Dear
All,
Here
is my story about how I became
a Christian, what I went through later and how I finally got through
and
transcended my beliefs. I have shared a lot of personal
things in this
that I've never shared with anyone before. Originally I had
not meant for
it to be this long, so I apologize for that. But while I was
writing it,
I felt like I was reliving all those suppressed memories again and so
lots of
details came out of my mind that I had to write. Several
times I had to
stop and pause for a moment because those memories brought back a lot
of
overwhelming emotions and I felt on the verge of tears. But
I'm glad that
I finally wrote it all out cause
I have been meaning
to for a long time. It also felt therapeutic to me to write
this all out
too. I stayed up almost all night for 2 nights writing
this. I hope
maybe you the reader may be able to get some kind of lesson out of it,
whatever
it may be.
Sincerely,
Winston
My
Rise to Christianity and Transcendence from It
By
Winston Wu
It
all started when I was 9
years old at a Christian Summer daycare school called Fremont
Christian.
I became a Christian there when I was a 10 year old boy by receiving
Christ
during the Chapel session. I liked the Christian teachings
because they
made me feel good and I liked knowing that Christ would always be with
me and
that I had eternal life to look forward to. I didn't know it
at that
time, but it gave me a sense of power that I never had.
Having Jesus in
my heart was like having a supernatural power that I could call on at
any time,
kind of like how Clark
By
the end of my first year
in high school, summer started, and a big tide was about to
turn. During
that Summer, two bad
things happened which later
turned out to be signs of even worse to come.
1)
That summer we went
to
2)
The second thing happened
in the latter half of the summer. I went on a Christian
summer camp near
So
you see, both those events
during that Summer made
me feel depressed and hurt and
confused. I didn't know how to handle it all. I was
too sensitive
too so things affected me more deeply and intensely than most
people.
Anyway, I was not emotionally ready to start school because of those
two big
issues, but I had to anyway. So start it I did. And
believe me,
when I went back to school it was a different world. Most of
my friends,
both Christian and non-Christian either left or had changed so much
that we
couldn't really be friends anymore. My new friends weren't
that great and
they didn't even really care about me. I didn't like any of
my classes either because they were
overwhelming and I wasn't
interested in studying because of those two events during the summer
that I was
still emotionally attached to. And on top of all that, I felt
lonely and
isolated too because all my friends were either gone or had
changed. I
couldn't believe how one summer changed everything! :( For
the whole year
nothing changed no matter how hard I tried to change them or how many
times I
prayed. I wanted get back the joy I had last year but nothing
I did
helped. I soon realized that I also seemed to have lost my
fire and
passion for the Lord. I tried to get that back too because
maybe if I
did, my life would turn around again and be fulfilling. But
no matter how
hard I tried to jump start my passion and fire for the Lord, it just
wouldn't.
It was like trying to start a car with a dead battery. It
felt like God
had left me or something. When I prayed, I didn't even feel
that he was
listening anymore. I was wondering if maybe all this was my
punishment
for not being able to convert all my relatives in
(Things
get even much worse
than you can imagine! Read on if you dare.)
Then
during that same year in
October, on Halloween, a very bad and scary thing happened that was a
sign of
what was further to come. That afternoon, I found that when I
got home
from school, I couldn't get around the house or do normal things
without
performing rituals to cancel out bad thoughts over and over
again. It was
weird and I didn't want to do it, but if I didn't I would feel a lot of
anxiety
and panic like something was very wrong. I kept
having
to enter and re-enter through the front door. This was really
weird and I
had never done that before. Then just to move into the living
room took
and put my backpack down took a lot of effort as well. What
was going on
here I thought!?!?!?!?!? I couldn't believe this was
happening. It
was so bizarre. I ended up spending about 3 or 4 hours in the
bathroom
because I couldn't get out of there because every time I tried to do
the
perfect ritual, my body would itch or something else would go wrong and
I had
to redo the rituals over again. After a few hours, I wanted
to get out of
there bad, I felt like a prisoner in my own bathroom! What
could be
stupider than that? The trick or treaters
came
by since it was Halloween and while they came I was stuck there in the
bathroom
trying to get out!!!!!! Afterwards I was so exhausted and
drained, and I
hoped that that would be the only day I would have to do those
rituals. I
thought tomorrow I'd be back to normal again. But I was very very wrong. It went on
each day the same way. I
had to fight hard to not do them, but I had to do them. It
cost me a few
hours each day. Sometimes
less, sometimes more.
