Lurking a little less - Hello, I'm new!

[Ouroboress]

Hello!

I've been enjoying reading some of the threads on this board. I just wanted to acknowledge the value that I'm finding here.
I have little to contribute at this point, as my journey in the occult is a crude one thus far, but I feel more questions and courage welling up with each new article, thread and adventure that I take.

There is one thing you could do for me; Tell me, when was the first time you realized there was something more to the world around you than what is physically present.

Thanks, and cheers!

- Ouroboress

[Ramscha]

Hey Ouroboress, welcome to the forum. That is a beautiful picture you have there. [grin]

There is one thing you could do for me; Tell me, when was the first time you realized there was something more to the world around you than what is physically present.

When I got drunk for the first time and people around me started to double and triple in numbers [wink]

[Nahemah]

Hello and welcome to the forum. [grin]

...when was the first time you realized there was something more to the world around you than what is physically present.

Well,apparently I'd been interacting with 'things that aren't really there' [others couldn't sense]for quite some time before I was made aware of it.

The realisation that my reality was a bit different to the folk around me was not a comforting experience,though.
I grew up in a heavily religious community,which sought to stifle and trammel me into their way of thinking/seeing/believing.

It didn't succeed.

TL;DR: Since early childhood.

[Ouroboress]

Thanks Ramscha! It's an emblem done by Barthélemy Aneaue in the 1500s. Brought to you now by the omnipresent Google.

Sounds like a hoot. Is that still how you connect with the divine?



Nahemah, I''m glad you made it through your childhood ordeal!

Thanks for the welcome.

[manofsands]

Tell me, when was the first time you realized there was something more to the world around you than what is physically present.

Since always. I've always assumed that most everyone is born with that feeling and the question is more how much of it do you lose rather than how much of the feeling do you gain. I think we try explaining the feeling more as we are older, but it always seemed a childhood staple.

[Ramscha]

Thanks Ramscha! It's an emblem done by Barthélemy Aneaue in the 1500s. Brought to you now by the omnipresent Google.

Sounds like a hoot. Is that still how you connect with the divine?

Google is always there to be asked. It is like it would tell us "ask me, ask meeeeeee!"
Besides that, my humble self is enough to connect me with all the divinity I need. Cheers!

Ramscha

[Ouroboress]

Since always. I've always assumed that most everyone is born with that feeling and the question is more how much of it do you lose rather than how much of the feeling do you gain. I think we try explaining the feeling more as we are older, but it always seemed a childhood staple.

I feel similarly; Only upon reaching my adolescence did I feel a need to search for what lay behind the scenes. As a kid running around in the woods, (largely unsupervised) tromping up creeks, talking to trees and scraping my knees all seemed very revealing and inclusive. Nature was an endless playground and needed exploration rather than explanation.

[Sypheara]

That is a beautiful avatar you have.

Welcome to the forums, I hope you can find some useful things here, if not also enjoy it for the company!

I first realised when I had a very intense, 'dream' that was actually forced astral travel by Lucifer. What he showed me transformed my worldview overnight, as it was so utterly vivid and real, I could no longer turn my back on things within my life.

What manofsands says about childhood is pretty important, we all lose something vital as we grow older, too accustomed to the world and we shut alot out as we develop more of a mental cage and form more 'self'

[Asurendra]

Welcome to the Forum Ourobouress

When discussing what was lost with childhood I think there is one work that sums all this up very well by William Wordsworth.

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood


THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 5
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes, 10
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair; 15
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound 20
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; 25
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea 30
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;—
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy 35
Shepherd-boy!

Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival, 40
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning, 45
And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:— 50
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet 55
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 60
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 65
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 70
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended; 75
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind, 80
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came. 85

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes! 90
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral; 95
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long 100
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, 105
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity; 110
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—
Mighty prophet! Seer blest! 115
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a master o'er a slave, 120
A presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie; 125
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? 130
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live, 135
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest— 140
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise; 145
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized, 150
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may, 155
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, 160
To perish never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy! 165
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither, 170
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound! 175
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright 180
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind; 185
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death, 190
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight 195
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet; 200
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 205
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

[Ouroboress]

Sypheara, I am very much enjoying the content and getting to know people through their posts. I find the different flavors of information exciting. The collaborative spirit here is pretty rad as well!

Asurendra, thanks for posting that poem. It gracefully explores the feeling that I often experience. William Wadsworth is my favorite poet from Cockermouth. (te hee)

[RoseRed]

Beautiful avatar!

I just emailed myself a copy of that poem so I can read it when I actually have time to sit and flow with the words. I'm looking forward to it.

I see this on a lot of different forums. Those new to these paths read a lot but hold back instead of jumping right in and participating. Questions are awesome. Exploring topics and expanding your thoughts on them is a really cool thing. But what I think a lot of people don't realize is that those of us that've been around a while still learn just as much from those who are just beginning. Sometimes, it's things we've forgotten. Other times, it's a fresh or new outlook or a new way of looking at something learned long ago. Please jump in. Don't feel like you need to hold back because you've nothing to contribute. You truly do.