The spiritual circus I was born into
I grew up in a very confusing environment, spiritually speaking.
Spirituality and mental health were never a subject on my family’s table.
My father’s mother was a ferocious Catholic.
My father’s father was a priest who impregnated my grandma twice and ran away with her sister.
My grandmother has indigenous inheritance and was adopted by her sister’s mother, who came from an enslaved family. My grandma also valued her native spirituality, and her sister (who took good care of me for many years in my childhood) used to bring some elements of African matrix religions into her so-called Christianity.
When you’re a kid, you do not rationalise religion and spirituality, so all this mess had a positive impact on my life, because I was born within diversity.
The day my world got smaller
During my pre-adolescence, my mom became a Jehovah’s Witness.
And from that moment on, my life changed radically.
Although I have never identified myself with this religion, I did not have that much choice. And suddenly, no more birthdays, or Easter, or Christmas, no more Mother’s Day, or Children’s Day gifts and so on.
No more friends from outside the denomination, either.
Now I had to knock on people’s doors to convince them about something I did not believe, and write a monthly report of the “precious hours I had dedicated to God, because I lived in my parents’ house and I could do whatever I wanted once I had my own place.”
This was a massive shock for me.
Even before I was 18, I found ways to run from that reality.
Until I was independent enough to sustain my decision of having autonomy over my spirituality, which, by the way, became none for a long time.
The idea of a God that preaches love, but kills people who refuse to obey him, sounds very radical to me.
I mean… Come on! My parents got f*cking pissed at me for abandoning the faith they chose on my behalf, but I don’t think they thought about erasing my existence on Earth. At least I hope not.
But when it’s God, that’s fine?
I don’t know, and no judgment on who believes it. It is just a no-no for me. Anyways, I got expelled, and no Jehovah’s Witnesses were allowed to keep any contact with me.
Pause.
Remember when I told you I couldn’t have friends outside the denomination?
Well, suddenly I also couldn’t have contact with anybody inside the denomination, either.
Ten years without God or faith in anything
All of this confusion turned me into an atheist for over 10 years.
I refused to believe in a God who massacres people or turns his back on this kind of atrocity.
But as my faith in God vanished, so did my faith in humanity.
And when you have hope in nothing and nobody, your depression goes where exactly? Through the roof!
I reached 5mm of distance from the bottom of the well. Seriously.
First, I engaged in many risky, impulsive actions. Until I decided to end my life directly. And I got really close to achieving it more than once.
As you’re reading this now, you can suppose I survived.
And you’re right, you smart thing, I did.
From the Crisis team, I had a heavy but necessary conversation with the ambulance driver.
And I’ll share it with you, because it is important for you to know exactly what he told me on my last suicide attempt. He said:
“Ana… This substance you ingested is not poisonous enough to kill you.
However, depending on the quantity, it can deform you or transform you into a vegetable. So, think twice. Because if you become another one of the cases I’m used to attending, you’ll have more reasons to hate whatever you hate in your life.”
Mate, that sh*t hit strong!
From that conversation, I developed two plans:
Plan A: Find an infallible way to end it all.
Plan B: Find a scientific explanation of how I got where I am and try to get better.
Well… I was living in a first-world country.
Why not try medicine and see what science says about this storm of poo, anyway?
100 Professionals and one question that
changed everything
During this saga to get an explanation, I saw around 100 different professionals.
And every time I had to speak to a new person, I had to re-tell and re-live my damn traumas.
As you can expect, it did not go very well.
Until I met a lovely psychologist through the NHS mental health program for abuse survivors, who was actually offering me practical tools to deal with my episodes.
And in one particular session, she simply looked at me and asked: “Have you thought about the possibility of you absorbing people and places’ energies?”
That just bugged me for a moment. Like, it was very out of the blue!
“Why is my psychologist talking about this woo-woo energy stuff now?”
“Solutions, my darling. Stop with this and give me tangible solutions. Would ya?”
But Sheyla, that wonderful piece of pumpkin pie, kept her scientifically composed posture and presented a range of scientific evidence for what she was suggesting, which planted that malicious curiosity seed for the very first time.
Before I moved to Thailand, I even participated in formal surveys conducted by the NHS academic team, answering questions about sensitivity and empathy.
That was nuts!
But actually, the first seed was planted earlier
To be honest, maybe the actual first spiritual awakening experience occurred many years earlier, with my first ayahuasca experience, in a Santo Daime ceremony.
I confess I accepted my colleague’s invitation without too many expectations.
I decided to stay open to whatever would come.
The person accompanying me said he just wanted to get high.
And at the end of the ceremony, he said it wasn’t very different from any other high he had experienced in his life.
Before I went to that ceremony, I had my first spiritual moment in years.
I simply threw my expectations out to God, the Universe, He-Man, Goku, Wonder Woman, or anybody “there” (without specifying very well where “there” is), saying, “If something exists and there is anything more to this life, let me see it.”
Because I could only believe what I saw.
Sorry to disappoint you, but that night I didn’t see anything exceptional, except for some really nice colours.
But there was something about that experience that somehow did not seem like a normal high. As I told you, I had tried many risky things to have fun, and I just knew this wasn’t it.
My honest admission
I didn’t see God that night.
I didn’t have a revelation.
I didn’t float above my body, didn’t learn a Kamehameha, and didn’t receive any millennial wisdom from my ancestors.
But something shifted. Something I couldn’t name yet.
And that unnamed thing would take me years, one NHS psychologist, a formal research survey, and a lot of reluctant Google searches to begin to understand.
That ayahuasca night gave me nothing I could measure, prove, or explain.
And I needed proof. I always needed proof.
So when Sheyla sat across from me almost 10 years later and used the word “energy” without flinching, I bugged, but I decided not to walk out.
For the first time, I asked:
What the actual f*ck? What does science actually say about this?
And those questions led me down a rabbit hole with no way back.
In Part 2, I’ll show you exactly what I found about science and spirituality going hand in hand. Until then, may the Force be with you. 🖖🏽
