Mystical Experiencer: Male in early forties
Submission date: January 2, 2022
Current location: Canada
Age at time of experience: 23
When it happened, and I can’t recall exactly what happened, it seemed like I cracked open, cracked through. Like my self had died but I was still alive. Like a rebirth, completely unscathed. I spent time just looking in the mirror at this incarnation, fascinated, giggling.
I was staying in a basement apartment and my room had a small window to the outdoors, big enough to get through. I remember I crawled out of it. I think it was early afternoon, and I just strolled the neighborhood. I forgot to wear shoes.
I was drawn to a playground area where children were playing, and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was pure joy and I thought everything in the entire universe was perfect just as it was.
I didn’t have any experience of “other”, more like the experience that I belong to God, and it was love and joy that exploded out me. [I learned that] love is all there is, and “hell” is simply not knowing you are loved and always belong to God.
I spent the following weeks just basking in the joy and I soon made many changes in my life, and changed my path completely. I felt like a completely different person. I even struggled to recall what I was like before it happened (and still do nearly 20 years later).
In the following 2-3 years, I must have read 100 books on spirituality, religion, and mystical experiences, all trying to understand what happened to me and connect with what I was feeling to be true.
I had never really read much before and I had never been to church or was in any way religious prior to the experience.