt certain it was more than just imagination?".

And i would say that it was not under my control like my imagination, i'll also explain later, when i began to drink Ayahuasca, how i also noticed there was another layer that was beside my imagination and the physical world. When i was kid, i just had an intuition that it was real, but when i was teenage and adult, i noticed something beyond, which i'm going to explain later, which is interesting, since, i was atheist when i was a teenager.

However, i always felt there is a "second type" of feeling, which was not linked to the feelings we have for the physical stuff, and neither linked to our emotion, just a strange sensation that there were strange forces, like, strange darkness that could appear from somewhere and that i thought "was real".

And like i said, i always saw things and heard things, and nobody i asked said they saw or heard the same. Until i crossed over a Reddit post about "how someone with psychosis sees", and i see this everyday since ever. I thought psychosis was when "this" (this vision of the picture below) was more intense, and not merely this... And then i asked my friends if they saw the world like that, and they said they didn't... For real that people don't see this? That some people worry about this at the point of going to therapy? While i was my entire life seeing this and thinking it was "meh, normal"?

The image of the post.

In fact, the image is more subtle than how i see, normally i see with the intensity of this image when i'm not very sensible and on certain physical or mental conditions. I also learned this image does not represent psychosis, but people that have high imaginative / imagery levels. Still, after researches, i noticed i do have psychosis.

When i was kid, i also believed i could have "mind forces", and i also would admire the music and art as i do when i'm high or something... I mostly listen music with closed eyes...

I also always had a strong synesthesia, in fact, i think everybody have a little of it, but i think when you see those "images", like the picture above, floating over your vision, then, synesthesia is probably stronger, since, i noticed that synesthesia and the intensity of those visions were connected one to another.

And i had certain psychological notions and other crazy things. I also though dreams were spiritual, even if i don't though about the word "spiritual", i always liked to dream and i though this was important on "another level".

When i was kid, i had a strange natural fear of God, i wouldn't dare offend him, neither Jesus.

Another thing that was interesting to note, that i had natural inclination to purity, the first time i saw a pornographic image, of a woman with a vibrator inserted in her vagina, it was SHOCKING to me, i kept the entire week shocked thinking like "why would someone do that?! For pleasure?! Why?!".

Another strange thing i had, that i had this strange feeling of seeing myself as a warrior that would defeat demons. I was also a huge fan of Doom, it was the first game i played, and i liked the idea of being a savior that would defeat big scary demons.

I kinda always saw myself as an exorcist, but, only later i took that as something more "serious", i'm going to explain later.

Talking about exorcism, i remember that when i was in the 1st or 2nd grade, i blanked out for like 3 to 5 seconds in the school interval in a soccer game with colleagues, like, equal to sleeping, but all "black", and after i "woke up" again, i was biting a friend. And it was not any bite, he had to check up in the hospital, and got a very big nasty and ugly hematoma. I could not explain that when i was kid, people nicknamed me "werewolf" and "dog", the school director menaced to expel me. Strangely, that guy pardoned me. As a stupid kid, i tried to explain in my own terms, so i said that he had hit me in the face and i had bitten him, but that was not true. Today i think i was maybe possessed by a demon for a small amount of seconds. And alike things happened twice when i was adult, but i'm going to talk about that later.

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TEENAGE:

Early teenage:

I was an atheist that loved to study and i was skeptic with everything, consequently, later i began to get in doubt with some atheist premises.

However, before getting to that point, i'm going to explain my teenage phase.

When i was near 13 year old, i began to doubt God, and i think it was hugely an influence i had about a big secular culture that was around me. My uncle was barely an adult, and he used to listen to different types of music, some which are not a big deal, like, Moby, some EDMs and etc. But he, and mainly some friends he had, used to listen a lot of Heavy Metal.

At that age i used to like a lot those extreme music, and it had this thing, which is weaker now, of calling such music "satanic music", and also the games, since, i was not far from the time people used to call Doom a "satanic game".

