Thread: Tell me about that time....

when you saw something that changed your life. naturally occuring, not naturally occuring. moments that will stick with you forever. something beautiful or hideous.

for me one of them would be when i was around 6, i was on a swing and saw feathers falling around me. i looked up and saw, right above my head, a hawk eating a pigeon. i wouldn't say it was bad, just i'll remember it probably til i die.

now you.

When I was a freshman in high school (when I actually had friends) we went to my friends shore house for a week. It was in a very rural area with a lake nearby that had a dock going into it. One night we went out to the edge of the dock. Although it was faint, that was the first (and only) time I saw the milky way, and it was one of the best experiences of my life.

Originally Posted by Wayfaerer

When I was a freshman in high school (when I actually had friends) we went to my friends shore house for a week. It was in a very rural area with a lake nearby that had a dock going into it. One night we went out to the edge of the dock. Although it was faint, that was the first (and only) time I saw the milky way, and it was one of the best experiences of my life.

Seeing the milky way is definitely something special. I live in an area where I can spot it most nights, but it's still something special each time, I feel.

When I was probably about 8 or 9 I was playing out in the woods and on the side of a tree I saw a wasp or mayfly or something laying eggs in a caterpillar that was twitching in agony. That messed me up pretty bad for a while, and I'll never forget it.

Nice thread topic idea.

The first thing that comes to mind is when we had to dissect animals in a 2nd year bio class. I know it doesn't sound like anything special that should have impacted my perception of things, but it did. We dissected a quail and a rat. It made me think of life and anatomy differently. My idea of internal organs changed, from colored diagrams to cold meshes of flesh hardly distinguishable from those around it. The smell, the organic nature of it, the feeling of touching the flesh and the stickiness as I pull my hand away, knowing that it was once alive... idk, it's hard to explain, it just made me think differently of bodies.

Skydiving is another one, more specifically the first few seconds of free-fall. For some reason, before actually doing it I was expecting a feeling of falling, like the short-distance falling I've experienced in real life but prolonged. I never considered that I'd feel the air. Like some insane wind, only it was me moving past the air and not the air moving past me. It was just so intense, I felt like I was being raped by nature or something. After that my perception of things kind of changed. Like before that I never realised that the world was capable of doing that to me, and now I view it differently, and kind of personify it. Again, it's hard to explain.

Now that I think about it there are a lot of those types of moments. I'll maybe post more here later.

post as many as you like!!

9/11

When I was a toddler my cousin showed me a magic trick.... It involved these 4 antique cans standing on our heater. He said that he'll show me something amazing. I followed him to the heater and there he took a little white pingpong ball put it in one of those cans and said some weird foreign'ish language things. And then he said to take the ball out of the can he had just put it in, but it was gone. So he said to look into one of the others and surely it was in one of the other 3...

I thought he was just fvcking around with me so I said I didn't believe him. He then said "You don't?" and gave me the little ball and said put it in one of those cans and told me the words I needed to say. And again it was gone where I put it and it would be in one of the other 3. I was amazed! Magic was actually real! So then everytime after that when I was bored I put the ball in one of those cans and said the words and it would randomly be in another can... I did it hundreds of times. Then when we moved to another house and I forgot about it until one morning. I got up and took some random object of mine put it in and say the words but nothing happened...

Another was when I was 2-4 years old I would often walk around having a third person view, not seeing thru my eyes but literally seeing myself from the back 10-20 cm's above my head. I thought this was normal. Until I walked up to my uncle while viewing myself 3rd person and asked if he had the same and if it would dissapear if I would grow older. He looked at me like "What The Hell?" and said "No that's impossible, you crazy!" and as he said that the 3rd person view was gone and it never happend again.

Things like these greatly impacted me with being the open minded person I am today

Honestly, One of the first things that came to mind was about three weeks after I joined DV when I had my first lucid dream. Doesn't really sound like a huge deal, I guess, but aside from the implications of lucid dreaming itself, I sort of realized then just what the human mind is capable of, and it really got me thinking about the relationship about the mind and reality.

