CharlesU Farley
Well-known member
I wrote this a couple years ago. I've been doing some updates to the website, re-read this a week or two ago and a post by dogzter jogged my memory, so I might as well post it here as well. And this is a _very_ long read, even for me, so get a beer / cup of coffee and smoke/vape/eat 'em if you got 'em, while you read this:
I bet that subject title got your attention? A recent series of events occurred that has given me quite a bit of contentment and inner peace. I’m going to try and relate what happened to me but just like relating dreams to someone else, it’s probably not going to make a lot of sense or be as profound for you as the experience was for me.
Here’s the tl;dr version:
I’ve always been a spiritual but not religious person. I’ve done large doses of LSD and had an extraordinary experience with sound but nothing religious or divine. My wife and I, along with one of our kids as well, had to euthanize our very old dogs because of cancer. So death and if there is anything after death had been on my mind. Couldn’t get to sleep, internally debating the existence of heaven, can pets go there, then started thinking about the nature of hell, does God exist, etc. In a totally darkened bedroom with my eyes closed, I experienced a complete and abject darkness that was suddenly pierced by a staggeringly momentary, yet indescribably intense light that I have no doubt whatsoever was inspired by God. I suddenly _understood_ and had answers to all my questions about heaven, hell, devil and God.
Yeah, if I would read this statement before experiencing it, I would without a _doubt_ close out this web page immediately. Since college, I’ve _always_ believed God doesn’t talk or communicate to any one person or make and/or control anyone do anything. But it happened to me. I now know, without a solitary doubt, that heaven is not real, hell is not real, the devil is not real but God most assuredly is.
For the complete story and astonishing conclusion, you have to read the long version.
A knowledge of my religious background will help to understand the foundation of my beliefs, that were initially formed in what would now be an absolute impossibility, a liberal Southern Baptist church. Our Pastor would pray for the killing to stop and for the end of the Viet Nam war, marched with Dr. King in the 60s (he was a white man), did missionary work, etc. But he was still all hell, fire and brimstone if you weren’t a Christian. It was either heaven or hell but if you “accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior”, your ticket to heaven was punched Express… no matter what sins you committed. Sunday school teachers pounded it even harder, “…even Hitler could go to heaven if he was a Christian.”
But if you weren’t a Christian, you went to hell.
Even as a 10-12 year old child, that just didn’t seem right to me. I used to get into arguments with Sunday school teachers about how a “just and loving God” could exclude all the Jews, Muslims and Hindus in the world from heaven and condemn them to hell. When I turned 13, I was rather persistent and vociferous with the parental units that I wasn’t going to church anymore and after much screaming, I was no longer required to attend church.
Didn’t really give religion much thought after that until a couple of years later in high school when I go to a Seals and Crofts concert. After the last encore, they said they were going to hang around and talk about what inspired their music, the Baha’i faith. My girlfriend wanted to see what they had to say so we stayed and learned how they think God sent various messengers down to earth, including Jesus, Mohammed and Buddha. They believed in the unity of all people and were against racism and sexism. Sounded really intriguing and in college I took several religion classes (Dante’s Inferno was quite the trip) so I learned the basics of all the major faiths. I was particularly intrigued by the Jefferson Bible, which is an unpublished book by Thomas Jefferson where he removed all the magical and supernatural facets of Jesus in the New Testament.
I had major philosophical differences with all of the religions I studied and won’t waste time now reciting chapter and verse of the various issues. I eventually decided I wasn’t going to follow any organized religion but I firmly believed in God, heaven and hell. I kinda settled on a Universal Mind concept of God, a spiritual entity that was responsible for but did not control human life here on earth.
After I became a Registered Respiratory Therapist, I began to see just how brutal human beings can be to other human beings. Between all of the innocent victims of gunshot wounds, rapes, stabbings and other assorted trauma, I began to question whether God really answered the prayers of those who had just been murdered.
