Death And Awakening

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Before I can talk about being called by The Mor­ri­g­an, I have to talk a lit­tle about what hap­pened before I could hear Her knock­ing at the door of my mind. Because in May of 2020, I was an athe­ist, but by the end of June, I at least acknowl­edged the pos­si­bil­i­ty that there was some­thing I did­n’t under­stand try­ing to get my atten­tion. 

I had a few lit­tle woo-woo things I liked to do back then, but I did­n’t think they were super­nat­ur­al. I had a charm neck­lace with tal­is­mans on it, but I con­sid­ered them to be more like “reminders” and “foci” than mag­i­cal. They held mean­ing because I gave them mean­ing. They worked because I want­ed them to work. They were place­bos and psy­cho­log­i­cal cues—they were “brain hacks.” I’m still not sure mag­ic is much more than that, but I no longer attempt to talk myself out of some of its more spec­tac­u­lar appli­ca­tions. 

The spring of 2020 was the cul­mi­na­tion of a year of death all around me. I’m old enough to start los­ing friends…and friends of friends. And Covid was still new, there was no vac­cine, and back then it claimed a few peo­ple I knew. Death is always a part of life, but that year—starting in 2019—I went from los­ing one per­son I’d vague­ly known every year or so to los­ing a cou­ple every month.

I know this sounds melo­dra­mat­ic (and, okay, it is), but I brushed with death as well. At least I felt my clothes ruf­fle as it went by. To the best of any­one’s knowl­edge, I got Covid-19 in April (the test­ing back then was pret­ty hard to come by, and I was­n’t going to dri­ve 50 miles in my con­di­tion to ver­i­fy some­thing I was 90% sure of). I prob­a­bly should have gone to the hos­pi­tal at one point, but I did­n’t want to be out hun­dreds or thou­sands for an ambu­lance. I remem­ber being in bed, hold­ing absolute­ly still, and bare­ly being able to breathe—just feel­ing the mech­a­nism by which Covid would kill me if it got ANY worse. I could­n’t eat. I could bare­ly drink or get to the bath­room. I recov­ered, but I had nev­er been that sick in my entire life. I was down for two weeks, and absolute­ly debil­i­tat­ed for three days.

It’s hard to explain how this suc­ces­sion of deaths affect­ed me. After one of a friend’s best friends and room­mate died in their house (I had known him, but only a lit­tle), it was like every death began to res­onate in a more and more phys­i­cal way. I could feel them like a headache inside my fore­head, run­ning up and down my spine like shoot­ers of chills and heat and spread­ing out into my extrem­i­ties. 

In June of 2020, after get­ting the news of anoth­er death, my headache became unbear­able. Right at the front of my head. It was like some­one had smacked me right across the fore­head with a white-hot shov­el. Lances of agony pressed into my skull from the edge of my hair­line to between my eyes. I have a usu­al­ly-sub­tle birth­mark there (that looks like a tri­an­gle), but it had flared a promi­nent crim­son. I left work in mid-shift to go home and lie down. 

It’s a lit­tle hard to explain what hap­pened next. I start­ed to sense peo­ple in my fore­head. I could bare­ly dri­ve with my headache, but as I did, my fore­head would flare when I felt peo­ple near­by. I man­aged to talk myself into believ­ing that I was notic­ing them with reg­u­lar per­cep­tion (hear­ing their foot­steps or see­ing them out of the cor­ner of my eye), and I was just get­ting a strange sig­nal before my con­scious mind would acknowl­edge them. Maybe I’ve spent a life­time learn­ing to tune out back­ground noise or gen­tle move­ment, and my brain sud­den­ly came up with a new way to let me know about it. But at least a cou­ple of times, I real­ly did­n’t know how that was pos­si­ble. The per­son was behind me and mov­ing qui­et­ly, and I just….SENSED them. And I don’t know how to explain it, but the sen­sa­tion was always dif­fer­ent when I was in dan­ger. (If some­one who could­n’t see me was try­ing to get into my lane when dri­ving, I would feel it before they start­ed mov­ing.)

I drove home (though I real­ly should­n’t have dri­ven in my condition—I could bare­ly see straight), crawled into bed with my fore­head absolute­ly feel­ing on fire. I fell asleep, but only after hours of try­ing to calm down. The next morn­ing, every­thing was duller and achi­er, but far from gone. 

Before I go on, I want to remind you that we were at the begin­ning of the pan­dem­ic. June 2020. Most peo­ple were still shel­ter­ing in place. Anx­i­ety was high. I had been work­ing 60-hour weeks as a nan­ny so that my clients could telecommute—and that was before I wrote a word. I was a phys­i­o­log­i­cal wreck from the anx­i­ety. My shoul­der and back mus­cles ached. My stom­ach was roil­ing whirl of acid reflux, and I was tak­ing three dif­fer­ent kinds of antacids. (A dai­ly reset pill, a break­through pill, and those chalky tablets when the acid would flare up any­way.) I was plagued by intru­sive thoughts and becom­ing an absolute wreck.

Two days after my headache, every symp­tom of anx­i­ety shut off like a switch. 

I still remem­ber exact­ly when it hap­pened. I was cross­ing a bridge over the free­way in my car to go to the near­by Trad­er Joe’s. And sud­den­ly my stom­ach did­n’t hurt, my heart­burn fad­ed, my shoul­ders relaxed, and the thoughts just….stopped. A few min­utes went by. An hour. Then a day. My anx­i­ety was just….gone.

