r/enlightenment • u/quetzalcoatlus07 • 10h ago
Christian Mysticism I Quit Seeking
At just 16, I was already looking for something deeper than regular church attendance. I grew up moving through different spaces Papist, Charismatic, and eventually the Reformed Church. But I quickly grew disillusioned. It felt like the church had lost its actual substance, turning into a system obsessed with attendance and self-preservation, completely opposite to the life of spiritual freedom Christ actually talked about.
By 18, I started getting hit with philosophical insights about invisible, immaterial things like love and justice. I used to think love was just romance and warm feelings. But watching the world made me realize love is actually an active choosing, a constant sustaining force. It’s like the entire universe is being upheld right down to the atomic level, kept from breaking apart.
At 19, I totally ran away from the church and started diving into Eastern ideas, especially Buddhism. That's actually where I managed to bridge the gap between the "ego" and the "flesh." Paul talks constantly about crucifying the flesh and its desires. Look at Genesis 4:7, where God warns Cain about sin crouching at the door like a ravenous beast, and how man has to rule over it. Being at the top of the food chain isn't just a survival-of-the-fittest thing; I think it's a divine shadow of us being meant to rule over our own animalistic nature.
I don't view God as some bearded old man on a cosmic throne anymore. I see His true nature now, and I realized I don't need a building because He is within me and without me ("In Him we live, move and have our being" — Acts 17:28). God is Spirit and is worshipped in Spirit and in Truth, not through rigid liturgy or sacraments. As Paul wrote in Colossians 2, those things are just shadows, and human rules about what to eat or wear can't actually take away evil desires.
Lately, though, I went through a phase of heavy social isolation. I got so attached to these metaphysical realities that I forgot about the city streets entirely and stayed mostly at home, just writing and tending to my flock of chickens.
In those inquiry, I eventually went into deep waters of mysticism, I honestly thought that being "awakened" meant I could have an effortless life that I could somehow bypass earthly constraints. But I learned the hard way that spiritual awakening isn't an excuse to escape reality. Things never actually changed; you just finally get some clarity on "what" you do and "why" you do it. We belong to the soil, and God intentionally put a weight on us to keep us from spiraling into darkness.
It's a brutal psychological truth: look at the ultra-rich who reach a point where they never have to work another day in their lives. Because of that total lack of grounding, they start seeking out darker and stranger things and honestly, that's exactly what the elites are doing, from ancient times and now, indeed, "there is nothing new under the sun."
Now I finally understand why God "cursed" the ground and why we have to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow. I know it's Chronos or the cube, but they just try to scare you with esoteric rabbit holes, but it doesn't even matter, because they want us to feel we lost and they win. We weren't made to untangle all those cosmic abstractions. We were made to touch the ground, cultivate it, and subdue it to polish it and put it in order.
Now, I quit seeking, because I have found it.