I don’t remember all the specifics of this particular incident, blocked it out from memory no doubt, but it convinced me that God just doesn’t intervene in human lives. A young child, victim of horrible abuse from Mom’s boyfriend, essentially beat to death because he peed his pants. Mom praying and wailing to God to please save her child, saying she will do _anything_ God asks her to do, go to church, repent her sins, _anything_. The child flat lined and died, as she was praying to God with all her might.
If God didn’t answer that prayer, God ain’t answering _any_ fucking prayer.
I always used to tell people I worked with in a hospital that when I died and if I made it to heaven, God was going to have some explaining to do on the whys and how’s of innocent kids getting cancer, suffering horribly and then dying from it. I needed some help to understand how a just and loving God could allow that to happen to innocent children.
Eventually settled on believing in a non-interventional God who was good and responsible for all that was good, a devil who was evil and responsible for everything that was evil. Heaven was where good people were rewarded for living a good life and hell was where bad people were punished for living a bad life. I know, grossly simplistic but it worked for me seeing disease, trauma and death on a daily basis.
I was quite content with that interpretation for almost all my life but a series of totally random and insignificant events blended together to give me what I’m characterizing as an Inspirational Clarity. One of our dogs, who had been with us over 13 years, was rapidly approaching her end of life from cancer. We had the vet come up here on the mountain and euthanize her. One of our kids was dealing with the exact same situation and their dog was almost 16. I had read the Rainbow Bridge poem many years ago, so I sent it to them to provide support and love. Feeling pretty low, decide to watch some comedy to lighten things up, cue up George Carlin and this kinda stuck out:
It was a little too heavy on subject matter, so I did a channel scan and a rerun of Modern Family we’ve seen 10-15 times was on. Here’s the part that caught my attention:
Damn, that was heavy for a sitcom.
Fuck this, time to go to bed, get some rest and sleep but haven’t been to forums in a while, so after I go to my usual Indoor Grow and Grow Room Construction subs, the Inspirational sub kinda catches my eye, for the first time ever. I read a thread from urhighness, from KY (where I was born and raised) describing the horror of her child being murdered. Jesus God Almighty, no Mom should have to suffer that fucking horror. Do an indepth search on what exactly happened, they are from Owensboro, a town I’d been to many times as my grandfather was a conductor for the L&N railroad. Read the whole, tragic story of a 15 y/o, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, who was murdered. The absolute horror of this sentence stays with me:
“When life gets broke down so far from a pain so desperate to be done, food has no taste, the sun has no warmth, and you realize there will never be a better time in your life than what has already been had... there is nothing left worth having.”
So the stage was set for what happens when I try to get to sleep.
Former dead pets are swirling around my memory… Niki, Dogma, Karma, Chaos… in addition to parental and grand parental units, the nature of heaven and hell, God, etc. Then hospital situations come to the forefront… never seen a dead person scared or frown… how many people have died and I was the last human they saw on earth… why does God _not_ answer prayers?
This internal dialog goes on for a long time and takes numerous variations, tangents and differing points of view. I have a unique ability to view differing and conflicting situations objectively and through dual points of view, that’s the nature of who I am. What happens to our soul after we die, are pets part of heaven, all this occurs before I can even begin to get to sleep. I’m having all these doubts about life, death, God and how I fit into all of this life here on earth stuff. How can a just and loving God be so very fucking brutal and vindictive to condemn the majority of human life on the planet to eternal damnation just because they don’t believe in Jesus Christ? This is most assuredly _not_ what I believe, so I really _need_ some answers.
That’s when I felt what was the most brilliant, pure, complete love, knowledge and power ever created in the universe.
It was immediately communicated to me that it was… a _nano_ fucking second experience of what really, actually _is_ God. I cannot explain or communicate it in any other way, I just can’t. I cannot actually explain this in a way that will make sense, as they used to say back in the day about psychedelics, “Words tend to be inadequate”.
All I know is that I suddenly had all the answers to my rather profound questions about the nature of life, death, God, heaven, hell, Hitler going to heaven, innocent kids dying from cancer, and all the other questions that had intrigued me almost all of my life. All of my questions finally had an answers.