My grades plummeted too as you might expect. I got a lot of
D's and F's
on my report card. I didn't tell anyone beside my parents
because no one
would understand and I was ashamed of this too. On some
nights when the
rituals were costing me too much time, I would yell at myself saying
"Come
on you @#$%, let me go!!!!!!!"
After
a few months of
enduring this inner hell, my parents took me to a
psychiatrist. I didn't
know how to describe what was happening. My communication
skills were bad
and I was too shy too and I was ashamed to admit this weird
disorder.
From what he had to go on, the psychiatrist diagnosed me with
schizophrenia and
gave me Prozac. Schizophrenia I thought?! Now I'm
really done
for! How could I ever be a good witness for Christ
now? Would a
crazy deluded schizophrenic who was unable to control his own thoughts
be a
good representative for Christ? Of course not! I
would give him a
bad name if I told people I was a Christian now! My
witnessing life was
over I guess. My dreams of becoming a Missionary and
Evangelist and
converting many people to Christ were shattered. What would I
do
now? Since I heard there was no cure for Schizophrenia and I
might have
it for the rest of my life, this means I might never be able to even
live a
normal life again! I might as well forget about any other
dreams in
general as well.
Anyway,
I tried the Prozac,
but all it did was increase my anxiety to the point where every minute
felt
like an hour and I felt like a Mexican jumping bean! I
couldn't even sit
through an hour of class under Prozac, so I had to discontinue
it. That
psychiatrist moved, so I was referred to another one. This
one diagnosed
me as having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). He
prescribed another
drug called Mellaril or
something. It didn't
have bad side effects and I wasn't sure if it worked or not, hard to
tell. Anyway, he was cold and uncaring even though I liked
his assistant,
who was a talking therapist. So for some reason I don't
remember, we went
to a third psychiatrist and he diagnosed me with both disorders,
Schizophrenia
and OCD! Oh great! That whole year I went to church
and my youth
group every week and for Wednesday Bible study too, but it was never
the
same. Everyone I liked at the church moved away. I
kept praying and
hoping God would do something to make my life better and especially
take away
my Schizophrenia/OCD or whatever. Nothing happened.
Nothing
changed. In fact, it got worse and worse as the year went
on. I
didn't understand why God, who has absolute control over every atom and
molecule in the universe, didn't do anything about this. By
the end of
the year, I felt so helpless, powerless and confused that I became
depressed
too. Then summer came and I was glad to get away from school
at least so
I wouldn't have to deal with the pressures there and my disorder at the
same
time. But I still had no idea why my whole life changed just
after one
bad summer. I didn't understand why God let this
happen. It didn't
make sense! I mean I know about the story of Job, but come
on!
Dealing with the outer world is hard enough, but when you're mentally
ill you
can't even deal with your INNER WORLD, how does
God expect
me to deal with the outer world! How would I ever be a good
witness for
Christ in the state I'm in? How would I even live for Christ
for that
matter?
After
Summer,
school started again and I was a junior now. I was hoping
this would be a
better year, but instead this turned out to be the ABSOLUTE WORST
HORRIFIC
period of my life! I have labeled this period as the
"Holocaust" of my life. I'm serious! My mind has
blanked
out this period so much from my memory that I don't even acknowledge
that it
existed. When I went back to school, I found that I was
completely
overwhelmed and didn't even have the will or interest in going to
school or
doing any homework. School felt threatening to me
now. For some
reason I could not cope with anything in life now. I even
lost the desire
to go to church because I didn't feel important to anyone there and the
sermons
didn't connect with anything I was going through. They were
boring,
repetitious and empty. Plus my prayers were never answered
anymore and I
had lost my fire for the Lord. I was too depressed and had no
motivation
to get up in the morning. Why get up when there was nothing
but pain,
loneliness, and schizophrenia rituals to look forward to
everyday? I
couldn't face all that and concentrate on tons of boring homework loads
everyday. This also happened to be the most academically
challenging
school year in high school as well. Do you think I was in
shape to deal
with that? Yeah right. I had to stop going to
school because it was
pointless, lonely, and if I continued I would get all F's in every
class.