And that made me began to suspect by the fact i felt nothing wrong about listening to certain music and playing certain games, while people would accuse such things of being such stuff, i felt nothing spiritual on those things, and since i was not feeling anything spiritual in those things, i began to question if there was indeed "spiritual stuff" in things.

This made me see that there was "something lying to me" in society, which was important type of thinking i had. This idea began to make me move from Metal to Punk / Hardcore. Which got me involved in a huge interest in philosophy, i began to be a very annoying person that would love to argue (i still love to argue as a sport, but now, i know i should respect people's limit). I always hated to be lied to, my intellectual nature made me want to know facts, and i saw lies as a sort of "hack" people were trying to do with my logical integrity.

Another factor to take in consideration, is that i used to think about things of fooling your children that Santa Claus, or Easter Rabbit, Tooth Fairy and etc was something that shows how people practice and also fall to "you can believe in things that does not exist". And so, the idea that this could be a possibility, while parents and the world are supposed to be our guides and not liars, made me be suspicious of things.

However, i noticed that my "punk friends / mates" weren't "as punk as they said to be", and i also noticed that they were very inclined to leftist politics. I would then begin to call myself apolitical, i though i had a punk nature in attitude, but i shouldn't care about those activism and stuff, i could just "live as punk" instead of caring about such political BS. But that was a lie, in my attempt to be "moderate", i began to accept certain lies told by leftists. I won't elaborate my political views, since the articles here aren't about that. But i would say that it is obvious that leftist ideas tend to have a rejection of religion, mainly Christianity.

Since i loved philosophy (and still love), the idea of religion as a core basis of argumentation was fascinating, it would test my abilities, make me understand fallacies and would force me to understand science. Since i was arrogant and though i "know it all", i thought that i was sure God didn't existed and that i could have confidence to challenge any theist, i just had to do semantic tricks to guide to "scientific truth" (which in my mind, would be God-less), and that i could manage to do it no matter my position in a debate.

At first, that was not exactly a problem, i used to get into atheist forums (that was in the early 00's) to get resources for my debates, and i would then use the early-social-media that was famous in my country, which was called Orkut, and find people there to debate. The problem: those were easy targets; people that had no big education in apologetic, the idea of religious debate at the time (in such places and in such way) was new, and people hadn't much arguments and preparation, unlike today, with too much resource available, Youtube and etc (at that time, i'm not even sure if Wiki existed yet, or if it did, it was bare-bones).

This eluded me, i though i had such an intellectual power, nobody could defeat me.

I remember a day i managed to piss off an entire Orkut group, and that led people to going in mass on my profile to argue with me, that moment was a moment that contributed with my sense of confidence, i noticed i could deal with multiple people at the same time (ironically, i now do the opposed, i was attacked in mass by atheists, and i noticed i could deal with multiple people at the same time).

Even when people asked mysteries, like, the beginning of the universe and etc, i would still manage to give an answer that would "shut 'em up". However, i would say the idea of the "universe coming from nothing" was never appetizing, but i would just ignore that as a mystery, like some atheists do now. I never thought deeply about my arguments that i have now that the third-law-of-motion and the law-of-conservation-of-energy would render "nothing" as the only option left, which is a paradox. Since by the fact i never thought so deeply about that, i never had a moment i would reconsider my views, i would think "until now, everything seems to be made in a naturalistic form, so, the things we don't know are also under this rule".

There was also nothing special that would strength my view of atheism, i was the typical atheist that would be like "there is no proof God exist", and that, for me, was strong enough.

STRANGELY... Even when i was very atheist at this point, i still could not offend Jesus, i could only do that once and i felt very guilty... I used to think it was because i was "programmed mentally". And i still had fear of spiritual stuffs, i used to think it was irrational fear, but i couldn't deny it. I remember once my friends were doing a "game" about invoking spirits, and i was scared telling them to stop, and they began mocking me, since, they knew i was atheist, and i was serious, i was anxious, i even raised the tone of my voice.