I was totally and almost completely straight, at least as much as I can be given my Endo Cannabinoid System situation. I’d forgotten my 8:00 PM capsule during Modern Family.
Every time I thought about conflicting situations where humans could be judged; a soldier killing in combat; a cop on the beat shooting a robbery suspect; a profoundly mentally ill human who murders, a terminally ill human taking their own life because they can’t take it any more… do these souls make it to heaven?
I now understood.
The situation a human is put in is frequently beyond their control but how they react in that situation is totally and completely under their control, not God’s. That’s what determines who becomes part of God and who doesn’t. Those whose motives and intentions are pure will be rewarded, the humans who exclusively choose their own, selfish needs over others will not be punished, they just won’t experience “The Light”. There is no eternal fire and brimstone… a just and loving God fucking doesn’t do that.
There is no Devil controlling humans and what they do, it’s who we are and unfortunately, humans can be Devils. Hell, purgatory and all the rest of that is just our human way of trying to justify and explain why we can be so very fucking evil… killing, raping, torture, etc. Blaming the Devil is just an excuse to justify and absolve human behavior and blame our evil on an external force.
We are both good and evil, because we are human, not God.
Hitler gets a glimpse of becoming God…and then there’s nothing, complete emptiness. Could there be a more horrible end of existence? Having experienced it, I cannot imagine a more horrible feeling than to experience total and complete love, absolute control of everything that has ever been created, infinite wisdom and the ultimate and complete power to create anything and everything that has ever been created, and then having it taken away?
I’m beginning to understand.
This analogy is going to be so lame when I try to explain it but I’m gonna type it anyway, because it made sense to me:
Life is like a big, long car ride where you have to interact will all different types of people. Some drivers are just outright assholes, yelling and screaming at other people all the time. Others don’t give a shit about anyone other than themselves, so they either drive too fast or too slow, endangering the lives of everyone else. Some get drunk or don’t pay attention because they are texting and kill other_ totally_ innocent human beings. Random tragedy for innocent victims who have done absolutely nothing wrong.
But almost all people get where they need to go because they obey the rules of the road, pay attention to what they’re doing, and treat others with tolerance and respect. As humans, we don’t know whether our journey in the car is going to be a short ride or a very, very long haul. Some of us, unfortunately, have very short rides that end through no fault of our own. Others enjoy a long, eventful experience.
That’s the adventure… and the responsibility.
There’s no one controlling how you drive, no cop who knows where you are going, and the car is not driving itself. _You_ are the one in control, the one responsible for driving correctly and doing what’s right. Guess which type of driver gets to become part of God? You don’t have to be Mother Theresa but you can’t be Hitler either.
Here’s the important part:
If you live your life correctly, do what is right and are tolerant of others, you actually _become_ a part of God. You become part of what created and creates anything and everything in the universe that has ever been or will ever be created. Recreating the love from dead family members and pets is absolutely nothing compared to creating everything that’s ever been created or will ever be created. If you live a good life, you will experience all that God has to offer when your life is finished. That’s what heaven is, it’s not a place, it is when you become a part of God.
After I exhaled and wiped the tears off, I just laid there for a little while thinking how glad I was to have forgotten my evening capsule, so I could communicate what happened and to be able to absolutely guarantee it wasn’t because I was under the influence of any alcohol, hallucinogen, or other mind altering substance. As usual for old farts like me, I had to get up to pee.
When I looked at the clock, this is no shit, it was 4:20 AM.
This is my reality, not yours, as we all bring differing and various points of view in life with regard to God and religion. Urhighness, your son is with you now and it is my belief that he is now a part of God and has recreated all of the love and happiness you both shared. Live a good life, don’t give up on it, as it is most assuredly worth living. You will be rewarded for carrying on with your life without your son by becoming part of God with him, when your life is over.