As
I stayed home on school
days not knowing what to do, I felt hopeless and sank further and
further into
depression. I felt like my life was over. There was
nothing but
doom, gloom and hopelessness. I lost even the ability to
enjoy very
simple things. I tell you, you've never known what true
depression is
like until you experienced what I experienced at that time.
It's like
you're so depressed that you can't even muster the energy to raise a
finger
simply because there's no point to. All the happy and fun
times I ever
had seemed like a false illusion now. There was no logical
solution to my
life. I saw no way out. Not only was I depressed
and hopeless, but
since my Schizophrenic symptoms hadn't lessened after a whole year, it looked like it would be
with me forever.
There was no way I could ever live a normal life if I had to spend
hours each
day in rituals and had trouble with even simple things like getting
around the
house. And there was no cure for Schizophrenia
either. This means
that not only will I never be able to live a normal life, have dreams,
hold a
job, get married or have children, but that I would also eventually
have to
spend the rest of my life in a mental hospital and be looked upon by
society as
a pitiful thing to be sorry for. There was no point to that
kind of
existence. I felt like the only escape was suicide.
But I didn't
even have the guts to do that. So all I could do was lay
around feeling
too depressed to even move and I tried to sleep as many hours as
possible to
escape all this. All I felt 24 hours a day during that time
was doom and
gloom. Even when the big San Francisco Earthquake of 1989
struck, I was
lying down on the couch at my uncle's house too depressed to
move. I felt
the house shake and just thought "An earthquake? Big
deal. Go ahead and kill me. Make the
roof fall down.
Then I won't have to endure this anymore." I still can't
believe I
said that even today. Anyway, what I experienced during those
6 months
that year will never be forgotten, and I shudder even today when I
think about
it. What I experienced is not describable with
words. It's like
your soul and life are being sucked dry to death and you are completely
helpless to do anything about it. It's very very
very difficult to
conceive that I went through this
and at the same time conceive of a God that exists.
My
parents were at a loss as
to what to do, so they sent me to a mental rehabilitation
center. I was
scared at first, but the staff turned out to be very supportive and I
enjoyed
the environment. Unlike the negative connotation of mental
institutions
portrayed in movies, it became a great getaway and I enjoyed the
aerobics,
swimming pool, volleyball, and arts and crafts activities.
For the first
time in a while I felt able to enjoy things again. I didn't
feel the
pressures I had in my school and home life. I even played a
lot of chess
there and beat all the staff and other patients :) After a
month or two I
was discharged from the rehabilitation center. I was
reluctant to leave
though, which was funny because I was dragged kicking and screaming in
there
but now I felt sad to go and leave such a nice and supportive
place.
Since I didn't want to deal with that snobby school I hated again
though (by
the way this was the same school Kristi Yamaguchi the world famous ice
skater
graduated from just to let you know), they decided to send me to a
different
high school for just a few classes because they didn't want to risk me
being
overwhelmed again. So I only took 2 classes at the new school
and did the
rest on home schooling. This worked out and I felt refreshed
and at peace
for once in a long time.
After
the school year, I
decided I wanted to take a big break from all that I went through and
go to
During
that year when my mom
came to visit me in
When
I came back after a
year, I felt confident, energized, optimistic and ready to tackle
anything. I started my senior year in that new high school
that I went to
before I left. I didn't make that many friends there because
it was hard
for me to break into the already formed cliques, but at least everyone
was nice
to me and respected me which I wasn't used to. It was a
boring year, but
at least I had peace of mind everyday and I easily faced each day with
confidence and drive. Homework was easy because I could
select classes
that were easy or interesting so I finally started getting good
grades. I
found that I could think and concentrate clearly too, so I had a lot of
control
over my thoughts and emotions for the first time. Maybe it
was because
the vegetarianism helped clear my conscience? I don't
know. But
either way, I found it easy to read and write and to be excited by even
the
little things. Amazingly, some cognitive abilities and
talents I never
knew I had appeared out of nowhere! I suddenly felt like I
had mastery
over organizing my thoughts and words so that I could communicate any
thought
or idea I wanted. No thought or idea was too difficult to put
into words,
and I could do it all in a very organized coherent way too! I
never was
good at writing until then. My speech and writing became very
articulate. Wow! I could write school papers and
essays easily and
could summon lots of creative thoughts and insights at will.