One day, i left my room, i looked my brother right in his eyes, i felt something was "whispering in my ears" (not literally), i then looked at some pictures, went to the bathroom, looked at the mirror with a very strange existencial dread feeling, and then, i asked:

"Why am i myself? Why not any other person? My brother, mother, african, japanese? Why i'm who i'm?"

I knew computers and robots couldn't pick its own chassi. Something had to "pick my body to be mine", it made no sense to me in a scientific explanation. No atheistic philosophy could answer me this correctly. This broke me, i was still atheist, but i found one question that "fucked me up". How could i not be able to answer a question? Me, the philosophy expert teenage that win all debates, can't answer this? What if someone bring this question in a debate? How can i deal with that?

I then tried to ignore this question, i thought that "science would eventually explain". I studied psychology by proxy because my mother, i love psychology and i studied a lot it. And i couldn't find in my own studies something to explain that. I knew conscience was a mysterious thing, but i just though "it is in the brain", however, this question broke me... If conscience is in the brain, we shouldn't have a specific brain, spontaneity and etc. A computer is turned on by wires, all computers with same basis would turn on and act in the same way, people can have different things in the memories, different programs, but computer only behave in a way, it have no individuality. And now i was stuck with this mysterious questions. My atheists peers couldn't understand my struggle, they were very superficial with their answer, i guess it was because they don't had a higher study in psychology, i knew they answers were not good, i knew they were talking from ignorance.

Their responses were very vague, like "conscience is in the brain, because, when the brain die, the person die", and that i shouldn't think too much about me being myself, since they though this simple answer already answered that "it is in the brain".

Sometimes they simple couldn't understand the idea of "why are you yourself", they would simple say "well, i'm myself because i'm myself, duh", which sounded very stupid to me.

After i discovered about the hard problem of the conscience, everything began to make sense (but i discovered that problem when i was adult).

But i never brought that in a debate with theists, i think my point was not to bring my doubts to them, but to make them feel doubt about themselves. Not because i was scared of this argument, but, because i don't felt this argument would be something that would reduce my atheistic view. However, i can't discard that maybe i had a subconscious fear of this argument, since it was impactful to me, but i was too proud to admit.

Mid teenage:

One thing to take in mind, i began drinking when i was 13, and when i was around 15 i used to drink a lot, this gave me lot of problems even when i was adult, later i'll explain why does this matter. However, now it will have a detail that this matter.

Even if i used to drink, i was still very puritan. Even while being atheist, i disliked perversion, nastiness, hedonism and etc. I hated cigars and the smell of cigar, and i would see drugged people as weak.

On the other side, i was very cynical, people would even have a certain fear of me, see me as having some psychopathic traits (to be honest, maybe i had, but not anymore, which is also something that you should take in consideration for later). I used to be heavy towards people, humiliating them, treating the average as dumb stupid people, that i was intellectually superior. I saw that as an arrogant confirmation that i was superior to the average people, and even the above average. Since i knew about psychology, i would use psychological tricks to manipulate people, sometimes only to laugh at them. I was good enough with that that, sometimes, i managed to make people fight each other for the stupidest reasons. I could manipulate people with facial expression, false cuteness, and etc, all that while inside i was a demon...

Strangely, even under such attitudes, i still could not look at gore things, this would shock me, however, eventually i got desensitized about it, which i saw as something bad.

One day i was called to a friend's house to commemorate his birthday.

And surprise, when i was on his neighborhood, and there was no turning back, they told me that, to commemorate their birthday, they would smoke weed. I was reluctant, i even said to then one moment that "you guys are going to smoke, i'll keep near and i wont", and they said "nah, you ARE going to smoke with us, and there is nothing you can do, because we are going to smoke in a room and you are going to get high by proxy". Since i don't knew how weed affected people, i don't knew if you could or not get high by proxy (now i know you don't, at least, not me), so i began to get anxious and feeling that i had to face "using dirty drugs for once". I also need to mention that another friend that never smoked weed was with me too, however, didn't seem like he was reluctant.

