The following is a personal essay about mysticism, addiction, trauma and how a look behind the veil and a change in perception saved me from a life of suffering.
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Disclaimer: I do not mean to diagnose or make any claims about addiction, mental illness or the true nature of reality. This is my truth and my own perception. It may or may not align with yours and that is fine by me.
I am a ceremonial magician. An initiate of a Rosicrucian (Western Mystical) magical order. This may sound new age, kooky, and even conspiratorial to non-initiates. I don’t blame you if you feel that way. I used to believe Western Esoteric orders like Freemasonry, the Knights Templar, and the Golden Dawn were secret clubs inhabited by egotistical elites and people who believed they could bend the world to their will for selfish reasons. I assure you that is not what I am doing. I am a mystic. I seek to know G-D, the Great Spirit that spins the fabric of this reality, so that I can better understand myself and the world around me. I now know it is possible to have a relationship with G-D. But this was not always the case. For most of my life, I believed that I was separate, a victim of trauma, mental illness, and addiction. My birth did not feel sacred. It felt like a tragic accident. I don’t believe this anymore, now that I have gnosis (experiential knowledge) of my place in the cosmos. This gnosis has saved me from a life of suffering. I hope my story resonates with you in some way. It is the story of how I became a master of my own life through the act of surrender.
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My story begins in a trailer park in the middle of the New Mexican desert in 1992. I am Eleven. I am beaten up in gym class because I am weird and poor and one of only two white kids in the whole school. At home, I am my stepfather’s emotional punching bag. On the weekends, my hippie dad who I adored my whole life, starts takes me to a clothing-optional hot spring. One day, he leaves me alone in the soaking pools with a pedophile. My mother is depressed. She either doesn’t see what is happening or does not care. I stop talking. I stop trusting. I lose myself. My soul breaks away from my body.
Every night I pray to G-D to die and go to heaven. One night, my prayers are answered, just not in the way I want. A lady in a cloak comes to me in a dream. We are in my trailer watching my mother and stepfather fighting over rice, boiling on the floor. My baby sister is crying.
This is not your fate, the lady tells me. She says an awakening will happen in my thirties. My life will change then. My purpose will become known. My life sucks now, that’s what I was thinking.
The last time I see the lady, she appears as a ghostly figure floating in front of my bedroom window. The next day I break out into hives. I still want to die.
All through elementary school, I had been a straight A student. By twelve, I was practicing black magick on the playground with my best friend, Sharon, also a follower of Marilyn Manson. I had gotten nothing out of being good. By the time I turned thirteen, I had sex, tripped on LSD, drank alcohol, tried meth, and ran away from home. I thought I was rebelling from my parents and society. Years later, I would realize I was mirroring what I was subjected to growing up, but with a different covering.
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Finally, the day the Lady predicted came true. On Christmas morning at the age of thirty-four, after chasing romantic fantasy and treating my PTSD with alcohol and drugs for over twenty years, I had my first spiritual awakening, and it was terrible.
For years, I had blamed my husband for my drinking and my desire to have affairs outside of our marriage. I was convinced that his porn addiction and his alcoholism fueled my own bad behavior. After drunk driving to my drug dealer’s house on Christmas Eve night and nearly killing myself, I awoke the next morning with a painfully clear realization. I was in denial. I had been drinking and chasing romantic fantasy long before I met my husband. If he were taken out of the equation, I would have continued to destroy myself.
The worst thing about this revelation was that I didn’t know any other way to live. My mind was ruled by a victim consciousness brought on by years of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. My addictions helped me to avoid the pain that I had no tools to heal from. Here I was, thirty-four, and I didn’t know how to save my own soul. Afraid of my own life, I got on my knees, and I prayed. Like a person facing their own death, I felt powerless, and because of this, I surrendered.
Oddly enough, G-D came as a voice in my head that sounded very much like a drug rehab counselor. Go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Of course, I thought this was bullshit. But after two months of trying to “control” my drinking and failing miserably, I listened to the voice.
On a spring morning with a heavy heart, I went to an A.A. meeting. I will remember that day for the rest of my life. I walked into a room of over thirty women and heard my story repeated back to me with startling clarity. These women had used alcohol and people to run from themselves, just like me. They came from neglect and abuse, just like me. Their stories were my story. They were strangers to me, yet, somehow, I knew them.
Then it happened. The room took on a brightness and a warmth I had not experienced since I was a small child in my mother’s arms. In that moment, I experienced the universe not as separate mechanical parts whirling in a void of dark matter, but as a conscious, interconnected organism that had my evolution in mind.
My whole life, I had been trying to control everything around me, thinking that if other people and institutions would just change, then my life would get better. I could finally see that I was trying to play G-D and it wasn’t working. Trying to change my external circumstances would only lead me to more suffering. The only person I needed to help, was me. A weight lifted. I heard a voice, just let go. It was clear to me in that moment that the answer was not control, it was surrender.
Now eight years sober, I have found that through a ritual practice focused on aligning my will (my ego) with a higher will (G-D), my life has taken on a meaning and depth I would have never thought possible in active addiction.
A wise man once said that mysticism is another word for love. And what is mysticism but the desire to be one with G-D. And what is G-D but a vast and beautiful energy running through this dualistic world of order and disorder, death and birth, pain and joy. The biggest lie I was ever told was that G-D was separate from me. That this world and its people were not of G-D and G-D was not of them.
Most of my life, I felt intrinsically unique in my victimhood. I drank because I felt alone, unworthy of love, separate, misunderstood. By changing my belief. By having the faith to surrender to a G-D of my own understanding and asking for help in a power greater than myself, I have been gifted with the experiential knowledge that I am connected to all things. This knowledge has cured me from my victimhood, and it has cured me of my spiritual malady.
You would think giving my life and my will to G-D would cause me to have no power. This turned out to be the most empowering thing I have ever done for myself. When I align my will with a higher power and ask that power to guide my every decision, I stop looking outside of myself for validation. I stop putting my ego in the drivers seat. I stop avoiding my pain and I take charge of my own destiny. And when I become in charge of my own destiny, then I become the magician of my own life. And that is the great secret. That is the great mystery. The All is One, and the One is All.
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May the New Year bring you restitution, joy, and freedom from suffering.
Peace, Love, and Gnosis, your pal,
Border Land Delia-Ann
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