It’s my hope that if you’ve somehow managed to plow through this long ass story, you will find some degree of comfort and tranquility in what I have experienced and be able to relate what I’ve experienced into your own life. For me, it has truly been an Inspirational Clarity.
Time for me to take a break.
I bet that subject title got your attention? A recent series of events occurred that has given me quite a bit of contentment and inner peace. I’m going to try and relate what happened to me but just like relating dreams to someone else, it’s probably not going to make a lot of sense or be as profound for you as the experience was for me.
Here’s the tl;dr version:
I’ve always been a spiritual but not religious person. I’ve done large doses of LSD and had an extraordinary experience with sound but nothing religious or divine. My wife and I, along with one of our kids as well, had to euthanize our very old dogs because of cancer. So death and if there is anything after death had been on my mind. Couldn’t get to sleep, internally debating the existence of heaven, can pets go there, then started thinking about the nature of hell, does God exist, etc. In a totally darkened bedroom with my eyes closed, I experienced a complete and abject darkness that was suddenly pierced by a staggeringly momentary, yet indescribably intense light that I have no doubt whatsoever was inspired by God. I suddenly _understood_ and had answers to all my questions about heaven, hell, devil and God.
Yeah, if I would read this statement before experiencing it, I would without a _doubt_ close out this web page immediately. Since college, I’ve _always_ believed God doesn’t talk or communicate to any one person or make and/or control anyone do anything. But it happened to me. I now know, without a solitary doubt, that heaven is not real, hell is not real, the devil is not real but God most assuredly is.
For the complete story and astonishing conclusion, you have to read the long version.
A knowledge of my religious background will help to understand the foundation of my beliefs, that were initially formed in what would now be an absolute impossibility, a liberal Southern Baptist church. Our Pastor would pray for the killing to stop and for the end of the Viet Nam war, marched with Dr. King in the 60s (he was a white man), did missionary work, etc. But he was still all hell, fire and brimstone if you weren’t a Christian. It was either heaven or hell but if you “accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior”, your ticket to heaven was punched Express… no matter what sins you committed. Sunday school teachers pounded it even harder, “…even Hitler could go to heaven if he was a Christian.”
But if you weren’t a Christian, you went to hell.
Even as a 10-12 year old child, that just didn’t seem right to me. I used to get into arguments with Sunday school teachers about how a “just and loving God” could exclude all the Jews, Muslims and Hindus in the world from heaven and condemn them to hell. When I turned 13, I was rather persistent and vociferous with the parental units that I wasn’t going to church anymore and after much screaming, I was no longer required to attend church.
Didn’t really give religion much thought after that until a couple of years later in high school when I go to a Seals and Crofts concert. After the last encore, they said they were going to hang around and talk about what inspired their music, the Baha’i faith. My girlfriend wanted to see what they had to say so we stayed and learned how they think God sent various messengers down to earth, including Jesus, Mohammed and Buddha. They believed in the unity of all people and were against racism and sexism. Sounded really intriguing and in college I took several religion classes (Dante’s Inferno was quite the trip) so I learned the basics of all the major faiths. I was particularly intrigued by the Jefferson Bible, which is an unpublished book by Thomas Jefferson where he removed all the magical and supernatural facets of Jesus in the New Testament.
I had major philosophical differences with all of the religions I studied and won’t waste time now reciting chapter and verse of the various issues. I eventually decided I wasn’t going to follow any organized religion but I firmly believed in God, heaven and hell. I kinda settled on a Universal Mind concept of God, a spiritual entity that was responsible for but did not control human life here on earth.
After I became a Registered Respiratory Therapist, I began to see just how brutal human beings can be to other human beings. Between all of the innocent victims of gunshot wounds, rapes, stabbings and other assorted trauma, I began to question whether God really answered the prayers of those who had just been murdered.
I don’t remember all the specifics of this particular incident, blocked it out from memory no doubt, but it convinced me that God just doesn’t intervene in human lives. A young child, victim of horrible abuse from Mom’s boyfriend, essentially beat to death because he peed his pants. Mom praying and wailing to God to please save her child, saying she will do _anything_ God asks her to do, go to church, repent her sins, _anything_. The child flat lined and died, as she was praying to God with all her might.