It all
became second nature to me. In addition, I found that my
depth of
understanding had greatly increased, and I could also see things from a
lot
more angles than I ever could before. This of course, made
all my essays
and school papers even better. It was like my cognitive,
intuitive,
insight and awareness jumped up a level by itself!
Later
that year, I felt that
it would be a good time for me to get back into Christianity
again. I
missed having the sense of purpose it gave me. I started
reading the
Bible and other Christian books again, and remembered all the
intellectual
arguments I used to support the Christian faith. I started
looking for a
church to go to again. I found a Christian Club on campus
too, which I
attended. Then I started going to a church referred to me by
some of the
people in the Club. Anyway, I started being on fire for the
Lord again
and started witnessing to people again too. I even came close
to getting
into trouble with some Muslim Afghan students at the school, because
they were
insulted at me trying to convert them to Christianity. They
said that if
I was in their country, a mob would kill me for attempting to convert
people! lol But
I didn't care and
I
was willing to take a few beatings for the truth of the Gospel of
Christ
because the true living God was working behind it, so I had nothing to
fear. One day, I even went to my Art History teacher after
class and
asked him why after a week of teaching us about Christian Medieval Art
he never
once mentioned about what Christ did for us on the cross and the Gospel
he
preached. I left him a Gospel tract and said that he could
learn about
what Christianity was about in it. He just said that he
wasn't the right
person to be sharing this with and that I should be sharing it with
fellow
students instead. After I graduated from high school, for
some reason I
never again regained interest in Christianity. This had
always been a
mystery to me until now. Only recently have I realized that
the likely
reason was that I had probably used Christianity as a crutch to get
through
life and give it meaning. After high school my childhood
problems were
gone and I needed no more crutches. It was then that I could
finally take
an honest look at Christianity and deal with the negative
irreconcilable
aspects of it, which I always knew were there but didn't want to face
it for
fear of blasphemy and because I needed the sense of purpose it gave
me. Soon, my doubts
starting creeping in.
That
summer I was able to use
my new found insight and understanding to re-evaluate the Christian
beliefs I
had. While on a plane on a vacation to
"There's
something
very wrong with Christianity here. I've known this a long
time but was
always afraid to face it. But since I value integrity of
thought and a
clear conscience, I might as well be honest now and face it no matter
how
blasphemous it may be. Now, I know that according to
Christian teaching,
billions of people out there in the world are going to go to hell
because they're
sinners and don't even know it. But why is it their fault
when they don't
even know it and were born with it? Sin to the Bible is any
imperfection
that we have, but since we were not born perfect no one can ever be
perfect, so
then why is it righteous to send them all to hell for an eternity for
something
they were born with? That's like sending Zebras to hell for
being born
with stripes! It just doesn't make sense no matter how hard
you try to
justify it. Now let's put myself in the place of a
nonbeliever.
Suppose I was a boy in
At
that time I knew that
these thoughts I was having were blasphemous to the Christian faith,
but since
I was so SURE that there was something inherently wrong here, that
certainty
gave me the courage to continue to think these things
through. That's
when my search for truth, meaning and answers began.
Aftermath and
the
Spiritual Insights I Discovered:
The
vacation in
But
what about finding the
answers about the truth of God and religion? I wasn't sure
where to
begin. I knew that each religion claimed to have the truth
and that they
disagreed with each other on many things, so they couldn't all be right
could
they? But how would I know which religion was true and which
wasn't?
I thought there was no way to really find out until after you
die. So I
just became an agnostic and left it at that for a while. But
eventually,
I believed that if there were answers out there, then there must be
some way to
find them. I wasn't satisfied with being an agnostic and
dropping the
issue for good, so I decided to search again. It was then
that I found
some New Age spirituality books that had caught my attention.
I had
remembered that a few years ago my Youth Pastor had warned of the
dangers of
the teachings of the New Age movement. I had no idea what it
even was at
that time, but now I was curious. Maybe it would show me
something that
the traditional organized religions didn't.
Fortunately,
it did.
