The moment when I ceased to exist

Sam
Jul 26, 2019
7 min read

2 months ago I posted a blog "Who Am I - and does it really matter?"

Today I wish to share my internal journey I underwent in 2017. They journey which led me to the moment I ceased to exist.

It is my belief that, we are the people that we believe ourselves to be, based upon all our prior experiences, particularly the social experiences. The sense of self is constantly building throughout life through a social reality we take for granted as being the only reality. Our memories are the roots, as the experiences we go through are our way of discovering and learning the world around us.

"There are endless levels of memory or mind. Spirals within spirals. When your consciousness identifies with this mind or ego construct , it ties you to social conditioning" - Samadhi Movie - Maya, The illusion of the self. But what happens when you start forgetting? What happens when you let go of everything you thought you knew? What happens when you uproot those memories and open your mind to rediscover and re-question reality as you know it?

In my recent post "How Ironman changed my life [Part 2] - The ego wants it," I spoke of my breakdown at the finish line of my 2016 race in Kalmar. That moment was a very significant moment because it was where I managed to release most of what was inside me. A Zen quote states"You cannot fill a cup which is already full". In that breakdown my cup almost completely emptied out and I was ready to rediscover the world.

Many changes occurred in my life in 2017. I was dealt with new challenges to tackle, but it seemed much easier this time around. Much loss was experienced in 2017. The acknowledgment that certain relationships in my life were toxic, meant I had to disconnect from certain individuals who rooted me down to the person I used to be. Only emptying my cup further.

My brain was in a new state. I was hungry to learn and found myself watching Crash Course - Philosophy on youtube. It nudged my brain to go down an endless spiral of questions which can never truly be answered by anyone. Philosophers throughout history have come to their own conclusions on many things. For me, trying to understand opposing theories which philosophers have argued about along the passage of time, brought me to the realisation we can never truly know. We can only answer the bigger questions to ourselves, and must find peace with the answers that emerge from within us.

If we ask the bigger questions of life and get an answer from an external source, if we blindly believe them and follow them but do not agree with them... then this is a recipe for disaster. It is what I believe was the main source of my depression for all those years in my life.

With Youtubes Autoplay function, I was led to a random video which continued to change me in the strangest of ways. Samadhi

What this video did, was put all my feelings and disjointed thoughts in order. When watching much of this video, I felt something resonate inside me. It all made sense to me. I knew a lot of what I learnt from this video, but my conditioned brain never allowed me to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

My business was sold off mid-summer and I was focused on my training for Ironman Barcelona 2017. I struggled a lot to maintain my life prior to selling the business, but thankfully I had learnt the self discipline from the previous Ironman years. This was the first time I was going to travel "alone" and go for a race without a support team. I was very excited. While at the airport heading to Barcelona for the race, I randomly purchased a book which grabbed my attention. It was called "The subtle art of not giving a f*ck" by Mark Manson. Similarly to the Samadhi video, this book made something resonate within me. I was able to identify very much with the views and concepts the author was bringing forward.

After the race I wished to travel to Amsterdam as a reward, yet none of my friends wanted to join. So I decided to go alone. Go for a holiday alone. This was something I never imaged that I would or could do. Yet with all that I had gained from reading, and seeing these philosophical videos, and countless hours of training alone, and travelling to Barcelona alone, I said. "Go for it". So I did.

There I was. In Amsterdam. All alone. I wasn't even sure of why I wanted to go apart from just get high and let go a little. Yet I was confused by bigger questions in my life. Like what now? What do I do with my life now? I had done all I thought I wanted to do. What's next? What's the Point?

So I smoked weed and I just walked around Amsterdam like a lost soul with all the information I had sucked in earlier that year. I kept reading my book and thought for some days.

Ferris wheel and other rides at Dam Square

There were some rides in Dam square. A ferris wheel and some more adventurous rides. So I decided once I'm on tourist mode to just go for it. I was terrified of one of the rides so I first went on the ferris wheel to see Amsterdam from above while considering going on the more "crazy" ride.