Now i know they were noob at the weed scene, but they at least knew how to smoke weed. One guy went to the "favela" (brazilian style of slum), he was scared, took some old clothes to look "poorer", which, now i know that it just made him look like a dork to the favela people. Then he probably even paid more for few weed. However, it was a good amount for the night.

They managed to roll eight joints (in Brazil, we mostly smoke joint, it is pretty uncommon to see someone smoking a bong or a pipe) of diverse sizes, some big, some small, now i know they were noob indeed, they don't even knew how to roll properly, to measure properly and etc.

Then, they lighted the first joint, at first i felt "nothing", i heard some people say that for the first times, people have tolerance, now i doubt it, i think it is just that weed effects are subtle, and sober people are unaware of subtle sensibilities, you need to "break their rigidity" to make them more sensible.

Then, at the second weed, me and my friend that never smoked weed, began to get very humorous, we began to find everything funny, we began to have burst of laugh at the smallest joke. People began to get humorous, things were nice.

Then, at the third weed, i began to feeling my heart rate changing, however, i have heart murmur, i don't know and don't knew how bad or "no deal" it was. So i got scared, i said i had such heart problem and that i was scared. People got a little worried, one even joked "nobody dies with weed, if you die because of weed, i'm going to kill you", haha. And then they invited me to lay down on the bed to "heal myself".

That was the moment i noticed how my deep imagination was strong and vivid, that this thing i loved to see and explore as a kid was saturated and better than i always wanted. I still remember a scene of my view going fast to a purple horizon with a light at the end, and the "floor" was beige tiles with stick figures looking like it was in an animation by the speed of my view floating over these.

I also noticed how my philosophical abilities increased, my hearing was way better, the colors were more saturated, my creativity and pattern recognition increased too and etc. I would say it was a "passion at the first sight".

And that is it, when i first smoked a weed, i noticed that it was enhancing this, which, since kid i considered "spiritual" (but still, i was not calling it spiritual).

By the way, i have not associated my heart problem with weed, but with my unsureness about how weed could affect me, but when i laid down, i began to relax, so i had no deep realization about mortality, i would say my imagination was so vivid that i got distracted by the beauty of it instead of thinking about my death, however, this was kinda subconscious.

Because of that, i wanted to find more of this "weed", i was noob and i don't knew how to buy it. So at first i began to buy on the downtown, which, in my country (or at least, my city) is more expensive, since, they use to abuse the price for people that are in the downtown for parties and would be willing to smoke and had no weed and would be willing to pay more for it.

I then wanted to present this "cool plant" to my friends, and i had two close friend, A. and L., and i once brought to them some weed. They enjoyed, i think A. enjoyed even more, he was an extrovert guy and i think the humorous side of weed made him have more affinity. I loved weed because my philosophical thoughts, L. was divided between "fun" and "philosophy", while A. would sometimes get annoyed about my deep deliberations and would sometimes call me to tone down my philosophical euphoria, which, i would most of the times deny.

This made us pretty creative people. Since kid i used to draw, and i was skilled (but i got rust), i could draw a very realistic face of someone when i was 12, at the school, people used to ask me to do a drawing to them. However, i normally only drew by copying realistic stuffs and scenarios and people's face (i also learned how to draw realistic non-existent people). With weed, i noticed i could explore art to express my internal reality, which, of course i also thought about that before weed, but, not in the way i was thinking, with too many ideas, with too many new techniques appearing and etc.

A. was not of drawing, but we used to notice weed made us find patterns on semi-random patterns on stuff, like, wall painting or deformations, and we began to get a pen, and, even if that was vandalizing (well, it was a pen, easy to clean), we would draw what we saw on such patterns. This seems to have ignited a passion for visual art and graffiti on A., which began to make drawings connecting the outlines of certain figures to another, making a sort of psychedelic colorful art that would mimic this "draw on patterns" things we used to do.