Many of the concepts made so much sense to me and showed me the big
picture. It was like it borrowed all the truths from each
religion and
put it into a giant wheel that represented the total sum of cosmic
divine
truth. That was it, I thought! Each religion
represented a
different aspect of the truth, and when you put them all together you
get a
better view of the whole picture! Bingo! This was
the answer I was
looking for. Now I understood what that secular adage meant
that said
that all religions are different interpretations of the same
God. Before
I thought that was just a cop out, now I understood how much sense it
made. The reason that the
great religions contradicted
each other were due to the differences in man's interpretations
of the divine, not the fault of the divine. In fact, the more
I learned
about each religion, the more parallels I could see between
them. The
same underlying themes seemed prevalent and all pointed in the same
direction. I also learned that since religion was man's
interpretation of
God, that God didn't
really fit into any organized
religion, but was far beyond the limitations that they imposed on him.
For
the next few years,
little by little I gradually developed the courage to read books with
ideas
from other religions and New Age beliefs as well. For a
while, each time
I picked up one of these books, the words "Satan" and
"blasphemy" would come to mind, but I as I learned more and became
more confident in my new knowledge, those fears lessened and eventually
diminished. One day, I found another profound answer to what
I was
looking for. I saw a quote in a book that said:
"The more and
more
you look at the universe, it appears less like a great machine and more
like a
great thought."
That's
it I thought! We
don't have to look for God out there in some abstract place.
We are all a
part of God. We are all like atoms and molecules in the large
organism we
call God. Like each atom and molecule in our body, we each
serve a higher
purpose that we aren't aware of yet. This made even more
sense to me as I
realized that everything in the universe seemed to be made up of
something
revolving around something else. For example, in an atom
there are
protons and electrons orbiting a nucleus.
Likewise, on a planetary scale, moons revolve around planets.
On a larger
scale, planets revolve around suns. From an even larger
scale, suns and
stars revolve around the center of each galaxy. So if we are
all made up
of atoms which contain things orbiting around each other, then maybe
suns,
stars, and galaxies are also like atoms which make up a larger whole we
call
God! I envisioned that everything in the universe was like
valuable parts
of the inside of an intricate clock, each part was valuable, unique,
and served
its own purpose. We just don't always see or realize that
purpose unless
we reach higher states of being and consciousness. At the
time, I thought
I was the only one who came to the conclusion that God was the totality
of
everything. Soon though, I realized that I wasn't and that
others
searching for truth had discovered the same thing, and that this view
of God in
fact had two terms for it. One was "Pantheism" and the other
was "Monism."
I
also discovered that we
could all find God and divinity in ourselves just by tapping into our
higher selves
and higher states of consciousness. It was like we were
Dorothy in The
Wizard of Oz who discovered that she had the power to return home the
whole
time because she had already been wearing those red magical shoes the
whole
time. Likewise, we could find God and the divinity within
ourselves by
just simply going within.
Finally,
I discovered that
many great mystics and seekers of truth throughout history and in our
modern
era have come to the same conclusions that I came to as well.
This said
to me that there must be something to my discoveries after
all! From
their books and books written about them, I discovered very similar
themes. These themes reveal that we are all souls from higher
levels
which have decided to come down to Earth to learn lessons and
grow. We do
this by either continuously reincarnating here or in other worlds or
other
planes of existence until we learn the lessons we need. As we
learn, grow
and evolve, we reach higher levels of consciousness, which allow us to
enter
higher heavenly realms. Some call these higher realms
Heaven.
Others call them Nirvana, Astral Planes, or Re-unification with
God.
There are different levels of these higher heavenly realms, and between
7 and
10 are named. In addition, I learned that millions of people
who have had
Near Death Experiences (NDE's)
and Out of Body
Experiences (OBE's) have
had these same higher truths
and themes revealed to them during their experiences. All
this told me
that there must be something to these themes if people from all over
the world
had the same things revealed to them somehow.
Then
I started reading books
and articles that critiqued Christianity. I learned that the
version of
Christianity that I had believed in was called “Christian
Fundamentalism.” I was amazed at how many arguments
there were against
it, and also at how many irreconcilable contradictions there were in
it.
Before, I thought there were no good arguments against it.
Now I realized
that there were as many arguments against it as there were crops in a
field! Whoa! The more and more I researched, the
more came
out. Just when I thought that was all there was, more kept
popping
out! I was amazed.
Now
I realized why most
non-Christians were so turned off by Evangelistic preaching.
As a Christian
it used to baffle me why anyone would turn down the Gospel and reject
free
eternal life. It was like they were rejecting a million
dollars offered
them for free. Now I realized that it wasn't as free as I
thought.
