Situational faith—the belief in an improved future state of affairs—is a profound tool of survival in the modern world. I am well-versed on this concept—in the depths of destructive alcoholism, I reached an impasse that necessitated the development of faith. I was forced to locate something beyond my personal sphere of experienced hell, or die. The choice was straightforward. I do not know how or when exactly this perspective dawned upon me, but I recall its vivid presence and the contrast to life without, once it was in effect.
As years went by, I battled further into a living nightmare, enduring twisted traumatic incidents in simultaneous fashion. I existed in a mode of purified survival for nearly a straight decade, facing a progressive descent into madness and total life obliteration. My faith never left—rather, it evolved, inevitably crossing over into the realm of fantasy and purposeful delusion. Under the propulsion of potent stimulant, psychedelic and dissociative substances, I created without volition a range of wildly elaborate dreamscapes. I was so far gone into psycho-social isolation that my connection to humanity was but a faint whisper, a barely noticeable pulse drowned by the roaring tide of hedonistic escape.
The interconnection of faith and fantasy is subtle yet substantive. They both act as deterrents of death and failure yet are delineated by their intrinsic level of rationality. Faith is grounded—it is rooted in something fundamentally realistic or natural. Faith becomes fantasy under the revelation of insanity-drenched blueprinting. Fantasy is pleasurable; faith is dependable. Together they are the yin-and-yang essence of psychic architecture. They are closely joined relatives—faith is the older brother, obstinate, stoic, wisely saturated with the knowledge of ages past; fantasy is the younger sister, wild, free, golden flowing hair gleaming in sunlight, the rush of a moving landscape viewed from a speeding vehicle.
When faith first found me, I knew not myself. I was a shell, rendered an empty husk after ten years of unfathomable self-annihilation. Faith entered as a flicker—a glimpse of hope in a barren desert of lonely angst. I slowly learned to love myself, teaching my battered body that it could indeed feel peace, that the endless onslaught of poison was coming to a trickle. I began to nurture the scared child trapped in its bloated disguise, the sensitive boy who started down the wrong path and wound up losing a significant portion of his life.
Faith is a friendly face in a house of sneering jesters. It is more than belief—faith is a visceral indicator, a felt sensation that assures and sooths. An unshakable foundation of faith can carry one through even the most savage of times. It is a crutch for the wounded, a sturdy shield of metaphor that barricades one’s fragile mind in a fortress of salvation. Faith spoke to me at first through imagery. I could see the life I truly deserved; I could see clearly my enemy. It developed through the lens of free-flowing creation—writing, movement, abstractions of thought, all contributed to a growing momentum within, a compass of morality I would follow in blindness.
Faith need not be religion—some may even proclaim that certain religious and spiritual dogmas fall more evenly into the world of fantasy. Faith, for some, is communal support—like-minded others who may be relied upon in an hour of darkness. Faith, for me, was actualized self beckoning me inwards, filling me with courage. It was both teacher and student, a parallel that was coherent yet often incomprehensible. Faith permeated a place of depravity, allowing streaks of white light to flow through tiny holes where there was once nothing but abyssal emptiness.
Fantasy is far more grandiose. It straddles the edge of impossibility, instilling a multilayered vision of unbelievable circumstance and flourishing levels of power, wealth and status. Fantasy grew from the core that was my faith—it acted in replacement, beginning as a hazy aura of optimized potential before shifting into an intricate framework of absolute self-indulgence. Fantasy airlifted me out from the decrepit hole that was my life in a post-father world. It was an oasis within a vacuous graveyard, a figment of cleverness that in retrospect was so obviously maniacal, yet at its moment of unfurling appeared entirely obtainable.
I witnessed years of epic, unhinged fantasy whirling through my drug-addled brain like a metaphysical tornado. Separating fantasy and psychosis is a faint line in the sand—in the deepest throws of amphetamine abuse, I walked with one foot in either dimension, the discerning factor being whether the mental constructs worked to appease me, in the case of fantasy, or terrify me, in the case of psychosis. These domains morph and oscillate in similitude throughout the formidable life of an addict. Fantasy spins a tale of exuberance, accelerated achievement, and idealistic placement; psychosis amplifies one’s most minute fears, generating a reality littered with visible demons, alternate planes of operation, and paradoxical settings. Both feature a distinct detachment from standardized existence.
Fantasy will leave you completely severed from the whole of humanity. It is characterized by inertia—fantasy persists, stripping away the stratified sheets of plausibility until nothing is left but a dense mass of vibrancy. When housed in imagination, one cannot recall normalcy—they dissociate from a painful realness to wake as an apparition, a haunted ghoul translating along the astral field. These twisted states may be the actuality of non-ordinary consciousness. Fantasy tends to remain legible, at least; psychoses cross over into the surreal, inspired bizarreness tainted with genuine affect. Either may envelope you, ensnare and consume you, becoming everything and anything.
Today, having reached a sustainable level of sobriety and serenity, there are active elements of both faith and fantasy infused in my daily experience. I now have accurate perception—my present musings are pragmatic, tempered relative to the extremes of my stimulant days. There is an allure that keeps me hooked to that segment of my past—the masochist in me is drawn to sufferings of strangeness. To pierce through the veil of life’s theatrics is to stare into blankness, greyscale void with mechanical gears turning in perpetuity. What is real, anyhow? To entertain an endeavor of oddity is to know a sliver of truth. Regardless of literal interpretation, there is value in venturing far into the absurdities of fantasy—at times; however, to prevail in the eyes of virtuous faith is to emerge victor in the arena of practicality.
Thanks for reading! This is the first post in an era of sporadic essays on Astral Projections. I found it difficult to keep away—stay tuned for more writing.