I’m staring into her eyes, smiling widely. I’m swinging in circles with her and her smile is piercing me. I’m convinced this is pure happiness. Heaven.

With a smiling laugh, she turns into a tiger and I’m falling into her. I fall through the tiger’s mouth and I’m in a different universe. I fall through blackness but I’m falling through every animal in the animal kingdom.  I have no control and I’m facing downward, seeing an infinitely long chain of animals that I fall into. The animals are morphing strangely and everything is a kaleidoscope. The noises are chaotic and every animal in the world is roaring at the same time. There’s a loud and flamboyant beat that comes with their noses. I fall through an elaphant and an antelope and a polar bear and finally a man.

The man’s skin turns into sand. I’m standing in a grand stadium comparable to the colosseum. The crowd is roaring and I feel as though I have no awareness of myself, only survival instinct. Before me is a purple black rectangle on two bars, like a dark matter volleyball net without holes. On the other side is a fierce man with long black hair. He charges and jumps upward when he reaches the dark but short wall, throwing a spear toward me. I feel no movement from my body, but I am not hit. He can’t come to my side, but he tries viciously. He’s frustrated and angry. I just watch. 

I’m alone. There’s nobody in the stadium. I’m in the center of the unoccupied colosseum and I’m the last person on earth. The stadium isn’t in a city anymore but in a vast limbo expanse that can’t be described as only a desert. The far reaches and wasteland are gray dust, not sand. I look around, distraught. Where is everyone? I start screaming and calling and crying for someone, anyone. Echoing and silence. I’m terrified more than any time in my life. A perfect square opens up directly beneath me.

I’m falling. I fall straight down and then I hit a steep slant. I slide down the slant, gaining speed. It’s dark but there’s sourceless light giving just enough to see. The slanted passage is tight and barely large enough for my body. I slide forever in this darkness and I’m moving faster and faster. 

I reach a bottom where there is a small room with several inches of a liquid as black as oil but thin as water. I splash into it. It’s dark in the room. It’s a rectangle, maybe ten feet long. I’m alone. I’m scared. There is no one with me. The passage slant is suddenly closed off with a loud thump. The black liquid is filling the room, fast. I start panicking. I frantically look for an escape. The liquid is at my waist. It’s taking me. I wade through it desperately searching for a door and I’m breathing hard. At the top of the room, I see a thin vertical tunnel with a ladder and at the top of the tunnel is a trapdoor. The liquid is rising faster now. I start to float. I rise to the ladder and I climb to the top. There is some light and I have hope. I try to open the door and it won’t budge. I bang on it with all my might and it won’t move. Tears are streaming my face and the horror in my heart is indescribable. Where am I? I look back and the darkness is still rising. I pull on the door harder than I believed I could. “HHEEEEEEEELLLLLLLPPP!!!! SOMEBODY PLEASE!!!! HELP ME!!!!!!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!!” The black liquid is inches away. I push my noise and mouth as high as I can go. It takes me.

I’m falling slowly, through the liquid, helplessly to the floor. I release struggle because I can’t struggle. It has taken me. I can see nothing but I also see through it. I’m not drowning. My lungs don’t need air, but I feel more out of control. I can’t move. This substance dominates me. I feel soaked by it and I’ve absorbed it fully. I’m terrified but I’m comfortable. It has me and I’m not fighting it. I hit the bottom of the room and I’m floating peacefully and horrifically at the bottom. I feel alone, isolated. I pray to the universe to make me feel less isolated by doing something, anything. I just want one friend right now. Anyone.

A body-sized rectangle opens up beneath me and I fall into it, still submerged. It’s twenty feet deep. As I fall, the area that was once the floor rematerializes above me. I fall to the bottom of this chamber and it rematerializes until I am submerged in a coffin-sized chamber. I can’t move. I can’t think. I am alone. I know how deep into this uninhabited world I am. Save me, someone. Please.

I’m falling backward. Violently. I’m not wet anymore. I’m falling directly backward in a vertical tunnel that is the same rectangle I was in. The coffin opened up from under m but I can’t remember when. The liquid isn’t here. I fall forever until I land in a dry chamber. It closes up. My nose is an inch from the top. I have no movement. The sand I’m in in blacker than the liquid. It’s dust. I miss the comfort of the dark liquid. I’m coughing and choking on the black dust as I move and struggle. I am more isolated than I thought possible. This is was what hell is. The agony is unbearable. I scream. I cry and howl and I desperately want to be held by another person, any person. Everything feels wrong  I hit the top of my coffin with full force and it opens up from my under me. 