Two days after THAT, I start­ed to notice col­ors and sounds and scents. Every­thing was vivid and bright. It was like I’d nev­er seen a sun­set or some­thing. Eat­ing became this incred­i­ble sen­so­ry plea­sure. I’d had Covid in April, so nat­u­ral­ly I just thought that I had final­ly recov­ered from long Covid or some­thing. But it was like I was on a low dose of MDMA or some­thing. And I start­ed to notice that I could­n’t real­ly stom­ach junk food the way I had before. I still liked sweets, but I was­n’t able to even stom­ach a lot of my favorite foods.

I start­ed to have out­ra­geous dreams (some of which I’ll share here in lat­er posts). They were vis­cer­al and vivid and filled with intense per­son­al metaphors. Some of the dreams had imagery in them that I had nev­er even heard of, and I had to go look these images up. I fig­ured that I must have seen them some­where (per­haps years before), for­got­ten that I knew them, and my uncon­scious had filed them away for dream fod­der. Still Things I’d Nev­er Even Heard Of™ start­ed to stack up and more and more of them showed up in my dreams. (The Tree of Life, Trin­i­ty Knot, Triske­les, and Awens.) The dreams were filled with smokey, vague­ly fem­i­nine fig­ures and black-clad women—sometimes sis­ters, some­times apart, some­times twins, some­times three, and some­times five. They would trans­form into black birds some­times and scream as they took to flight. Some­times they would grab my face, look into my eyes and say, “See me.”

My inner calm and con­fi­dence explod­ed dur­ing all of this. Despite what­ev­er was going on, I felt pro­found­ly in tune with myself, cool, and col­lect­ed. I was hit­ting on peo­ple (some­thing I nev­er did before), mes­sag­ing strangers on dat­ing apps (again, I had nev­er done that), and feel­ing at ease with who I was and who I was­n’t. I felt com­fort­able in my own skin and strange­ly unbri­dled by my usu­al foibles.

I start­ed to feel con­nect­ed with every­one and their ener­gy. (I have always felt this due to hyper­vig­i­lance, but it became mag­ni­fied.) I even began to feel the ener­gy of crowds puls­ing and shift­ing. I’d always been an intro­vert, and sen­si­tive to lots of noise or motion com­pet­ing for my atten­tion, but I start­ed to feel crowds in a dif­fer­ent way. Like the ebb and flow of their ener­gy was some­times too much. At one point, I tried to take a hike on a pop­u­lar trail and there were sim­ply too many peo­ple for me. I could…feel them. I could feel their ener­gy. They made my fore­head hurt, and it was like the sheer force of it was push­ing me back. I end­ed up going home.

At one point, I was on a hike, and I was out of shape from shel­ter­ing in place for so long. By the end of the first hill, I was done. Mus­cles scream­ing. Pant­i­ng. Com­plete­ly unable to con­tin­ue. I had noth­ing left. I was ready to turn around and go home. But then I felt some­thing click. I reached down into a deep­er cen­ter and found some ener­gy that I did­n’t even know I had. My mus­cles screamed. My heart pound­ed. My breath jagged. But it was like it was hap­pen­ing to some­one else. I felt sort of like a pas­sen­ger watch­ing my body get dri­ven by some­one who want­ed to test its lim­its. The next day, I should have been absolute­ly wrecked with mus­cle sore­ness, but I was fine. I’ve been work­ing out (and some­times over­do­ing it) for 25 years, and I know when I should be sore the next day—I was­n’t.

I also start­ed hear­ing voic­es. Usu­al­ly in the twi­light moments before falling asleep or dri­ving in the car—places I’ve been hear­ing sounds most of my life. But these were clear­er. These were dis­tinct. I’ve spent my life hear­ing a ran­dom word or a sound that could­n’t have been there. But these were whole sen­tences in clear voic­es. Some­times they would say things I could under­stand like, “What would it feel like if you just stopped try­ing to date for a year and focused on your­self?”

And one thing that’s hard to describe was just feeling…on. I just felt amped all the time. I was walk­ing around ampli­fied and ener­gized. I felt like I was crack­ling with ener­gy like a live wire all the time. I need­ed less sleep each night. I felt hyper-alert. I could­n’t find the “Emp­ty” when I was work­ing out or writ­ing deep into the night.

I tried to fig­ure out what I was going through. I talked to my doc­tor. I talked to my ther­a­pist. I did research into long Covid (and get­ting over long Covid). I looked into brain tumors. I looked into Parkin­son’s, Alzheimer’s, Charles Bon­net syn­drome, and more. Noth­ing real­ly explained all my symp­toms.

And then one day, I start­ed work­ing back­wards. I start­ed putting in all the symp­toms first. And I got an answer that fit bet­ter than any of the ill­ness­es or injuries I had been com­ing up with:

A spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing.

While this was def­i­nite­ly on the edge of my expe­ri­ence and under­stand­ing, I was­n’t yet quite off the map. Spir­i­tu­al awakenings—as weird as they can be for the per­son going through them, and as much woo-woo shit as gets attached to them—are still a doc­u­ment­ed (and explic­a­ble) psy­cho­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non. There’s noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly super­nat­ur­al about spon­ta­neous­ly feel­ing more empa­thet­ic, aware, and calm. 

But thread­ed in with all those “Spir­i­tu­al Awak­en­ing” Google results was one oth­er result that kept show­ing up. A result that explained my fore­head and my dreams even just a lit­tle bit bet­ter. A result that sent a corkscrew of tin­gles up my spine and made my fore­head throb even as my face screwed into a bit­ter moue:

A mag­i­cal awak­en­ing.

And NOW I was off the map.

Next: How Do You Spell, Skep­tic?

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