If God didn’t answer that prayer, God ain’t answering _any_ fucking prayer.
I always used to tell people I worked with in a hospital that when I died and if I made it to heaven, God was going to have some explaining to do on the whys and how’s of innocent kids getting cancer, suffering horribly and then dying from it. I needed some help to understand how a just and loving God could allow that to happen to innocent children.
Eventually settled on believing in a non-interventional God who was good and responsible for all that was good, a devil who was evil and responsible for everything that was evil. Heaven was where good people were rewarded for living a good life and hell was where bad people were punished for living a bad life. I know, grossly simplistic but it worked for me seeing disease, trauma and death on a daily basis.
I was quite content with that interpretation for almost all my life but a series of totally random and insignificant events blended together to give me what I’m characterizing as an Inspirational Clarity. One of our dogs, who had been with us over 13 years, was rapidly approaching her end of life from cancer. We had the vet come up here on the mountain and euthanize her. One of our kids was dealing with the exact same situation and their dog was almost 16. I had read the Rainbow Bridge poem many years ago, so I sent it to them to provide support and love. Feeling pretty low, decide to watch some comedy to lighten things up, cue up George Carlin and this kinda stuck out:
It was a little too heavy on subject matter, so I did a channel scan and a rerun of Modern Family we’ve seen 10-15 times was on. Here’s the part that caught my attention:
Damn, that was heavy for a sitcom.
Fuck this, time to go to bed, get some rest and sleep but haven’t been to forums in a while, so after I go to my usual Indoor Grow and Grow Room Construction subs, the Inspirational sub kinda catches my eye, for the first time ever. I read a thread from urhighness, from KY (where I was born and raised) describing the horror of her child being murdered. Jesus God Almighty, no Mom should have to suffer that fucking horror. Do an indepth search on what exactly happened, they are from Owensboro, a town I’d been to many times as my grandfather was a conductor for the L&N railroad. Read the whole, tragic story of a 15 y/o, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, who was murdered. The absolute horror of this sentence stays with me:
“When life gets broke down so far from a pain so desperate to be done, food has no taste, the sun has no warmth, and you realize there will never be a better time in your life than what has already been had... there is nothing left worth having.”
So the stage was set for what happens when I try to get to sleep.
Former dead pets are swirling around my memory… Niki, Dogma, Karma, Chaos… in addition to parental and grand parental units, the nature of heaven and hell, God, etc. Then hospital situations come to the forefront… never seen a dead person scared or frown… how many people have died and I was the last human they saw on earth… why does God _not_ answer prayers?
This internal dialog goes on for a long time and takes numerous variations, tangents and differing points of view. I have a unique ability to view differing and conflicting situations objectively and through dual points of view, that’s the nature of who I am. What happens to our soul after we die, are pets part of heaven, all this occurs before I can even begin to get to sleep. I’m having all these doubts about life, death, God and how I fit into all of this life here on earth stuff. How can a just and loving God be so very fucking brutal and vindictive to condemn the majority of human life on the planet to eternal damnation just because they don’t believe in Jesus Christ? This is most assuredly _not_ what I believe, so I really _need_ some answers.
That’s when I felt what was the most brilliant, pure, complete love, knowledge and power ever created in the universe.
It was immediately communicated to me that it was… a _nano_ fucking second experience of what really, actually _is_ God. I cannot explain or communicate it in any other way, I just can’t. I cannot actually explain this in a way that will make sense, as they used to say back in the day about psychedelics, “Words tend to be inadequate”.
All I know is that I suddenly had all the answers to my rather profound questions about the nature of life, death, God, heaven, hell, Hitler going to heaven, innocent kids dying from cancer, and all the other questions that had intrigued me almost all of my life. All of my questions finally had an answers.