On my side, i began to drift away from visual art, i always loved music and i knew some underground music since the early-teenage, and the auditory effects of weed made me pursue more experimental music and made me want to learn more about music. Some years before that experience, i used to compose music on a tablature program that would output MIDI files; and now, with weed, this feeling that i could put my compositions ideas on paper, made me want to learn how to deal with a DAW. However, before using a DAW, me and A. used to record on a recorder i had (cellphones were a novelty at the time, not everybody had, i don't felt the need to have) random environmental noise and / or (mixed or not) ourselves hitting random objects on the street to use as instruments, like if the world was a musical instrument, since, we used to feel with weed that "the world is music" (which, strangely, when sober, i never felt like that, i mean, i used to appreciate the sounds around me, but not see it as a natural composition in such intense way), and that we were agents of the "world music". We also used to talk gibberish, almost like "speaking in tongues", make mouth sounds and etc and mix it all together.

Later i installed Fruit Loops and it was the first time i began using a DAW, however, even later i swapped to Ableton and then Renoise, which is my fav DAW and the DAW i use currently, even if now i barely use DAW and went from MaxMSP to making music on C++ directly.

You may be asking "why are you telling that?", because, i want to explain things of the mind, remember when i said i couldn't understand why my conscience was mine in specific? And because this has also led to other things related to how i see spiritual stuff and how it guided me to a spiritual view of the world.

Another thing i noticed, i began to get very skilled naturally on video-games, it was like it magically made me be skillful, it just "flowed" from me. It made me see that a good mood also reflect in a good skill and creativity.

I could only see that as a cognitive increase, as, video-game are purely cognitive, so, if i was doing better, it was because i was being SMARTER. And my love for wisdom "beeped", i noticed that "that is it", i "got a key for wisdom".

I also noticed that my sins would lead to the reduction of my "imaginary saturation", my internal view would be dimmed, and then i noticed my "puritanism" was justified. Which is also something to take in consideration, because, later it made me realize things about Christianity, but not at this moment, i was still atheist. However, take in mind, it was not based on traditional religious teachings, i was (and still am) always an empirical person, my justification is that sins maybe mess my head with hormones or other neurological discharges that would dim my "imaginary saturation".

Late teenage:

While i still liked some punk rocks, i was drifting away from heavy metal and harsh types of rock, but i still liked some technical ones, like, mathcore, math rock, post rock and etc.

I was more interested in experimental music (still, some harsh, because it was new to me), like, noise, ambient and a genre that was sprouting at the time, Drone (which is a genre with small note changes, very minimal, with pads and a "wall of sound", kinda ambient, but not always, but always reminds ambient music). Also some freak experimentation, like, some crazy folk music, krautrock and etc...

I was loving to enjoy listening music with my eyes closed, like i always used to do, however, it seemed like i lost certain quality in hearing from when i was kid, which weed was reviving.

I also need to mention i was very "orthodox" in terms of music, i would be the one that would call experimental music "not real music" (but not because i don't understood it, i was studious in terms of music; i just couldn't feel what i then began to feel), and i would be kinda elitist in music. The same for art. I was becoming something different, i noticed how weed was changing me as a person, making me understand better the different types of expression, personalities and etc. I was also becoming more loveful, i was feeling pity for ignorant people instead of hatred.

I also managed to understand better the weed culture and people. I found a better dealer, which was merely a guy that studied with me, however, he still sold weed at a higher price.

Later, a new student appeared, and he was a good friend, we were basically the only ones talking to each other. He managed to find a good dealer, and then, we began to buy a good amount of weed, that made my money worth, and now i was smoking more frequently.

At my early teenage i was not depressive, i wouldn't say i was full blow depressive later, but, i began to have false friends and failed romance, and then, i began to get more depressive by time. I was still kinda depressed, but, weed was helping me a lot. I noticed i was avoiding dark thoughts and that, maybe, if it wasn't for weed, i would have killed myself or did something bad to someone else. It was also making me reduce alcohol, i also began to see alcohol as a dangerous drug. Before weed, i had the typical view of "i drink, i know technically is a drug, but, i at least i don't use drugs, like those weed smokers", and now i was seeing that i was fooled, alcohol is very dangerous, toxic and brutal, and weed is so innocent, never killed anyone.