I fall ten feet into an empty, dark hallway. One way extends infinitely and a few yards the other way is a room. I feel… darkness. The room is the source of evil. I look to it from afar and see the darkness within. I walk toward it. Slowly. It takes hours to get there. I am in a trance. The darkness is destroying my heart. I must reach the room. I must discover what this is. I’m in the room. There is a tall and dark personage in a hooded black cloak. I can’t see the face. It occupies the other end of the room and it has been staring at me for as long as I’ve been the hallway. It doesn’t move. It is the most terrifying being in the world. Its darkness can’t be described. I became hypnotized by the darkness behind the hood. I continue walking toward it. As I draw closer, I see skeletal hands and a silleouted skeletal face. This great being is terrible but has unbelievable power. It doesn’t stand but remains perfectly still.

As I draw closer, the dark creature opens up its robe and spreads its arms wide open, wanting me to fall in. Inside the cloak is a thick black fog. It’s irresistible and I stand no chance. I walk toward it, into it. It takes several minutes. Once I start to become absorbed by the darkness within, I feel my entire existence dematerializing. I am becoming the darkness; it’s absorbing me and I’m soon to be gone. My consciousness is fading, I’m barely alive anymore… fading… fading…

I’m looking down at myself. I see myself walking toward me. Wait. Am I? No. But… how? I see an expression on my own face of pure suffering but lust for the darkness. I open up my arms, and I absorb myself. It feels amazing. I’m floating here in this dark room, miles beneath an uninhabited world. I don’t know what this is or why it is.

Now there are more. Behind the last me is an infinite line of myself. It’s almost as if time isn’t happening in one moment and I can see a new me fall down the hallway after the last, and the line is neverending. I absorb myself, over and over and over again. I’m unable to think of anyting else. As this demon, this is my purpose. The thought of anything else simply doesn’t compute. I do this for years, decades. 

…

I realize after an uncountable time that I mustered enough independent thought to know one thing: I hate myself. I am alone in this dark chamber, in pure isolation. There is no one to save me. I feel like the darkest of darknesses. There is no one who cares, nobody here. I am in the purest form of isolation there is, stuck in an endless limbo loop of darkness and evil. There is no hope. There is no happiness. All that exists is the lonely and isolated universe I now inhabit. I have nobody. This is the purest hell I can imagine.

Almost against my control, the demon that I am suddenly moves something other than its arms for the first time and flips around. It, and… I, goes through a secret back door, flys down a short tunnel, and looks up. A straight shot all the way to the surface. We look up and for the first time, we both experience emotion together. It is in this moment that I feel sympathy for the monster that is my constant companion, the first time I feel sadness, desperation, and hope from what I am. I see the monster’s solemn face from the outside and I feel the most intense sorrow. What made this monster deserve this? What made… me deserve this? We are the same, but different. I am this demon, but the demon is its own. I tell it that it will all be okay.

The demon I inhabit takes off with me still a part. We’re flying toward the surface at lightning speed. It’s so far. We’re looking straight up and our arms hang down as we fly toward the surface. Flying, up, up, up.

We’re back in the empty stadium in a lonely universe. There isn’t the sun but it is bright. It feels like a different realm.Our cloaked body floats just above the sand. I think we are alone. But then I see her. She’s sitting, cross-legged in a light robe, like a Buddha. She sits in the center of the colosseum and is the personification of peace. I’m so happy to see her. Soon, I feel the prescences of other people manifesting, lightly, in spiritual form. I fly to them and immediately we consume them into our darkness. We absorb everything and anything living. We rampage through all the life manifesting in the arena, pulling it all in. And then we fly toward her, in a trance, to take her too. She sees me coming and doesn’t look scared; she stays sitting peacefully. I charge at her, flying through the air. When I open up my arms to consume her with the darkness, I feel the most intense pressure in the universe. I just want her in my arms. I wish it was only me. Sitting there, peacefully, in pure bliss, she cannot be destroyed. She looks up at me, and I push further, my arms wide open, the dark fog feet from her. I cannot move closer and it feels as though there’s an impenetrable force field. I push closer and closer, harder and harder, but then, right when I’m about to take her, I violently dematerialize and explode into every direction faster than anything else.