When i was young apparently i didn't understand why i shouldn't do whatever it was i wanted to do. in 2nd grade i would just draw all over my school work and apparently this frustrated my school teacher. one day she made me sit near her with all the retarded kids, so she could 'help' us with the work. i just started drawing all over the paper again and i guess that did it, cuz she slapped me. that's when i realized people didn't like me doing whatever i want.

When I saw the moon through a telescope for the first time.

When I had to break an injured bird's neck.

The myriad of views I've had from the air.

When I climbed the chimney in this picture:



It was such an intense sensation of being alive. I doubt I'll ever forget that feeling.

You climbed up there?!
Well can't really remember any, right now, but I'll post when I remember.

I clearly remember when I made the startling realization that meat is muscle. I always knew meat was 'flesh', but I used to think flesh was some other material inside the body, and that muscles were thin stringy things that ran through it. I remember one evening - I was young, I don't know, maybe 8 or 9? Maybe a little older, not sure. We were having steak. I found something stringy and tough inside mine and said I thought it might be a muscle, and my mom told me that all meat is muscle. I was all like Ewww Gross! And didn't want to finish my steak or ever eat meat again (that lasted for about 5 minutes). But when the realization sank in it was like a huge mysterious part of my world suddenly became clear and brightly lit and everything went click and my impossibly vast childhood world shrank down a bit.

This was one of several similar revelations that brought the world ratcheting down from a vast endless land of mystery and darkness to a round globe with lines printed on it and colorful continents. And I suppose this the the process Castaneda refers to as adults destroying your unconscious understanding of the Nagual (the natural world as it really is) and gradually replacing it with the Tonal (the artificial world-construct that people agree the world is).

^ Lol, that thing about meat happened to me... but it was about a month ago. Pretty sad.

I think maybe something that had an impact on me was the first time I played a saxophone. I had found something beautiful that I was actually good at, and it elevated my love of music to a real passion.

I once raised this chicken abandoned by its mother. I used my whole summer taking care of it, feeding it, give it water and such. My dad found an old tree box, where the chicken could sleep, and put up a heat lamp at the top and hay at the bottom so it could keep warm. In the daytime I dug up worms and gave it to her. She loved it! And I just used all my time with that stupid chicken. It quickly bonded with me, and everywhere I went it ran after me. But one day me and my dad decided it was time to give it a bigger enclosure, since it was growing fairly big. It was growing feathers and everything. So we let it out in a bigger area, and my dad and I walked away. When I came back 15 minutes later I could see a crow inside the enclosure and I quickly ran over to see what was happening. The crow flew and in the middle of the enclosure was my chicken laying dead with its head ripped off. I just dropped down on my knees and cried and cried and cried. That was the first time I ever experienced a death that touched me. I was completely devastated for several days. But in the end I learned a lot of things about responsibilities and taking care of others even though it is a sad story.

I saw an angel on TV when I was 11 and she became my idol ever since. 8 years and going~

This is such an amazing thread. Strong. For the last 15 minutes I've been drifting through my most intimate, emotional memories. Some of our strongest memories may seem completely insignificant to someone else, but I will never forget what I felt when I saw a little bird get hit by a car.

One of my breaking, shift changing, meaningful moments was listening to G. Carlin's "Religion is bullshit" sketch. In that few seconds the whole god illusion (delusion ) vanished. When he said: "but he loves you!" I remember asking my self... who am I actually praying to? And the answer was clear and overwhelming.

A brilliant thread. For me was the first time I fell in love. True infatuation. It was a long, often cold road of unreturned love but i'll never forget how strange it felt to be so affected so deeply by something that my rational mind knew was hopeless. Though I was hurt terribly the rememberence of those beautiful brown eyes and how humbling it feels to make yourself vulnerable still brings a wry smile to my now rather more guarded face. Love is blind, as they say.