In my atheistic view, i don't saw a reason for life, i could die and that would be a mere "whatever", i also took as granted that the world was corrupted and sadness was the status quo, so i couldn't see a reason or a strategy to deal with my depression, in fact, i used to think that people that would tell me to see things on brighter side was "lying to me, like society always does".

This also matched with my punk view that "society is fooling me", once again, another lie society told me: that weed is bad.

I don't think weed is a gateway drug, there is good evidences that this does not make sense, including that in fact it seems more like a "get away drug" (like, it makes you get away from other drugs). And when i began smoking weed, i still had this "puritan view" and saw weed as "good and natural, and not really a drug". However, after more failed relationships, both as friends and romance, i got in dark place and began to accept almost any drug people gave me, i just never used glue or chloroform, because i thought those were truly trash drugs and not even real drugs, but straight up hazardous toxins. However, it was not long after that that weed itself also showed to me that i had no likeness to stimulants; cocaine only made me anxious and not euphoric, i never understood the appeal of that drug. I noticed crack had a stronger effect that was "more fun", but was still trash and don't combined with me. And then, weed showed me that i liked this philosophical and intellectual activities, and those other drugs are just "party drugs" and have no benefit, it does not worth the money, and weed was cheap.

I also need to take note that i even used a very trash "drug" called Benflogin, which was a cough medicine that when overdosed would make you hallucinate. This was my first time that i had real delusions. And this shit was strong. Like, you would literally hear people talking to you, you would stare someone in their face and not recognize, you would see shadows of people forming in objects, and most of times it would be a bad-trip. However, i still used sometimes because it was something unique. I remember one day i smoked a weed while under effect, and i could swear that, for like 3 to 5 seconds, the colors of the sky changed a little, like a photo filter. I saw friends being super scared for no reasons at all. And we would also see neonic traces of things that moved, and it would look like a delayed signal with feedback, because, let's say, if you moved you hand, it would have a trace with lot of hands.

The sense of time was brutally changed, sometimes things that took 10 seconds would feel like it took a whole minute, really, no exaggerations.

You would also get super quiet, and in fact it was not fun, but it looked "magical" to me that our brain could warp reality so much. I regret a lot using this shit, because i think one of my eyes does not see well anymore because of this drug. It is not even a drug, and it had lot of risk, lot of times i though i was going to die, which was a feeling very commonly reported from people that used this drug, since, for it to make effect, you would have to overdose at risky levels. One day my heart was going so fast that i literally called my brother to be aware of me if i suddenly had an attack, and when he felt my heart he was also worried, it was not common. The taste was horrible if you had bitten the pills.

I think they changed the recipe, since it was a trend in the 00's to buy it and joke that it was the "poor's man LSD", since, it was very cheap to buy it, and, if i remember correctly, it got media attention and etc.

Going back a little in time, before all this trash part of my life with those other drugs that i got involved.

One day i smoked weed and began to think about the "acaso", which means "chance", but not exactly in case of randomness, but what is unpredictable; it is hard to translate what we understand in portuguese with this word.

Chance in english can make one thing about "the rolling of a dice", but "acaso" is not always about random chance or stochastic events, but sometimes you can say "por acaso" (by chance) to things that are not related to chance, but, about something that appeared spontaneously. It is a portuguese word that is hard to translate precisely, that is why i'm going to use the word "acaso" and not the word "chance".

ANYWAY, i was philosophizing with L., which was high with me, we were both looking at the stars and talking. We were talking about how the stars and atoms are alike, both have a center of mass that things gravitates towards, and that even non-physical stuffs tends to that too, how cultures becomes niches, how ideas, psychological states and etc also attracts people towards a "gravitational center". We began to discuss how that was part of nature, that things get closer to a central point by time. We talked a lot about it, which led me to days later start a philosophical basis of writing and that this idea would be the first i was going to talk about: "acaso não existe", which, at first glance, looks obvious, since, for every action there is a reaction, but my idea went deeper than that, like i talked about the cosmos and etc, i wanted to talk about how how different areas and etc had an universal pattern.