A fragment of what I once was shoots at light speed to every corner of the univserse. All that remains is my consciousness. I move into the sky at the speed of light. I fly past the moon, past Venus and past the Sun. I fly out of the Milky Way and I look back and see the inhabited world again. It was back. I grab for it but I keep flying. I pass Andromeda and watch countless stars and planets fly by me in a flash. I witness the wonders of the cosmos in all their glory. I pass through and beside galaxies. I leave our star system and pass by others. The splendor of the universe is before me and I am in awe. I’m nothing but consciousness flying through; no body, no mind. 

Then I was there. It was both the direct center and furthest edge of the universe at the same time. It was true nothingness. I looked back into the universe and I started to see… everything. Everything started to become clear and I was in a different dimension, a different realm. Time didn’t move here, but it wasn’t frozen. It just… was. I started to experience it all.

I saw why I was so attached to her, why her smile sent me on this journey. I saw how important things with my mom actually were. I saw how my childhood molded me and why all the things that happened to me felt so terrible. It was all just experiences seen through a faded, flawed lens! I realized what appreciating everything actually meant. I finally saw how much the body and the mind have nothing to do with my real consciousness and how every thought, every feeling was just a part of the great illusion. My thoughts were not me, my body was not me, even my soul was not me. I was only just beginning, I felt my consciousness breaking free from it all, from the experiences that only happened to my body and mind! This is all that matters—

A sandstone ledge breaks beneath me and I’m sliding down a steep slanted cliff. I’m back in the inhabited world and my heart rate is high. Wait! How do I go back?! I was only just learning what I need to know! I try desperately to stop myself from falling fast to my doom. There’s a cliff I’m sliding toward and there are rocks at the bottom. I’m in pure chaos but I feel alive for the first time in years. I viciously grab onto anything I can but then I reach the edge. Falling. A few seconds. Rocks coming toward me, fast. Blackness.

That’s how it ended. I tried for a long time to go through it again, and the same thing happened. 

I was completely awake for this… experience, sitting by the woodstove on the floor in my living room, with my eyes closed. Once it began, I didn’t move a muscle for an hour and a half. I was in. I obviously knew I was partially still in the real world but this didn’t feel like a dream. It felt like my consciousness did separate from my body for a time. An illusion, but it doesn’t matter.

Before this happened, I was in a state of real meditation. It was the first time I realized what meditation actually was. It isn’t just closing your eyes and learning to sit still still for a long time. It’s… infinite attention. But no attention. It is awareness.  It can’t be explained. I never realized until shortly before, and I just put my head back on the couch and started. 

I was in a time of extreme stress on December 8th, 2016, with chaos surrounding me everywhere. My mind and body were interpreting all these experiences and filtering them in a way they didn’t like, and I was miserably unhappy. A simple text in the morning send me into a downward spiral, proving just how “aware” I really was. The day was filled with me reacting to the actions of others and allowing impulses to dictate what I was. 

As I started, I began to realize how all my thoughts, all my feelings about everything in this world were just interpretations of my body and mind that I didn’t even realize were there. Every feeling and thought that passed through me because of someone else’s actions was nothing. Illusions. I started to see why a past lover’s actions specifically threw me into more unbalance than anything else. Once these things were realized, they became insignificant. The “I’ll give you people a piece of my mind” conversations I badly wanted to have now seemed like jokes  I could laugh at. The next day (today) was going to be filled with stress, but as I became aware of the stress itself and it’s true sources, it became meaningless. My entire life was changed even before the… vision-thing. I feel peace right now. More peace and clarity than ever before. Nobody will be able tell. I look the same. I’ll talk the same. It felt real, but not real. It was not the same as a dream. I feel as though I visually saw these things. Illusion? Likely, but it’s irrelevant. I was definitely aware of where I was sitting in the real world the entire time, but I was a goner. Wouldn’t have even noticed if someone said my name. It was something different, but it was concrete.

When I was exploring why, after so much time and even romantic disconnect, this person’s actions still impacted me more than any other thing in the entire universe, I came to her smiling and looking into my eyes, and then it started.