I was totally and almost completely straight, at least as much as I can be given my Endo Cannabinoid System situation. I’d forgotten my 8:00 PM capsule during Modern Family.
Every time I thought about conflicting situations where humans could be judged; a soldier killing in combat; a cop on the beat shooting a robbery suspect; a profoundly mentally ill human who murders, a terminally ill human taking their own life because they can’t take it any more… do these souls make it to heaven?
I now understood.
The situation a human is put in is frequently beyond their control but how they react in that situation is totally and completely under their control, not God’s. That’s what determines who becomes part of God and who doesn’t. Those whose motives and intentions are pure will be rewarded, the humans who exclusively choose their own, selfish needs over others will not be punished, they just won’t experience “The Light”. There is no eternal fire and brimstone… a just and loving God fucking doesn’t do that.
There is no Devil controlling humans and what they do, it’s who we are and unfortunately, humans can be Devils. Hell, purgatory and all the rest of that is just our human way of trying to justify and explain why we can be so very fucking evil… killing, raping, torture, etc. Blaming the Devil is just an excuse to justify and absolve human behavior and blame our evil on an external force.
We are both good and evil, because we are human, not God.
Hitler gets a glimpse of becoming God…and then there’s nothing, complete emptiness. Could there be a more horrible end of existence? Having experienced it, I cannot imagine a more horrible feeling than to experience total and complete love, absolute control of everything that has ever been created, infinite wisdom and the ultimate and complete power to create anything and everything that has ever been created, and then having it taken away?
I’m beginning to understand.
This analogy is going to be so lame when I try to explain it but I’m gonna type it anyway, because it made sense to me:
Life is like a big, long car ride where you have to interact will all different types of people. Some drivers are just outright assholes, yelling and screaming at other people all the time. Others don’t give a shit about anyone other than themselves, so they either drive too fast or too slow, endangering the lives of everyone else. Some get drunk or don’t pay attention because they are texting and kill other_ totally_ innocent human beings. Random tragedy for innocent victims who have done absolutely nothing wrong.
But almost all people get where they need to go because they obey the rules of the road, pay attention to what they’re doing, and treat others with tolerance and respect. As humans, we don’t know whether our journey in the car is going to be a short ride or a very, very long haul. Some of us, unfortunately, have very short rides that end through no fault of our own. Others enjoy a long, eventful experience.
That’s the adventure… and the responsibility.
There’s no one controlling how you drive, no cop who knows where you are going, and the car is not driving itself. _You_ are the one in control, the one responsible for driving correctly and doing what’s right. Guess which type of driver gets to become part of God? You don’t have to be Mother Theresa but you can’t be Hitler either.
Here’s the important part:
If you live your life correctly, do what is right and are tolerant of others, you actually _become_ a part of God. You become part of what created and creates anything and everything in the universe that has ever been or will ever be created. Recreating the love from dead family members and pets is absolutely nothing compared to creating everything that’s ever been created or will ever be created. If you live a good life, you will experience all that God has to offer when your life is finished. That’s what heaven is, it’s not a place, it is when you become a part of God.
After I exhaled and wiped the tears off, I just laid there for a little while thinking how glad I was to have forgotten my evening capsule, so I could communicate what happened and to be able to absolutely guarantee it wasn’t because I was under the influence of any alcohol, hallucinogen, or other mind altering substance. As usual for old farts like me, I had to get up to pee.
When I looked at the clock, this is no shit, it was 4:20 AM.
This is my reality, not yours, as we all bring differing and various points of view in life with regard to God and religion. Urhighness, your son is with you now and it is my belief that he is now a part of God and has recreated all of the love and happiness you both shared. Live a good life, don’t give up on it, as it is most assuredly worth living. You will be rewarded for carrying on with your life without your son by becoming part of God with him, when your life is over.
It’s my hope that if you’ve somehow managed to plow through this long ass story, you will find some degree of comfort and tranquility in what I have experienced and be able to relate what I’ve experienced into your own life. For me, it has truly been an Inspirational Clarity.
Time for me to take a break.
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