To non-Christians, the Gospel asked them to adhere to extreme beliefs,
took
away freedom of thought, used fear of punishment to invoke compliance,
and
forced values onto people that they didn't agree with. As I
Christian I
never realized this because my beliefs put me in such a warped frame of
mind as
to not see this. Now I realized that while non-Christians
couldn't really
relate to the Christian perspective, it was also true that Christians
had lost
the ability to relate to the perspective of non-Christians.
Since I
became a Christian at 10 years old, I never really understood the
non-Christian
perspective until now.
There
was another benefit to
all this as well. Because of all these discoveries along with
my new
views of God and spirituality, I realized that my parents and relatives
weren't
going to hell after all! This lifted a huge burden off me and
gave me
peace of mind. In a way, I had saved my parents and relatives
from going
to hell just by realizing that they weren't going in the first
place! My
parents had been right all along that I didn't have to convert them or
any of
my relatives. All I had to do was appreciate where they are,
because they
were already where God wanted them to be. I now had peace of
mind to move
on and discover my own potential. I was free now to explore
the limitless
possibilities of life, knowledge, mind, philosophy, spirituality,
etc. A
whole new adventure was just beginning.
Five
years later, I met the
most wonderful person in the world. I met her online and we
talked for a
year before meeting. When we finally met she turned out to be
everything
I wanted. She was very beautiful both inside and
out. She was very
much like Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Like Belle, she
adores and is
adored by children and animals. When we met, we knew we were
a match made
in heaven and the love between us was unconditional. I moved
up to
I
know that there will always
be ups and downs in the cyclical nature of life, but my experiences
have given
me an inner strength that helps me to be in the “eye of the
hurricane” through
it all. And what better coping skill could there be than
that? It’s
also given me the ability to see a larger perspective which helps me to
not be
overwhelmed by every little thing, but instead remain detached and view
life as
a process with challenges that allow us to grow and learn so that we
can
ultimately achieve wholeness within ourselves and unity with
God. Also, I gotta
tell you that nothing
is more scary
than losing your own mind and
sanity. It's a fate worse than physical pain or even death,
and those
who've been there know what I mean. However, once you've been
there and
recovered from it, you appreciate life more than you ever would have,
and you
are given the blessing of being able to appreciate the little wonders
of life
more richly and fully than ever before, which few people are able to
do. In
any case,
“The
adventure is just
beginning…………”
-
To quote the ending of the movie “Star Trek: The Motion
Picture” where a
conscious machine had just been reborn and evolved to the next stage of
its
evolution.
Thank
you for reading this,
and may you all find your true bliss, true self,
and
ultimate destiny.
Sincerely,
Winston
Wu
Conclusion and
My Own
Theory About What Happened To Me:
Well
there you have it.
I'm sorry for making this so long. I had intended to write a
much shorter
version, but as I was writing all this, it was like I was reliving all
the pain
and joy of it again, so I was compelled to describe so many details
about
it. If that made it long and tedious to read this, then I
apologize. But I hope that you will try to understand and
appreciate the
life story I just told you. In a way it was very therapeutic
for me to
write all this out. It had been hidden and repressed for so
long.
Many of these things I never wanted to tell anyone. Even
today though,
it's hard for me to make sense of it all really, there were so many ups
and
downs. I don't really understand why things went the way they
did or if
things went the way they were meant to.
But
now I have a theory
though. In summary here are the main events:
1.
I was a passionate
devout Christian on fire for the Lord and believed I had found ultimate
truth.
2.
A snowball of odd
tragedies struck, which turned things around.
3.
Along with that, Schizophrenia
or OCD came and made my life an inner hell.
4.
The powerlessness of
not being able to cope with it all led to deep depression as
well. I
thought my life was truly over.
5.
Things got better
and with that my mental disorder symptoms subsided.
6.
After recovering
from all that, I attained a level of transcendence and awareness that I
never
had before. My cognitive, writing, speaking, communication,
insight and
understanding abilities suddenly reached a level on their
own. It was
then that I was able to understand higher spiritual truths.
