Why I Slept On My Couch For Six Years, And Why Buddhism Is A Better Option

It’s me again. This time I’m gonna get personal, but on consideration I guess a few of these blogs have been rather personal already. Today I’m diving into my deepest beliefs, the thing that is the foundation for how I view the universe.

Back in 2013 or 2014, before I’d gotten any diagnoses, I had an experience that had quite an impact on my worldview, or rather, my perception of reality. For a few weeks when I went to bed, I’d sort of freeze, and my arms would move involuntarily. I’d be on my back, eyes closed, not able to move, and my arms and hands would raise themselves under the blanket, and they’d stay raised for a few minutes, while my mind would be… different, odd, before lowering themselves again and I could turn on my side and stomach and go to sleep.

I was dealing with a lot of mental health stuff in general, undiagnosed schizophrenia was developing, so it didn’t bother me as much as I just found it odd and “just the way it is I guess.”

This whole thing culminated in an event, however, that was really quite extraordinary. The last night I stayed in bed, because I slept on a couch for the next six years after this, I had a wild experience. At the time I’d listen to Joe Rogan, known idiot, and he’d go on and on about ayahuasca and DMT, a chemical that’s in psychedelics and also occurs naturally in our brains from what I remember. So ever since that night I’ve assumed that’s what caused my out of this world experience.

The night started as usual, with my left arm raising itself, but this time my right hand gradually, over some minutes, slowly disappeared. As in from my shoulder down, there was nothing left. Then I started floating over my bed, rising sharply, and even though my eyes were closed like usual, I could see my room, and watch my spirit float up and away from my apartment building, over the city, into the sky, across space, and I remember floating past planets and stars, until finally reaching a bright light that enveloped me.

I don’t do drugs, so no, there was no trip going wrong, and my only explanation is that DMT thing in my brain.

I was hurled back towards Earth, and came down back into my body, where I was not able to move, and lay still, left arm raised, right arm missing, for a few minutes. Then a right arm slowly raised from the bed and grew into my new arm, and then I was back, able to move, think, wonder. Like what the fuck just happened?

This experience obviously caused me some distress, and went some way of getting me into some higher levels of therapy and getting a few diagnoses, until it settled on the umbrella schizophrenia a little later.

My new right arm only did two weird things over the next few days before it became as my own.

Anyway…

My first interpretation of this event was that I’d woken up, gone to the real world, and had indisputable proof that our reality was a simulation. I fluctuated between this reality being a prison and I was being punished in my life, or this being a research tool to figure out how humanity had managed to screw up so thoroughly.

This never affected my outward life much, I never discussed it with anyone outside of therapy, or let the knowledge that our reality was fake harm my personal relationships. These other people in my life didn’t know we weren’t real, and later I realized that even if we’re not real, our feelings are real, and these people like me, so there’s no harm in being the only person who knows the truth about our universe.

Several years later, I met my soon to be wife, and her love altered how I saw this long ago experience. Maybe I wasn’t being punished, maybe I’d volunteered to go back from the light, after being shown my future. For my future was bright suddenly. My brain had been quiet for a few months before I met her, and what if she was my partner in the real world, outside this reality, and my family out there had convinced me to go back because they knew how great things were going to become for me.

I dunno. I think our deepest held beliefs alter and change as we as humans alter and change and grow. No one believes the same things as an adult as they did as a child and as a teenager. At least they shouldn’t, because we’re meant to grow and evolve and develop.

When I was a kid I remember being fascinated by Buddhism, possibly after discovering Nirvana, the band, and Kurt Cobain. I believe he was a buddhist. I got my dad to buy me a book on Buddhism, but I don’t think I ever read it.

A few months ago now, I read a really great book called The Years Of Rice And Salt, by Kim Stanley Robinson, who I know nothing about. It’s an alternate history book, where the premise is that the Black Death kills 99% of the European population and the world develops up to the present dominated by Islam and Buddhism instead of white Europeans.

It’s a really terrific book, and at 800 pages the longest one I’ve read in a very long time.

The book introduced me to the buddhist concept of the Bardo, which for the first time in years made me reconsider our reality. I’m not gonna be able to tell you exactly what the Bardo is to most buddhists, but the way I interpreted it from reading a fiction book is that it’s sort of a place between life and death, between lives before you are reborn.

When you are in the Bardo you will meet up with the people closest to you over the centuries as you all live out several lives. This was a really beautiful thought to me. It’s given me comfort since Jånni died (our cat), because if I choose to believe this thing, when I die I won’t wake up in a different reality, as someone who may or may not be human, but I’ll get to live a new life, reborn, with my soon to be wife and our two dead cats and whoever else from my life who are my closest bonds, and in the next life I might be a cat, and Simba or Jånni might be humans who love me. And this idea is so much more beautiful and comforting than the cold Reality is a simulation idea I have believed for the last decade plus.

I have no idea if any of this makes sense, and I’m just gonna publish right away instead of editing it later and having second thoughts!