This is the second part of a message that I wrote to Luke Eilers (GoldJacketLuke) describing one of the strangest (and most incredible) experiences of my life. You can read Part 1 here.
Like I mentioned, this gym is in a hotel, on the 6th floor. As I was walking out into the lobby area to get the elevator, there was this guy and his wife there talking, not quite arguing but doing this unpleasant conversation thing where there’s a lot of tension and it seems like a real fight is about to break out at any moment. Like you can tell they are just fed up with each other and not really in a happy relationship, I’ve seen a fair number of couples like this, you can sense the vibe right away.
Anyway, in the state of mind I was in this seemed completely ridiculous to me because I could see that this was just two ego’s basically fighting with one another, and that none of it was really real. I thought about how people get so wrapped up in their egos (they don’t realize that it’s not really “them” or that they’re not really “them”) and I thought about how much unnecessary unhappiness and negative emotion there is in the world due to that.
So I overheard a bit of their conversation, and the guy wanted to stop by a store on their way out, and the wife said “OK” kind of reluctantly. I think she noticed me behind them or at least I felt like she did, we were the only people in the elevator lobby area. She was pretty attractive, too attractive for her husband, it seemed to me at the time, and definitely out of his league. She was walking slowly and seductively (in my mind at least) behind her husband and I was checking her out hard. I knew that she could feel my eyes on her, and after her husband turned the corner she turned and looked at me (I was expecting her to do this, not because of something specific to this moment but because this is something girls do often) and I gave her this kind of cocky half smile.
This felt a bit surreal as if I knew it was going to happen before it happened or something, or like it was too “perfect” a coincidence that this kind of loser guy and his attractive wife were out there having a disagreement right at the same time I was. Like the scenario seemed too picturesque to be real or something, it’s hard to describe and it sounds like something normal that just happens, but it didn’t feel like it at all while it was happening, especially after what I had been thinking about in the gym.
So the girl went around the corner, and then I went over to a mirror by the elevator and did the same smile again in the mirror, because I wanted to see what it looked like. I saw in the mirror that I was this sort of douchebag (not necessarily a bad or negative thing, just an observation that that’s what “I” looked like), because I was muscular and wearing a tank top and giving a cocky grin, and I had just given a cocky grin to some guy’s wife. Then I thought “If I go further in the same direction (in terms of like personal development/the way I’m going) then I’ll be the dude that wives cheat on their husbands with in the future (when I get older or in different circumstances)”. Again there wasn’t really any judgement attached to this, it was just an observation. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it at the time, not really good or bad. I just sort of thought, “hmm Ok, maybe at some point I’ll have to think about whether or not that’s the kind of person I want to become”.
Then I had a feeling that what had just happened was kind of fun or mildly exhilarating, and I asked myself, “Is that the point of life, to have fun?” and right away answered, “No, not really.”
As I went down the elevator and was coming out through the main lobby, I was sort of thinking “What’s the point of making money” (one of my major goals here in Thailand and a major reason for coming here is to make money and build an online business) because money is just something the ego wants so it’s pointless. I felt like this a bit on LSD as well. Then I thought about what if I just died in a traffic accident on my scooter on the way back from the hotel, and how it just wouldn’t matter either. Then my thoughts jumped to my Mom and how she would care if I died (among other people but I thought of her first) and how that’s a reason not to die. But then I thought again that that’s just a construction of my Mom’s ego, which is a construction itself.
While I was walking to my bike I thought about how I wanted to talk to two of my new friends here in Chiang Mai about the experience, and one of them in particular.
The woman looking at me in the elevator lobby had been kind of playing on my mind this whole time out into the parking lot, and then on the bike on the way back to the coworking space, I realized that this was the universe playing with me and that there are no coincidences. The girl looked at me in the lobby because of what I did at the gym (went up and talked to the other girl even though I was scared), and that it was all connected to the thoughts and feelings about the ego and universe and stuff that I had been feeling a bit earlier in the gym. Like the idea that Elliott Hulse talks about, “the universe meeting you half way”. My half was going up and talking to the girl despite being nervous, and the universe’s half was having the attractive wife walk seductively in front of me and then give me a look. Like it was some sort of sign or acknowledgement or something. I felt that there was some kind of connection between me and the cosmos, but then I remembered/thought that I am the cosmos. Then I remembered/understood the Alan Watts quote “What you do and what happens to you are the same thing”. I really felt like there was no difference between what “I” was doing and what was happening to me.
I then thought that I wanted to make this kind of thing happen more often, so I thought to watch your videos later because this is exactly what you talk about. I resolved in my mind to try and make this kind of thing happen more.
The drive is only like 5 minutes, and on the bike on the way I saw this girl walking down the street, dressed VERY similar to the first girl in the gym (the one I had approached a few days before and didn’t get the number from). She was wearing the same style of purple workout shirt and similar black shorts, she had similar hair colour and a similar build. I thought it might be her and then thought “There are no coincidences” and realized that this was the universe playing with me again. I drove past her and looked at her face and saw that it wasn’t the same girl. I had only half expected it to be her anyway, because this girl was alone while the first one had left with the guy.
I then arrived back at the coworking space, and began typing out notes on what had happened very quickly. Writing out these notes was similar to a time I was on LSD as well, because during that trip I sat down several times to type notes out quickly about an experience in an altered state of consciousness. The internet had gone out in the coworking space (the first time this had ever happened the whole time I’ve been here, I later found out the internet had gone out in the entire area, another coincidence?) and it gave me chance to type everything out, rather than go on the internet and get distracted or forget some of what had happened. People sort of tried to talk to me and I like half engaged with them, but probably made it clear I didn’t want to talk because I just kept going back to typing and I thought that maybe it seemed rude.
I then wrote at the bottom of my notes in bold “Don’t forget about this it’s important” “Don’t go back and get wrapped up in your ego again” and “make this come about more: what you do and what happens to you are the same thing”
Then I had another random thought: being afraid of people (social anxiety/fundamental fear of people) is being afraid of yourself because everything is one and you are the other people. And I thought this was pretty funny at the time. I thought about how the fear is a product of the ego, because the ego thinks it’s separate, but that the ego’s not really me. I also watched some of your videos in the coworking space and preloaded a bunch of them to watch back at my apartment because I don’t have internet there. I thought about how the way to make this kind of thing happen more often is to do things that are courageous.
Continued in Modafinil, Ego Dissociation, and GoldJacketLuke: My Crazy Spiritual Experience (Part 3)