So
I was wondering
then. Perhaps my soul or higher self wanted to evolve to a
higher
awareness level and when it was in the process of doing so, my physical
brain
had trouble adjusting to it, so it started misfiring and
malfunctioning, which
created those obsessions and behaviors. Perhaps that is the
reason behind
some mental illnesses. The reason I postulate this is because
I recently
read some articles about patients who recover from Schizophrenia and
become
better than before. They become smarter and more successful
in
life. I thought that my case was a fluke or a mystery, but
when I learned
that this happened in other cases too, it made me wonder whether going
through
a mental illness was in some way a path to transcendence of some
form.
What do you all think? In case you want to read the articles
on the
websites I mentioned, here they are:
Thank
you for reading this,
and I hope that you can get out of it whatever lesson
you see in it.
Yours
Faithfully,
Winston
Questions for
Faith,
Kathy, David and Barbara:
I
do have a few questions for
some of you though.
To David and
Barbara: What do you
make of my
whole story here?
How could a passionate devoted Christian on fire for the Lord who
preached the
Gospel to others be repaid with Schizophrenia and live with an inner
indescribable hell for two years? How is that person supposed
to be a
good representative for Christ when he can't even control his own
mind?
Would you want a Schizophrenic depressed person who spends hours a day
in
rituals to represent Christ? How does God expect you to deal
with the
outer world when you can't even deal with the inner world
anymore? David
and Barbara, please keep something in mind. Don't see the
mental illness
I had, whatever it was, as just another disease. It is a very
very scary thing to lose
your mind, and unless you've
experienced it, you cannot relate to it. It's not something
you can intellectualize,
it's a literal inner hell where you have no
control over your mind, your actions, your inner world, etc.
What would
you two have done in my situation?
Also,
after reading those
last paragraphs in my life story in the aftermath where I described my
incredible gradual spiritual transformation which not only awakened my
insights
and awareness but lifted a lot of burden off me, which freed me to
discover my
own potential, do you honestly still think that the right thing for me
to do is
to go back to Christianity? Look at all that I've come from
before
answering, please.
To Faith and
Kathy: What do you make
of my
story? How should
I make sense of all this? Were those horrific two years
really necessary
for my spiritual path? I thought high school was supposed to
be fun, instead it was
like a Holocaust for me. In fact,
those two terrible years have been blanked out from my memory until
now.
How can I reconcile the concept of a loving God with what I went
through?
It's very difficult and unimaginable. There's not a day that
goes by that
I don't wish it could have all happened differently and in a lot better
way. Why couldn't I have just had a typical teenager's
life? I
deeply regret not having one, and that regret has plagued my
subconscious in
one way or another every day since 1992. So what do you
think? Was
I supposed to have done anything different? Did I screw up in
some
way? Or was did everything happen the way it meant to?
By
the way, in case you're
all wondering if I still have that mental disorder or not.
It's not 100 percent
gone, but it's been minimized to where I only spend a few minutes a day
dealing
with my rituals now. So it's not really an issue anymore,
except that I
do spend a lot of time trying to organize things and events in my life
to a
point that I can control them. It maybe costs me about 10 or
15 minutes a
day now, instead of hours. It can be very frustrating
sometimes, but at
least I don't have to repeat things in a ritual anymore.
Thank you all so
much for reading all this! It was very therapeutic to me to
share this.
Yours
Faithfully,
Winston
Update: My
new
article debunking Christian arguments
A
few years after I made use
of the knowledge I gained from the research I did on Christianity to
understand
it and give me the courage to leave it, to write a big treatise
entitled Debunking
the Arguments of Christian Fundamentalists and Apologists.
If you
are interested in reading it, here is the link: https://www.debunkingskeptics.com/DebunkingChristians/Contents.htm So
far
it has received rave reviews such as the following:
“I
work at a public library and thus have access to hundreds
of books on religion and spirituality, yet very, very few are as
helpful as the
one article that you have written. There is even a book titled "Leaving
the fold" that is for former fundamentalists leaving their religion,
yet
your article is arguably better and more useful then the entire
book.”
“Congratulations
on an excellent site. Your
information on evangelical
fundamentalist Christianity is the BEST site on the internet. It spells everything out.
Try to get the search
engines to bring it up
near the top of searches.”
Update:
My new
theory on what happened to me
My
Theory - Religions are
essentially ways of
channeling energy
Although
each religion claim to be
different from
others in their beliefs, views, and doctrines, when you delve into the
mystical
qualities of each one, you find that they become more and more alike,
with the
ultimate goal of achieving "oneness" with all, and absolving one's
ego and sense of separateness.