In the midst of that brainstorming, I was thinking about how i was feeling way wiser, this made me think that some cultures treated weed religiously and that religious had this focus on wisdom, so i began to think about this effect of being wiser with weed, and how that could be seem as religious.

When i came home i decide to open the bible after a long time (regardless that i used to read the bible to refute theist, and also because even being atheist i used to think the bible have good advises), and i was thinking a lot about this "wisdom" thing weed was giving me, and coincidentally (i don't believe in coincidence, especially that i just had concluded that "acaso" is non-existent) i opened on the Book of Wisdom, from a Catholic bible. I though it was too coincidental, mixed with other coincidental things that was happening to my life.

After talking so much about how coincidences does not exist, that for every action there is a reaction, that it seems that things follows a line of events... Then, i open the bible and it says exactly what i was just thinking?! What are the odds?!

And i was also beginning to note synchronicities and stuff like that too... However, i don't knew it was called synchronicities, i would only consider too much of a coincidence to be true.

This made me think a lot about my atheism, but yet there was a lot of things to deal with that. Of course, as a long stubborn atheist, i wouldn't just start believing because of that. However, that was a big boost in my view of religion, now i don't saw it as irrational, i noticed there are indeed reason in religion and there is things that are deemed spiritual. That when we are sober, we don't notice a "boost of wisdom" out of nowhere, and that if something can simple give me wisdom from what already have in my brain, so there must have techniques to boost my wisdom in other ways, and that, if such techniques and "drugs" are considered religious, maybe there is a truth in religions in the sense of the virtues it gives to you.

Weed was also helping me to find a focus and a reason to live, something, like i said before, i don't had. This was also something that made me think about religious concepts, since this should have no objective sense in an atheistic view.

The boost was something general, it was both intellectual and emotional, that is a good point to talk, because it was one of the things that made me think that there is not this thing about "either intellect or emotion", i noticed we intellectualize about what brings us emotions and that we emotionalize with things we intellectualize, emotions and intellect work together and are not something separated. I was noticing my mental virtues are all connected, that my brain worked as a whole.

Another thing that i began to notice, even before weed, is that, i noticed if you think in someone's direction, this one will have a subconscious reaction. When i was an atheist teenage, that would make me thoughtful about how it worked, as it seemed that it was using mechanics that was not from this world. I was still thinking it could be that the subconscious is more powerful than we think and that there was some sort of subtle mental force that would trigger people's subconscious.

However, i used to test it everyday when i was going to work and college, and i noticed it does not matter the distance or whatever, the fact was still true, this shouldn't be possible in a naturalistic view.

I tested different types of thoughts to see if there was a difference between rude or gentle thoughts, or mere abstract thoughts that pretended to touch people. I noticed that rude thoughts would lead people to have a rude response, normally, but not always, they would react with something that would look like grunt, be it cleaning their throat, coughing, heavy breath, or that noise people do when they push strongly the air in their nose (normally to unclog their nose). It is never completely what you expect, but it is always on the direction you expect. Telling people to put their hand on the head would lead people to scratch their hair, or to put the hand on the chin or etc.

If you think like you are touching someone's shoulder, this one may scratch the shoulder, or fix the position of the shirt.

Another reaction i noticed that it seems to increase people's anxiety by time, i noticed that if you do that too much to people, they end up shaking their legs, biting their nails and etc, not always, tough. And i noticed you can only affect the subconscious area of action of people, for example, if someone is strongly willing to text someone by phone, this one wouldn't stop texting because you thought in the direction of this one something that should make this one move their hands.

The results may vary, and not always the results i explained here, i'm talking about some common results. People may say that they don't saw the same result as me, but, just think in someone direction and try to observe their body language, you are going to see that the body language answer you somehow, even in ways you don't expect. I'm also summarizing a lot, since this is not the subject of this article and i observed this for numerous years.

