Hello everyone, my name’s Diana, I’m 24, and I’ve been lurking these forums for a hot minute; I finally decided it was time to bite the bullet and create an account.
An undercurrent of interest in the metaphysical and the occult has been in my mind since early adolescence, but it was largely repressed by the fear culture that comes with an unfortunate upbringing in a certain restorationist Christian cult that is infamous for knocking on the door at 8am on your day off.
I broke away from that org at 14 for multiple reasons, tried to pound strict atheism into my brain as an overcompensatory measure of deprogramming myself.
Allthewhile I experienced a very consistent stream of inexplicable coincidences, bursts of extrasensory clarity/perception, uncanny premonitions in dreams, vivid desires manifesting that logically should not have, etc etc… you get the idea.
I would try harder and harder to write these things off as products of luck or chance. But they just kept getting more and more bizarre until it all sort of reached a tipping point in which the constant mental gymnastics of rationalizing it all were taking significantly more energy than just accepting that there had to be something greater at play. I had a near-death experience at 18 that gave me a brief encounter with some entity that I believe was definitely not of this material plane, but again, the fear response conditioned in me from years prior was still strong at that point and I blocked a lot of it from memory.
Up until a relatively recent major life event that emotionally kicked my ass, all of this stuff felt like puzzle pieces that had been strewn about, kicked under the fridge, stuck between the couch cushions, etc. I knew they were there, but finding them and putting the puzzle together was perpetually a back-burner task.
What sparked the sincere interest was a bout of desperation to feel some scrap of control over the aftermath of that major life event.
But I’ve since moved past that feeling and realized, “hey, if I’ve been doing this stuff all along, I might as well buckle in and do it right.”
This led me into introductory sugar-coated woo-woo territory, but I kept digging and studying and testing-- cutting through the sea of clickbaity LoA life-coach fluff to the meat and potatoes (feeling is the secret!). I resonate hard with the multiverse theory that infinite branching realities exist and your consciousness can select which one to inhabit by thinking/feeling from the state of it.
From there I’ve been delving deeper into divination, sigil magick, using rituals as a tangible way of setting an intent and really connecting with it, subconscious/theta state work (big fan of the Neville Goddard sleep method!).
My goals as of right now are to just keep learning, absorbing, practicing, removing blocks, and building a stronger/more perceptive mind. Interaction with spiritual beings is definitely something I have great interest in, but I know there’s mental work to be done yet as far as opening my senses up more to better receive anything they may have to show or tell me.
On a sidenote, I did petition Marquise Amon yesterday-- aside from feeling a sort of “hot flash” chill, my cat who had been lounging nearby with disinterest prior became very alert and curious!
The tl;dr of it all: Still very much a noob, but learning and applying things every day. Glad to be here!