~ Chasing the Dragon ~
Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2013 4:01 pm
.
Beyond anything you could imagine...had an unbelievably great childhood.
Fun, friends, family, happy, playing ALL the time. Playing ALL the time.
No pressure, just FUN. Extremely physically active. Loved to move. Just move.
Great, GREAT life.
......................................................................
Had a hundred jobs, loving parents. Many friends. Enjoyed art & drawing. Great family.
Towards the end of high school, was introduced to drugs.
Marijuana and hash consumed me.
After high school my entire life revolved around being high. CONSTANTLY high. 24 hrs. high. High for months at a time.
Then I got got caught. Just so happened that I lost a job that tied me to my fellow friends who were also fellow users. In every quarter, my life imploded.
..............................................................
Went into a deep depression. Deep, deep, deep. Catatonic-type deep.
Don't remember my father speaking a lot to me or giving me advice but when he did, I listened. I remember him saying, Why don't you go to college? I did.
My first quarter grades initially reflected the grades I enjoyed my entire life in formal education - horrible.
Then, towards the end of my first quarter, I happened upon a Saturday seminar on How to Study. Was still outwardly catatonic-like but the teacher and his one-time seminar impressed me.
Changed my study habits and for the first time in my life I was scoring consistently above 100% on each and every class and test that I took. Some physical education related classes I had I did not receive an A but that was unimportant.
What was important was that around the same time I was immersed in an extremely heavy college class load a thread began to appear. A golden thread. A slender thread of authors that I read aside and unrelated from my intense formal class-related work.
No longer can I remember the sequential order of authors but I know the trail passed through Vonnegut, Jung, J.J. VanDerLeeuw, Hubert Benoit, Wilhelm, Hesse, Colin Wilson, and many others that I have forgotten. Within each book another author would be revealed to me and the golden thread seemed to take me deeper and deeper upon a increasingly consuming sub-conscious path that ended when I found P.D. Ouspensky.
Not only did I read Ouspensky I breathed Ouspensky. I ate & I saw things Ouspensky.
Sitting in a mathematics class something totally unexpected happened to me. Though I had experimented with every mind-altering drug on earth NOTHING could have prepared me for that life-altering experience that happened to me while I sat, stone cold sober upon a chair in a morning math class.
.............................................................................
Inside-out.
There is no way I can describe or attempt to share with anyone what I actually experienced.
Time took a different dimension. Up & down. Not sequential.
I became my fellow students that shared the room at the time.
I lost me.
I remember having a consciously formed thought, I'm going out of my mind.
That thought brought me back. Back to me. Back to the persona of Bill Wiltrack.
The deepest, most uncontrollable psychic fear came from somewhere. It brought me back. To what or from what I do not know.
Fear.
I read & re-read & reread Ouspensky for years & YEARS afterward.
Joined an ashram in Cleveland, Ohio and a commune outside of Benwood, West Virginia.
Could never get back.
Never meant for this post to be this long but I want to provide a framework for someone who reads this to get something out of my writing.
The only thing I could share from this, the most important single experience of my life is that philosophy is important. Philosophy is experiential. Philosophy is lived.
The experience itself left me with one certainty. That certainty is, that we repeat our lives over & over again. One other thing, I'm not certain of anything out here; here in our three dimensional world.
Don't know why I didn't kill myself during the severe depression that happened to me in my early adulthood but somehow, I am convinced that - that depression, that deep, dark, inescapable and debilitating depression precluded & prepared me for an equally uncontrollable mind-blowing, life-changing unforeseeable explosion of an overall indescribable positive experience that I am so appreciative to have experienced later.
....................................................................
Philosophy is intertwined in each of my moments.
The inseparable thread of philosophy is intertwined within my reality. In everything that I love, philosophy is there.
There is a tremendous more amount of me and my relationship to philosophy that I have to share but this post is already waaaaay too long.
Like all of you who are reading this I have MUCH more that I could write about in my life's relationship to philosophy. For now I will stop here.
