Spiritual awakening to a video game soundtrack?

I have come to accept that the tug of my intuition is often a mystery.

I can’t foresee the many possible consequences of an (inter-)action. If I feel a pull to talk to someone, is it about learning something from them or sharing something with them? Or will the conversation affect someone else who they meet in the future? All of the above? Everything is connected, but how it all fits together only becomes clear looking backward, if at all.

That’s what happened to me this past week. A few days ago, I opened Reddit, which I very rarely do. The only thread I read was: Did anyone quit their job after enlightenment?

(For the purpose of this conversation, let’s hold the weighty term enlightenment loosely. Let’s think of it as “awakened and reached a higher state of consciousness.”)

Totally, I thought. I thought of my own bumpy road and the people who, you know, “get one-shotted by ayahuasca” and drop out. Career change feels like an “occupational hazard” of stepping on to a spiritual path.

One answer stood out to me.

Yes. I actually quit being a Lawyer after becoming enlightened. A career path that started in high school and took 14 years to complete, thrown away by one summer evening of revelation.

Makes sense. What startled me was the nature of the revelation.

The final revelation came to me on an evening walk on April 3, 2023. I was listening to “Moon Halo” by Honkai Impact 3rd; and the specific line of “May all the beauty be blessed” pushed me into the first stage of authentic enlightenment; “being”.

A walk. With a piece of music. Best as I can tell — and this is not my world — it’s the soundtrack to a Chinese anime-type action game. No drugs. No meditation retreat. Music, but not the kind I would have expected.

not what I was expecting!

No dropping out to Bali or Tulum. No turning into a coach or neo-shaman. How… unexciting?

Everyone that repeats that life after enlightenment continues to be “Chop wood, fetch water” is correct. My day to day hasn’t changed significantly between pre- and post-enlightenment.

He pointed out that it was not a spontaneous event but the culmination of a long path of wrestling, a moment of bliss and poking through the veil after a dark night of the soul.

I realized that all of creation was one in my teens, but developed a God complex by incorporating that divine knowledge into earthly existence.

I went seeking for knowledge and understanding in parallel with my academic studying throughout the years.

I had an ego death a few months prior to that final revelation. My ex of 7 years and I broke up, my family life was in disharmony and I wasn’t resonating with the legal profession like I was before.

I think it was the fact that William (his alias for the purpose of our conversation) remembered the specific time that made my ears perk up. I have a few such “before and after” moments. I felt a strong pull to reach out and learn more about his experience. So I did. And we talked.

I have mixed feelings about the conversation. That’s why I am writing this lengthy preamble. It’s a raw chat with a stranger, an experiment unlike other podcasts I’ve done.

I am not happy with all of my questions. I wish I had spent more time on his experiences leading up to that moment. Instead, I got side tracked a few times. There were also moments when I struggled. For example, I noticed how conflicted and uncertain I feel about topics like finance and money and how they affect us.

Finally, I noticed my own resistance to some ideas that rang true but came from a fellow seeker. I think I would have accepted the same statements without question from a spiritual teacher / authority figure. I think this detracted from my presence in the conversation in a subtle way. Much to ponder.

In any event, I decided to share the chat regardless. It has some longer than normal pauses, some uncertainty, some laughter, and bumpy moments that I chose not to remove. It is what it is: a private conversation about the experiences on the winding spiritual path. (I made one change: I moved the question about the song from the end to the very beginning.)

I believe quite a few people are bumping into the mystery — which can be disorienting and lonely (see The Prophecy of Rust Cohle). Afterwards, you try to contextualize what happened, you look for community, some relationships end. You wonder what it means — whether this new awareness comes with responsibility, with a mission even.

I have, for now, found my answer: to follow my compass, be of service, and develop and share my gifts to the best of my ability. Still, it’s honey on the razor blade as Sasha just just put it.

So, if you’re dealing with these questions, perhaps you find a spark in this conversation. If not, don’t worry about it. I trust that it will reach whoever it is meant to reach.

And I want to reiterate my offer to chat — if you’re wrestling with stuckness, big goals, spirituality — feel free to reach out.

— Frederik

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“Fang Congyi, a Daoist priest from Jiangxi, traveled extensively in the north before settling down at the seat of the Orthodox Unity Daoist church, the Shangqing Temple on Mount Longhu (Dragon Tiger Mountain), Jiangxi province. Imbued with Daoist mysticism, he painted landscapes that "turned the shapeless into shapes and returned things that have shapes to the shapeless.” — Metropolitan Museum

The only thing behind this paywall is access to the private conversation.