After weed and those strange conclusions about coincidence and religious ideas, i began to consider that it could be spiritual and i began to associate with the spiritual, but not understanding perfectly. My atheism was now menaced, i was in fact becoming agnostic, but i have not took a stance, i just naturally had put in my head that "i don't know for now", but i was also not being critical of religions anymore, otherwise, i was growing a respect for it.

This was all "from me", no books or other faith, neither paganism... I began doing it when i was atheist...

My faith was sprouting from my humbleness and kid-like exploration nature...

I mention about this, because some people accuse me of doing pagan or new-age stuff because i smoke weed and i don't think i'm less of a Christian to think plants can aid in a spiritual journey. My belief sprouted naturally, and not because i was pagan or something. I'm going to make an article later about how to reconcile psychedelics with Christianity (done), and how there is no biblical basis to attack such substances that leads to advantages, i'm going to cite science and etc. God is a God of truth, love and life. And if psychedelics enhance the ability to see the truth, increase love, is healthy and lead to life and makes you regret sins (the price of sin is death) and give value to your life, so, it is good.

I then noticed, atheists seems to be cowards, since, they just ask questions, but they don't seem to really want to know if there is a God. I then thought, if i want to know if God exist, maybe i should be part of a religious group and practice something spiritual and try to see by myself.

And that, maybe, ONCE AGAIN, "society was lying to me", maybe atheism is also a form of social lie!

Religion is not baseless, the things religions preached were true. One could say it is "mere psychological effect", but can't deny to be true. However, when i was atheist, i thought like lot of atheist do, that religion had no basis, no rational reason to believe. But that is not true. If that is a lie, then, society lied to me once again, and i hate lies, so i needed to verify my logical integrity ONCE AGAIN. How can i trust atheism if what they said to me was not true? That is like a code bug, whenever a code bugs, you need to evaluate the code for its integrity, and then you need to doubt even things on the code that are taken as granted. That is why i hate lies, and that is why when something lies to me, i need to get suspicious of that something, and in this case, it was atheism.

That is when i began to research about other plants that had this "boost of wisdom" capacity like weed. Living in Brazil, i'm in one of the Ayahuasca countries, this is a religion here, and the idea of shamanism, even if still taboo in Christianity, is not totally taboo or unknown here, sometimes only mocked by more traditional people. However, my first experience was with Wachuma, but i'm going to talk about that later, because, at that moment, i was already and adult, and then, let's go to the next section...

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ADULT:

Early adult:

At first i only used weed, but that made me curious about other plants that could have entheogenic proprieties. Now that i was adult, i could buy that legally.

However, i still took a while...

At this point i was already a believer, i was noticing how weed could make me reach certain states of mind that would make me believe in God. But my spiritual view was still pretty vague, i would still merely consider the spiritual as internal virtues and those synchronicities, which, i still considered spiritual, but that it was not something exactly convincing.

I was still not very versed in Christianity, so i still had some woke stupid views of Christianity and began to have some stupid views of other religions...

Things like, thinking the bible could have been manipulated, generalizing churches as overall bad (of course, i still think some churches are pretty strange, but now, i think most churches are fine and a good place for people to go learn, especially people that don't have the time and will that i have to study, and then, they rely on the knowledge of a pastor or priest), that some problematic histories of Christianity were purely bad bad (like crusades and etc).

And, since i was a former atheist now, i wanted to see if there was a common factor in all religions, so, at first i had a respect towards all religions, even if my basis was still Christian, and that i never did any fancy ritual of other religions, i had this idea that "all religions speak the same thing, but in their own terms" and blah blah; Yet, anyway, i did some experiments based on concepts of other religions, which was partially part of rites and techniques of other religions. Skipping a little my history, i had a moment where i heard (from others) that Jesus was just another Aeon, and Shiva and Buddha were others like Jesus, which, i don't believe anymore and don't took long for me to notice this mistake.

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