.
Beyond anything you could imagine...had an unbelievably great childhood.
Fun, friends, family, happy, playing ALL the time. Playing ALL the time.
No pressure, just FUN. Extremely physically active. Loved to move. Just move.
Great, GREAT life.
......................................................................
Had a hundred jobs, loving parents. Many friends. Enjoyed art & drawing. Great family.
Towards the end of high school, was introduced to drugs.
Marijuana and hash consumed me.
After high school my entire life revolved around being high. CONSTANTLY high. 24 hrs. high. High for months at a time.
Then I got got caught. Just so happened that I lost a job that tied me to my fellow friends who were also fellow users. In every quarter, my life imploded.
..............................................................
Went into a deep depression. Deep, deep, deep. Catatonic-type deep.
Don't remember my father speaking a lot to me or giving me advice but when he did, I listened. I remember him saying, Why don't you go to college? I did.
My first quarter grades initially reflected the grades I enjoyed my entire life in formal education - horrible.
Then, towards the end of my first quarter, I happened upon a Saturday seminar on How to Study. Was still outwardly catatonic-like but the teacher and his one-time seminar impressed me.
Changed my study habits and for the first time in my life I was scoring consistently above 100% on each and every class and test that I took. Some physical education related classes I had I did not receive an A but that was unimportant.
What was important was that around the same time I was immersed in an extremely heavy college class load a thread began to appear. A golden thread. A slender thread of authors that I read aside and unrelated from my intense formal class-related work.
No longer can I remember the sequential order of authors but I know the trail passed through Vonnegut, Jung, J.J. VanDerLeeuw, Hubert Benoit, Wilhelm, Hesse, Colin Wilson, and many others that I have forgotten. Within each book another author would be revealed to me and the golden thread seemed to take me deeper and deeper upon a increasingly consuming sub-conscious path that ended when I found P.D. Ouspensky.
Not only did I read Ouspensky I breathed Ouspensky. I ate & I saw things Ouspensky.
Sitting in a mathematics class something totally unexpected happened to me. Though I had experimented with every mind-altering drug on earth NOTHING could have prepared me for that life-altering experience that happened to me while I sat, stone cold sober upon a chair in a morning math class.
.............................................................................
Inside-out.
There is no way I can describe or attempt to share with anyone what I actually experienced.
Time took a different dimension. Up & down. Not sequential.
I became my fellow students that shared the room at the time.
I lost me.
I remember having a consciously formed thought, I'm going out of my mind.
That thought brought me back. Back to me. Back to the persona of Bill Wiltrack.
The deepest, most uncontrollable psychic fear came from somewhere. It brought me back. To what or from what I do not know.
Fear.
I read & re-read & reread Ouspensky for years & YEARS afterward.
Joined an ashram in Cleveland, Ohio and a commune outside of Benwood, West Virginia.
Could never get back.
Never meant for this post to be this long but I want to provide a framework for someone who reads this to get something out of my writing.
The only thing I could share from this, the most important single experience of my life is that philosophy is important. Philosophy is experiential. Philosophy is lived.
The experience itself left me with one certainty. That certainty is, that we repeat our lives over & over again. One other thing, I'm not certain of anything out here; here in our three dimensional world.
Don't know why I didn't kill myself during the severe depression that happened to me in my early adulthood but somehow, I am convinced that - that depression, that deep, dark, inescapable and debilitating depression precluded & prepared me for an equally uncontrollable mind-blowing, life-changing unforeseeable explosion of an overall indescribable positive experience that I am so appreciative to have experienced later.
....................................................................
Philosophy is intertwined in each of my moments.
The inseparable thread of philosophy is intertwined within my reality. In everything that I love, philosophy is there.
There is a tremendous more amount of me and my relationship to philosophy that I have to share but this post is already waaaaay too long.
Like all of you who are reading this I have MUCH more that I could write about in my life's relationship to philosophy. For now I will stop here.
.