Even the
most widely followed
faith, Christianity, has
mystical traditions in the Gnostics, for instance, which teach karma,
reincarnation, oneness with all, etc. just like the Eastern mystical
traditions.
Basically,
I've come to realize
that, despite the
outer surface differences in beliefs and doctrines between the
religions, what
religions basically are in their essence are ways of CHANNELING ENERGY
to grow,
add to, and benefit oneself, getting in touch with a divine source.
Just as
each individual is
different, so each person
has their own style of channeling spiritual energy that suits them best. And since each religion
has a different style
of channeling energy to its adherents, different religions work better
for
different people. There's
no "one
size fits all", for whether a religion or spiritual practice works for
someone depends on how compatible their way of channeling energy is
with
it. And probably,
the different
religions, I believe, are all channeling spiritual/divine energy from
the SAME
source.
For
instance, some people channel
energy through the
Christian faith very well, benefitting
themselves,
their lives, and their souls, so they stick with it and recommend it to
others. Their feel
fulfilled and their
prayers get answered, so obviously it works for them.
But others whose may get nothing out of it if
their style of channeling spiritual energy is incompatible with the
Christian
faith. And this can
be true even if they
make a sincere honest effort to follow the
Christian faith, for if it just doesn't resonate with their spiritual
style and
level, then it's not going to work, no matter how earnest they are
about
it. Instead, they
may work better
energy-wise with Buddhism, Islam, or other spiritual systems, deriving
more
spiritual benefit from them. Others
may
resonate better with more offshoot faiths such as Mormonism, Jehovah's
Witnesses, or even cult groups.
Still,
some don't need any religion
at all. They may
simply channel good energy to them
just by going out into nature or the wilderness setting.
Or they may simply
meditate and channel all
the energy and spirituality they need.
This is
why, I think, why some
people hear a religious
message or gospel, and instantly feel that they've discovered "the
truth", or sense that God or the Holy Spirit is speaking to them, while
others
hear the same message and consider it rubbish, nonsensical, and could
never
take it seriously. Different
religious/spiritual paths and ways of channeling energy click with some
and not
others.
It's like
with anything in life -
drugs, alcohol, roller
coasters, skiing, etc.; they bring pleasure and stimulation to some,
while to
others they do nothing or cause only discomfort.
Also, as
one evolves or changes
their level of
consciousness throughout life and their spiritual path, sometimes one
may lose
their resonance with the religion/spiritual path they channeled their
life
force energy through best, which leads them to seek out a different
spiritual
or religious path. There
are plenty of
religious devotees who at some point in life, grow out of their faith
or
spiritual practice, feel stinted by it, and transfer to another one. For instance, some
Christians may lose
resonance with their faith, feel it doesn't make sense anymore, and
doesn't
work for them anymore, becoming Buddhists or adopting Eastern paths. And
vice versa, for there
are Buddhists who become Christians and find more fulfillment there and
closeness to God, as well.
I was one
of those, for instance,
who resonated with
Evangelical Christianity early in life.
It made sense to me, gave me a powerful feeling of
purpose, made me
happy, and I even got a lot of prayers answered through it. But when I outgrew it, I
no longer felt any
energy from it, didn't resonate with it, it no longer made sense to me
mentally, and my prayers were no longer even being answered. I tried my best to
re-establish my spiritual
energy with it, for I thought it was the truth, but it was futile, like
trying
to jump start a dead horse. I
didn't
realize it at the time, but my journey and path to truth lied
elsewhere, and
eventually led me to the New Age/Eastern paths.
Therefore, I began subconsciously looking for excuses to
invalidate
Christian teachings, so that I could find truth in other teachings,
considering
all but committing to none. I
discovered
that I am an eclectic who loves intellectual freedom too much to commit
and
limit my mind inside the box of any religion or belief system, though I
may
make use of, see truth in, or derive benefit from them.
Recommended
reading on spirituality
The
books and authors who
best represent my new spiritual beliefs, which I strongly recommend you
all to
read, are:
The
Power of Now , Stillness
Speaks and A
New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart
Tolle, Way
of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman,
any book
or audio by Wayne
Dyer, The
Holographic Universe by
Michael Talbot, and Under
the Tree
by Greg Stone.