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My Wasteland of a Reality

June 10, 2007 at 3:24 pm by mahud

I have walked the Christian path on and off for around 11 years. The former half (probably the last 4 or 5 years) as a Fundamentalist Christian, and the latter as a Liberal Christian. I never actually applied either of those terms to myself, but I guess they are the simplest ways to describe my religious world view during those times.

In between my transition from ‘fundamentalism’ to ‘liberalism’, I went through a brief and painful period of agnosticism, where I took the New Testament injunction to “test everything” to its extreme, and became totally insensitive to God’s ‘spirit.’

Introduction to Christianity

My first real introduction to Christianity was at fifteen, when I started visiting my dad for the first time, since he and my mum spit up when I was three. He had recently become ‘born again.’ psychologically, I was very messed up, and had been kicked out of school at fourteen, because of my uncontrollable behaviour. My head was full of so much stuff that conflicted with concepts such as God and Christian morality, so I never really took my dad’s religion seriously.

I was primarily interested in Sex, Drugs and Rock Music, and as far as religion went, I was interested in Shamanism and hallucinogenic drugs. I also played around with the I Ching (Book of Changes).

The Inward Mythology

At the age of 15-16 I began to develop a serious anxiety disorder, that prevented me from hardly ever leaving my bedroom, unless I was compelled to by my friends. Eventually my anxiety became so bad (plus the drug taking didn’t help either), over the next few years of my life I basically lost any meaningful friendships I had, because I was totally unable to connect with anyone anymore. And I’m still pretty much the same way now.

I began to create a fictional universe when I was nineteen, that was set in both the present and the ancient past. It involved a bunch of musicians living in a castle, who attempt to contact extra-terrestrial life using shamanic techniques, and inadvertently invoke a malevolent forest spirit. The spirit, through possession, kills all but one of the musicians, and he becomes trapped alone within the castle walls. He grows old and loses his memory, awaiting for his release.

It seems to me now, that I was creating a myth of my own reality. I was the musician trapped within the castle, that lost all his friends due to a destructive power, that is, my social anxiety. The loss of memory reflects my own loss of self-identity, as I could and can no longer remember who I was, before my life was shot to bits, back when I was around eleven or twelve.

I also find it interesting that my myth, in a number of respects also mirrors the myth of the Rich-Fisher-Grail King, who was also trapped in an enchanted castle, after receiving a physical wound (that in my case is psychological), and could only be released when someone asked him the all-important question, restoring not only the king’s perpetual wound, but also bring life to the king’s realm that had become a wasteland.

Becoming a Christian

By the age of twenty one, I had became pretty desperate for help, and this lead me to check out Christianity more. It seemed to of helped my dad, so perhaps it might work for me. After much Bible reading I was convinced that it was true, and eventually after a ‘divine encounter‘, I was able to truly believe.

I was baptized, and attended church for a few months, but I was still as socially anxious as before. I also began to develop a terrible sense of guilt, that I had never experienced before, because of all the fucked up stuff I had done. Eventually the guilt and anxiety, I stopped attending church, and no one appeared to miss me.

The Outward Mythology

I just slipped back into self isolation, drifting in and out of Christianity, and adding more history to my myth.

I created a race of priests called the Nehar Shana, which meant ‘guardians of the river.’ They and their people lived in the Forests of Luft, near my castle, that was yet to be built. One of the Nehar Shana falls in love with a woman, and they have a baby that is born both male and female. When the priesthood discover this, they murder the child’s parents and expose the ‘abomination’ in the forest, to either die of exposure, or become a meal for the wild animals.

Instead the child is brought up by the creatures in the forest, and develops untamed magical powers, which she-he unleashes upon the Nehar Shana, destroying all but one of them, called Gavroc, who then wanders the world. After brewing himself a tea from the milk of the poppy, Gavroc has a vision of a Fender Stratocaster descending from storm clouds. He attempts to recreate the instrument, and sets the ancient lore of his people to song, becoming the first wandering Nehar Khan, who teach an esoteric form of lore of the forest dwellers, spreading their mystical traditions throughout the world. It was due to a misreading of these traditions that the castle musicians invoked the spirit of the double-sexed child.

At this point my story was influenced by my own studies into religion and mythology, and so the myth doesn’t really reflect my own inner self. Rather than subconsciously looking inward, I had began to reconstruct my mythology from outward sources. And the same can be said for my own spiritual journey.

Inward return

I’ve held on to Christianity for so long, I find it hard to let go. It has become a part of me, but it is an alien part of who I truly am (something I’m still trying to figure out), and I no longer believe that Jesus, his teachings (or the repackaged Christian myth of a ‘dying and rising’ god) offer the transformative power I need to regain myself. I still have a strong faith in God, but not the historical Christ.

I still don’t know how my story ends, but I believe I need to start looking inwards again, rather than directly borrowing from other mythologies to release myself from the magic castle, and restore my wasteland of a reality.

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