I went on the crazy ride and something happened to me there. I decided to go on it because it terrified me. I wanted to go and face my fear of this ride. Like "what's the worst that can happen". I was strapped into the seat, big heavy thing holding my torso area to the seat and I was holding onto the handles of this ride tighter than I've ever held onto anything in my life. The ride started and as I was spinning around in all different angles at the same time, and the sensation of free falling made me so anxious. So I held on even tighter to the handles. Then, all of a sudden..... this internal dialogue started. A similar dialogue to that Edward Norton and Brad Pitt had in the movie Fight Club.

"What are you holding onto?" "Why are you so anxious on this ride?" "Do you think if something had to go wrong on this ride, by holding on so tightly do you think it will actually make a difference?" "Look at you!!! You're f*cking pathetic" "Stop trying to control everything and just let go. LET GO"

So that's what I did.

The cup which I had emptied and starting filling once again, stopped being there. There was no more cup to fill. I could stop trying so hard. Let go and let the world flow. Everything I had learnt all just popped into place.

There was one more small nudge left to get me to completely letting go. That nudge happened the following day when I decided to take psychedelic substances in the park alone. (I had taken such substances in previous years but this was very different).

I was gone, and not in the negative sense. Many people may argue I was just tripping. Particularly those who have not ever tried such substances, but the best way I can explain what these shrooms did to me was that it gave me that final push to break all the boundaries I had built within my brain. All labels my brain had built to help me understand the world around me just dropped. There was no division between this and that any longer. No more me and you. I zoomed out of myself to such an extreme that I truly felt one with the universe. I witnessed and experienced the whole universe. The realisation that there is no such thing as objective good or bad. The concept of duality vanished. We are all part of the same thing. Creation is one whole thing and we are all part of it. It was there where I believe I truly experienced the divine.

If you zoom out enough, you see things from a different perspective. You realise, it's perfect. Creation is perfect and we are part of that creation. The divinity is within us, all around us. Let go of the illusory idea you have of yourself and allow yourself to experience your own divinity.

This internal experience carried on for many months after the effect of the substance subsided. I wouldn't say it was the effect of the shrooms, but the shrooms were a tool to help me let go that tiny little bit more. I've come back now. It was not easy to accept that I had lost touch with my own divinity. I was angry and felt like I was lost again. But I now understand it's about finding balance and appreciating that I am still human. I am must accept that the unconscious primal existential fears are part of who I am. Yet with the awareness and grace of having experienced the bigger picture of life and creation in a way that words simply can not recreate.

Many may disagree with my revelation that there is no objective good or bad. We are all entitled to our own opinions. All I am doing here is sharing my opinion and experience. Yet I would like to start a dialogue, so I invite anyone who would like to start a philosophical discussion or debate to do so on the Discovering the Point facebook page. I will end this post with another quote from the Samadhi video.

"Many will argue that in order to change the world and bring about peace, we need to fight harder against our perceived enemies.

Fighting for peace is like shouting for silence. It just creates more of what you don't want. These days there is a war against everything A war against terror

A war against disease A war against hunger

Every war is actually a war against ourselves. The fight is part of a collective delusion. We say that we want peace but we continue to elect leaders who engage in war. We lie to ourselves saying we are for human rights, but continue to buy products made in sweatshops. We say we want clean air but we continue to pollute. We want science to cure us, but we won't change our self destructive habitual behaviours that make us more likely to be sick.

We delude ourselves that we are promoting a better life.

We don't want to see our hidden parts that are condoning suffering and death. The belief that we can win a war against cancer, hunger, terror or any enemy that was created by our own thinking and behaviour, actually lets us continue to delude ourselves that we don't have go change the way we operate on this planet. The inner world is where the revolution must first take place. Only when we can directly feel the spiral of life within, will the outer world come into alignment with the Tao. Until then anything we do, will add to the chaos already created by the mind. War and peace arise together in an endless dance. They are one continuum. One half cannot exist without the other.

Just as light cannot exist without dark and up cannot exist without down. The world seems to want light without darkness, fullness without emptiness. Happiness... without sadness"